Social Justice

READING
Isaiah 1
Micah 6
Matthew 25
Luke 4
Acts 2
Matthew 28












As you go, disciple all the nations, immersing them into the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit, and teaching them to keep all things, whatever I’ve directed you. And look! I’m among you all the days until the conclusion of the age.

While it sounds on the surface as a Biblical, Christian way to live out our faith.
The Social Justice movement seems to be taking us in the wrong direction.

For sure we should be feeding the poor.
We should be helping those “less fortunate” than ourselves.
But that doesn’t save them.
They’re still lost, and the only way they can be saved is if they come to a personal realisation that they are sinful, they have personally rejected God, and their only hope after death is to accept Yeshua’s sacrifice in their place, and to live the rest of their lives for him.

We should definitely help people. But it is not our purpose.

And we can’t let social justice take all our effort to the point that we are no longer focused on our actual purpose - to represent Yeshua to the world. And to do that in a way that helps them find the salvation which only comes through him.
If they die with a full stomach or an empty one, it’s totally irrelevant if they die lost.

Now some people will argue that social justice brings the lost to the point that they will listen to the gospel message. That sounds reasonable.
But that’s kind of like “friendship evangelism” isn’t it. Most people who use that title, usually don’t get to the evangelism part, kind of hoping that it will happen by itself. Rather than risk the friendship by mentioning their friend’s need for a saviour.
It nearly always becomes “Friendship Non-Evangelism”.

So our problem is that churches too focused on social justice end up the same way. “Social Non-Evangelism”.
And that’s a problem. That’s failing our purpose as a church.

Actually our whole society should promote social justice. Not just the church. And we should all help the poor, etc…
Not in a communist way, but just to share the blessings Yahweh has given us with those who are struggling.
In a way that we would want if the tables were turned, and we were the ones who were struggling with life.

Unfortunately, here in Oz, (Australia), a church which said, “free food for the poor” would get a huge amount of people pretending to be poor to get free food. Not sure if that happens as much overseas?

My mother started a weekly ministry to the homeless in her church. They called it “No Bucks” because it was free. Her friend and her offered a sit down, home cooked meal for the homeless in her city. And let me tell you, she’s an amazing cook! So they got a fantastic 3 course meal, including dessert, for free. Some of them used to get very emotional, having dishes which reminded them of their own mother.
Other people in their church started feeding them on the days my mum and her friend didn’t. And it became a 5 day a week ministry.

But after a while they noticed that quite a few of the homeless were rather well dressed! Even the lawyer from upstairs would come down for a free feed. And once, 40 people from a church conference turned up for the free lunch!

It made a difference to a lot of hungry homeless people, but I’m not sure anyone ever became a Christian through that ministry. But in that case, I don’t think that was the purpose. It was simply social justice being lived out, and not the focus of the whole church.

And that’s fine if that’s your goal. But as a church, as a whole church, we can’t make that our total focus.
We should be running things like that, but #1 has to be reaching the world.

The church is the body of Christ on Earth.
We should be living, (as a body, not as individuals), and doing what he would be doing if he was still physically here.

When he was here 2,000 years ago he left some people ill. He didn’t heal everyone.
He hardly provided food for anyone, except bread and fish twice that we know of.
It just wasn’t his focus. He had a more important message to share. A more important mission to fulfil.

And these days social justice is also becoming more than feeding the poor. For some reason we now think that it means you have to accept everyone, and no longer point out any sinful behaviour in case you offend them.

We should welcome everyone, but they must be told what sin is, and that it’s not acceptable to God.
We all sin, but we need a redeemer, and we need to live better lives. We can’t just accept openly sinful people into our church as if it doesn’t matter.

I’ve even seen a church here who have a “Pride Network”, run by a transvestite.

But to me, this is just the natural outcome of focusing solely on social justice and ignoring our actual purpose of living for Yeshua.

If your church has gone too far down that road, then you really only have two options:
Change your church, or change your church.
Help your church see its error, or become part of a different church.

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