Social justice matters more than social distance

"Suddenly, Public Health Officials Say Social Justice Matters More Than Social Distance"

Don't catch you slippin' now

Coram Deo asked a good question about why people riot. In general, I presume there are many different reasons. I offered a brief response in the post, but I'm sure it could be expanded and improved.

However, in the case of George Floyd, much of it is due to perceived racism. The kind of thing epitomized in Childish Gambino's "This Is America". George Floyd is coming on the heels of Ahmaud Audrey and Breanna Taylor too.

Yet, perception isn't necessarily reality. Is it only black folks and other minorities targeted by the police? Consider the tragic case of Daniel Shaver only a few years ago. The officer who killed Shaver was found not guilty.

Anyway, there's a lot of pent-up frustration against authorities in general, especially the police, police brutality, the blue wall of silence. A lot of it justified, in my view. There are a lot of corrupt cops. Cops who don't serve and protect. Of course, I'm not suggesting riots are the answer. Not at all. I don't defend the riots.

That said, I want to come to my main point: I think the left is fomenting a lot of the riots. Leftist agitators. Take arguments like this which attempt to justify violent protests. Likewise take how some argue "black rage" is a "spiritual virtue". Take the house that Obama built (e.g. Obama arguably inciting blacks against authorities). Take the fact that "Biden's staff is donating to a group that funds the release of rioters" (source).

It's as if leftists are using Floyd's death as a pretext to push their agenda. It's as if leftists want a second civil war. A revolution.

If so, I suppose that'd be in line with what socialists and communists have always wanted. To build a new world atop the ash heaps of the old world, the world of their fathers. They don't honor their parents, but wish to commit patricide and matricide. They're not their grandfathers' sons, but their grandfathers' slayers. Destroy Amerikkka, arise Utopia.

I don't think the US today can be defeated by external forces (e.g. China), but I think we could defeat ourselves by tearing ourselves apart. Many on the left are like a fifth column in the US.

Update. Andy Ngo, who himself was a victim of Antifa, makes good observations which overlap with mine.

The violence tonight is not about George Floyd.Growing numbers of young Americans have been taught to think of US as an evil empire—a white-supremacist, patriarchal hellscape.The part about the US being the best hope for humankind—a deeply flawed but noble democracy—not taught.

— Christina Sommers (@CHSommers) June 1, 2020

Mohler purges seminary

http://www.worldviewconversation.com/2020/04/breaking-al-mohler-fires-conservative.html

Prima Donna

A friend drew my attention to the DL today. White spent a few minutes near the start attempting to refute my "hit piece": 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO5MbkGC-Ro

He's reacting to this post:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/03/is-status-quo-frozen-in-place.html

On the DL, he suggested that I didn't have anything else to post on that day, so I went for the low low road. Unfortunately, his counting leaves something to be desired since there were no fewer than 7 posts that day. 

This is a problem with White. He makes snide off-the-cuff comments that come back to bite him. 

Let's comment on something he said earlier on Facebook, which he copy/pasted onto my post:

I really have no idea why Steve has to run over to spit at me about every six months or so, but I guess I was due my spittle today. Absurd out-of-context argument. Maybe Steve doesn't understand Twitter? This was the beginning of what is called a thread. There was more---much more. And, of course, I have sort of said a great deal about this topic over the past year, inclusive of hours of material on the Dividing Line, editing the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel, and speaking at the G3 PreConference on the topic as well. So, isolating a single tweet, ignoring the rest of the thread it was a part of, and the entire context of what I've said---well, good job, Steve. Really helps polish up the ol' credibility as they say! For those who do not have a regularly scheduled "spit at James White" thing going on, nothing in what I said for a moment is an argument against pursuing righteousness in God's creation. It does, however, argue against a worldview that does not begin with the divine decree---i.e., intersectionality, that random, chaotic thought process that sees us all as victims of impersonal forces that shape us RATHER THAN image bearers who are called to faithfulness no matter what God's providence sends our way. If Steve can't see that, I feel sorry for him. But I think he can. Only problem is, when you keep spitting in the wind, it ends up in your eyes.

1. Notice how emotional White gets over intellectual criticism: "Steve has to run over to spit at me about every six months or so, but I guess I was due my spittle today…For those who do not have a regularly scheduled 'spit at James White' thing going on…Only problem is, when you keep spitting in the wind, it ends up in your eyes."

For the life of me I'll never understand why some grown men act like Prima Donnas. White is reacting like John Loftus, Richard Carrier, and Dave Armstrong. If you're that thin-skinned, you shouldn't be a Christian apologist. Intellectual criticism comes with the territory. And if you're that self-important, you need to take a break and reset your priorities. The more seriously we take ourselves, the less seriously we take the Gospel. 

2. It's hypocritical to use Twitter, then whine about people judging what they say on Twitter. And yes, I read the entire Twitter thread before I wrote the post. And no, the rest of the thread didn't "completely change" what I said in the post. 

3. I'm very selective about viewing podcasts generally. I dislike the medium. And White's DL marathons are really bad. He rambles incessantly, veers off into chronic digressions, like a random association test. He's ad libbing the whole time. It's a very lazy, inefficient form of analysis. He should rediscover the art of writing. How to express himself in compact, organized fashion. 

Moreover, his complaint is an exercise in misdirection because I wasn't evaluating his overall position on social justice and intersectionality. So that's neither here nor there. 

4. Let's go back to what he originally said:

Let me put this simply.

Intersectionality is utterly incompatible with a belief in the sovereign kingship of God and His divine decree.

It is God who makes men to differ, God who makes the lame and the blind and the rich and the poor.

i) To "put it simply" is to summarize his position. That's his position in a nutshell. Needless to say, if you think your position can be succinctly stated in two sentences, then that moots the claim that no one can understand your position unless they listen to hours of your exposition. Conversely, if you think a two-sentence summary is too simple, too liable to misunderstanding, then don't put it simply. What you're not entitled to do is to put it simply, then complain that readers oversimplify your position. Isn't that obvious? 

ii) And notice how the two sentence are juxtaposed, so that the second sentence illustrates the principle enunciated in the first sentence. The problem is that his formulation is classically fatalistic. He makes it sound like you can't do anything, and shouldn't try, to change the status quo since God decreed the status quo. If God decreed who is rich and poor, then who are we to try and help the poor out of poverty?

But if that's not what he intended to convey, if belief in the sovereign kingship of God and His divine decree is compatible with improving the status quo for the lame, the blind, and the poor (to take his examples), then where does that leave his original antithesis? 

Put another way, if that's not what he intended to convey, then he should be able to reword what he said to avoid the fatalistic formulation. Just rewrite it. Present an alternative formulation that avoids the fatalistic dichotomy which his original statement erected. 

Defining “Social Justice”

I’ve watched most of the videos from the recent G3 conference, but this one, “Defining Social Justice” by Dr. Voddie Baucham was clearly the best. “I do not think [that phrase, ‘social justice’] means what you think it means”, he says. “The biggest problem with the terminology ‘social justice’ is that it doesn’t mean what we think it means”.



“Those who have decided to go ahead and use the terminology, they want first for the terminology to be understood according to their [own] intentions”.

He unpacks the term in a variety of ways.

“The biggest problem with the term ‘social justice’”, he said, “is that there is a ‘social justice’ ‘movement’ and that ‘movement’ has a ‘mission’.” It is a mission that is not consonant with Biblical Christianity.

He cites this article from Kevin DeYoung: Is Social Justice a Gospel Issue? -- in which DeYoung clearly seems to miss the boat on what he is talking about.

The primary division, according to Dr. Baucham, is whether “justice” is being intended at an individual level (wherein God Himself works for justice for individuals) or for “groups” (and this is where the modifier “justice” comes into play – in the sense that “social” justice requires an arbiter – usually the state – to provide “justice” not for individuals, but for aggrieved “groups” (in the Marxist “oppressor/oppressed” paradigm).

The larger point is, we need to understand what our political opponents are talking about, specifically in the form of the language they use. Because those individuals who ought to be on our side, unwittingly find themselves advocating things that they normally would not advocate, if it were the case that they actually knew that they were using what I’ll call here, pre-loaded terminology.

As an analogy for this kind of confusion, one of the most frequently confused terms, I think, involves the various uses of “begging the question”. In a world that has some intelligent interactions with philosophy, “begging the question” is a technical term that means “petitio principii”, essentially using the premises of an argument to define its conclusion. However, at a more popular level, many people use that phrase in the sense that what has come to mean “raises a question” or “invites a question to be asked”. But for philosophers and those speaking in the philosophical sense, it decidedly does not mean that.

In the case of the term “social justice”, its usage by Christians is problematic, because, first, God demands justice. Injustice is sin. So if ‘social justice’ is truly justice, then disagreement is sin.

But that is not the case at all. As Dr. Baucham points out, the “social justice” movement is not about Biblical, Godly justice.

In short, the mission of the “social justice” movement sees its mission as one to facilitate “state distribution of advantages and resources to disadvantaged groups to satisfy their right to social and economic equality”

So as it is used on the left, the “social justice movement” is about societal (governmental) redistribution of virtually everything in society – not only goods and services, but all kinds of “advantages and resources”, including such things as access to education (through “affirmative action” programs), “reparations” for “slavery”, even such intangibles as prestige, ideology (weighted through “intersectionality” to provide advantages to those who can claim the most “oppression” in terms of the number of “oppressed groups” that they can claim membership in) and on and on.

So for “the political left”, the phrase “social justice” connotes their own use of the term with all the “Critical Theory” espoused by the “Frankfurt School”, otherwise known for its “Cultural Marxism” and the “Intersectionality” that goes along with it.

When Christians ask “is social justice a Gospel issue”, the phrase “social justice” does not imply actual justice. It is a “technical term”, a “code word” or even, say, a “dog whistle” for something far more well-defined and far more insidious.

Neil Shenvi has provided some helpful quotes from leading thinkers on the political left, illustrating how and why this is so.

We must not be afraid to confront our political opponents “on their own terms” and “in their own terms”. But we must also not be afraid to call a thing what it is, to say what it really is.

Income redistribution

http://kuyperian.com/is-social-justice-just-a-defense/

Pacifism and Anabaptism

Classic Anabaptism took a strong and pretty consistent position regarding the discontinuity between OT ethics and NT ethics. And that informed their pacifism. They regarded OT warfare, self-defense, and capital punishment, as an obsolete paradigm.

Contemporary Anabaptists are pacifists, but unlike old guard Anabaptists, many contemporary Anabaptists see more continuity between OT ethics and NT ethics when it comes to "social justice" issues like immigration and welfare for the poor.

That, however, means they can't erect a wall between the laws of OT warfare, self-defense, capital punishment, and NT ethics. They run the risk of making ad hoc exceptions. So their position is more precarious. 

Sanders at Liberty

http://mschultz83.com/2015/09/15/sanders-at-liberty/

Parents–check your privilege!

The demands of social justice require parents to deprive their kids:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/new-family-values/6437058

Social justice in a nutshell

Here's the win/win formula: 

If a white cop shoots a black suspect, blame whites. 

If a white cop shoots a white suspect, blame whites. 

If an Asian or Latino cop shoots a black suspect, blame whites. 

If a black cop shoots a white suspect, blame whites. 

If a black cop shoots a black suspect, blame whites. 

Repeat as necessary.

"Solve the solution"

It's ironic that in order for the SJWs to illustrate how "people of color" are being "inconvenienced," they are inconveniencing people of color who want to make it to class on time:

What's done can't be undone

Many of those opposed to the death penalty argue it's wrong to wrongfully execute an innocent person, because death would be an injustice which could never be undone. Short of a miracle, it's not as if the innocent person can be raised from the dead.

Of course, I trust most if not all of those on the opposing side would entirely agree it's wrong to wrongfully execute an innocent person. I take it we'd be agreed here.

However, is the fact that death is an injustice which cannot be undone when carried out against an innocent person (or any person) a good reason to oppose the death penalty?

If it is, then why not oppose lesser punishments in our legal system as well? After all, surely there are many wrongful punishments meted out against innocent persons in our legal system, and surely many if not most of these punishments cannot be undone once they've been administered.

Indeed, wouldn't it be generally wrong to wrongfully punish an innocent person, even if the punishment is less than death? Say someone has been wrongfully imprisoned for a year. Financial or perhaps other restitution might be given to the wrongfully imprisoned person. But it's still a year of freedom he or she can never get back. This, too, cannot be undone.

But let's say the person who is against capital punishment bites the bullet and argues we should do away with lesser punishments for this reason. If so, then what sort of a legal and penal system would we have left? There wouldn't seem to be much of one left, for it would seem to rule out punishing many if not most crimes.

Finally, I think there might be some tension (albeit perhaps a tension which could be relieved) for those who are against capital punishment for this reason but in favor of euthanasia, for it's possible the person who euthanizes themselves may come to regret the decision in the future if it were somehow possible for them to choose again. But, of course, it wouldn't be possible.

Loving myself as my neighbor

After immersing myself in Ron Sider, Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis, Philip Yancey, and Stanley Hauerwas, I've decided to become a social justice advocate. My epiphany came as I was meditating on the logical implications of loving my neighbor as myself. It dawned on me that if I'm obliged to love my neighbor as myself, then, by converse logic, I'm obliged to love myself as my neighbor. 

Therefore, after much soul-searching and agonizing, I've decided to buy this house–the better to love myself as I love my neighbor:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erincarlyle/2014/07/28/billionaire-heiress-petra-ecclestone-shopping-spelling-manor-for-150-million/

The cost of discipleship impels me to make this sacrificial move. Social justice demands no less. 

Why the term "Social Justice" has NO Meaning

Like a patient etherized upon a table

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. But to be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we ‘ought to have known better’, is to be treated as a human person made in God’s image....

For if crime and disease are to be regarded as the same thing, it follows that any state of mind which our masters choose to call ‘disease’ can be treated as a crime; and compulsorily cured. It will be vain to plead that states of mind which displease government need not always involve moral turpitude and do not therefore always deserve forfeiture of liberty. For our masters will not be using the concepts of Desert and Punishment but those of disease and cure. We know that one school of psychology already regards religion as a neurosis. When this particular neurosis becomes inconvenient to government, what is to hinder government from proceeding to ‘cure’ it? Such ‘cure’ will, of course, be compulsory; but under the Humanitarian theory it will not be called by the shocking name of Persecution. No one will blame us for being Christians, no one will hate us, no one will revile us. The new Nero will approach us with the silky manners of a doctor, and though all will be in fact as compulsory as the tunica molesta or Smithfield or Tyburn, all will go on within the unemotional therapeutic sphere where words like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ or ‘freedom’ and ‘slavery’ are never heard. And thus when the command is given, every prominent Christian in the land may vanish overnight into Institutions for the Treatment of the Ideologically Unsound, and it will rest with the expert gaolers to say when (if ever) they are to re-emerge. But it will not be persecution. Even if the treatment is painful, even if it is life-long, even if it is fatal, that will be only a regrettable accident; the intention was purely therapeutic. In ordinary medicine there were painful operations and fatal operations; so in this. But because they are ‘treatment’, not punishment, they can be criticized only by fellow-experts and on technical grounds, never by men as men and on grounds of justice.

This is why I think it essential to oppose the Humanitarian theory of punishment, root and branch, wherever we encounter it. It carries on its front a semblance of mercy which is wholly false. That is how it can deceive men of good will. The error began, with Shelley’s statement that the distinction between mercy and justice was invented in the courts of tyrants. It sounds noble, and was indeed the error of a noble mind. But the distinction is essential. The older view was that mercy ‘tempered’ justice, or (on the highest level of all) that mercy and justice had met and kissed. The essential act of mercy was to pardon; and pardon in its very essence involves the recognition of guilt and ill-desert in the recipient. If crime is only a disease which needs cure, not sin which deserves punishment, it cannot be pardoned. How can you pardon a man for having a gumboil or a club foot? But the Humanitarian theory wants simply to abolish Justice and substitute Mercy for it. This means that you start being ‘kind’ to people before you have considered their rights, and then force upon them supposed kindnesses which no on but you will recognize as kindnesses and which the recipient will feel as abominable cruelties. You have overshot the mark. Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful. That is the important paradox. As there are plants which will flourish only in mountain soil, so it appears that Mercy will flower only when it grows in the crannies of the rock of Justice; transplanted to the marshlands of mere Humanitarianism, it becomes a man-eating weed, all the more dangerous because it is still called by the same name as the mountain variety. But we ought long ago to have learned our lesson. We should be too old now to be deceived by those humane pretensions which have served to usher in every cruelty of the revolutionary period in which we live. These are the ‘precious balms’ which will ‘break our heads’.

There is a fine sentence in Bunyan: ‘It came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said, and however he flattered, when he got me home to his House, he would sell me for a Slave.’

Read the rest here.

Social Justice

Ahmed Jabari got off easy with a quick death:

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/israel-assassinates-hamas-commander-aerial-barrage/story?id=17716728#.UKPihIVRnv1

Unlike this massacre of a Jewish family of five:

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/03/islamic-jew-hatred-graphic-muslims-stab-jewish-family-of-five-to-death.html

God in the dock

Today in the Hague, the International Criminal Court tried, convicted, and sentenced God in absentia for the crimes against humanity; to wit: ordering the circumcision of newborn males.

Its ruling was the outcome of a class-action suit filed by Casanova, Errol Flynn, Bill Clinton, Louis XIV, and King Solomon. Plaintiffs allege circumcision left them with deep feelings of sexual inadequacy. Asked why he had 700 wives and 300 concubines, Solomon said that was a painful, but necessary duty of high office. 

The International Criminal Court issued a bench warrant for God’s arrest, under various aliases (e.g. Yahweh, Elohim, Jesus, Jehovah). Executing the warrant was complicated by the fact that heaven has no extradition treaty. Dog Chapman was retained as a bounty hunter to apprehend Jesus at the Second Coming and conduct him to the Hague to begin serving his sentence.

Because Jesus has a security detail reportedly comprising twelve legions of angels, concerns were expressed that attempting to take him into custody at the Parousia might lead to serious collateral damage, viz. crashing asteroids, boiling oceans.

A delegation consisting of Henry Kissinger, Benedict XVI, Michael Lerner, Alan Dershowitz, Jesse Jackson, Ron Sider, Gregory Boyd, and Kofi Annan was dispatched to open negotiations with heaven, in hopes of talking God into voluntarily turning himself into the authorities. The proffer was written in Greek, Hebrew, Latin, French, Esperanto, and Ebonics.

Who are the 1%?

I have no idea if the following is accurate:



But if it is, then is the Occupy Wall Street movement protesting against scientists, artists, people in media, athletes, professors, teachers, IT/computer geeks, engineers, blue collar workers, social service workers, farmers, ranchers, and even those who are "not working"?

Whence Justice?

An Analysis of Brian McLaren's Postmodern Deconstruction of the Christian Metanarrative and A Recommendation to Pursue Biblically Defined Humility

The wing of the evangelical church that is most concerned about the loss of truth and about compromise is actually infamous in our culture for its self-righteousness and pride. However, there are many in our circles who, in reaction to what they perceive as arrogance, are backing away from many of the classic Protestant doctrines (such as Forensic Justification and Substitutionary Atonement) that are crucial and irreplaceable—as well as the best possible resources for humility.¹

Abstract

This paper engages a few of the core philosophical and theological commitments of the Emergent Church, a movement that is attractive to dissatisfied, current and former Christians. Since the movement is broad, and to some extent indefinable, Brian McLaren's works will serve as a representative of its general concerns. One of these primary concerns is how to respond to the enormous quantities of injustice and suffering that have been wrought throughout modernity. According to McLaren, this suffering and injustice flows out of arrogance grounded in normative metanarratives; therefore, the ultimate sin resides in absolute confidence in a worldview. This absolute confidence can be defeated utilizing a postmodern, deconstructionist methodology, and the Emergent Church is the natural outworking of applying this methodology to the modern, Christian metanarrative. While this approach does not entail a comprehensive rejection of absolute truth or a descent into moral nihilism, as some have suggested, it does fundamentally redefine the orientation of sin and salvation toward earthly, rather than heavenly, concerns. A return to a Biblical conception of humility will allow Christians to have both strong levels of confidence and a meaningful concern for others and the cause of justice.

Tomorrow is the Single Most Important Vote a Wisconsinite Will Make in Their Lifetime

What is at stake.

And it has national implications:

“Seven weeks ago, this looked like a very sleepy campaign,” Prosser said. “This race is now the most significant judicial race in the country. It is full of symbolism.”

Vote tomorrow (Tuesday) for David Prosser for state supreme court justice!