Beck and Mohler | Politics

Written by Douglas Wilson

Saturday, 22 May 2010 21:05

Justin Taylor recently mentioned Peter Lillback's appearance on Glenn Beck, and also in that same post linked to Al Mohler's discussion of Beck's dissing of "social justice" a few weeks back.

I read Mohler's article with interest and appreciation, and I agreed with everything he said about what the Bible says about justice. But I think he missed the fact that Beck was dead on center in his comments about "code words."

Social is good, and justice is good, and how could social justice be bad? Biblical passages can be heaped in mounds, all testifying to God's justice, and His concern for justice. But this misses the point about code words. If someone were to preach a positive sermon on "liberty, equality, fraternity," and we were not to miss the allusion, we would see they are praising a genocidal bloodbath. And it doesn't stop being praise of a genocidal bloodbath just because it would be possible to say "liberty (2 Cor. 3:17), equality (2 Cor. 8:14), fraternity (1 Pet. 2:17)."

When social justice is one of the buzzword phrases, the rot of theological liberalism is not far away. At least as far as that goes, Beck was right.

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Robert Seward

Sunday, May 23, 2010 2:33 am

Beck's problem is that he refers to a lot of books from small publishers. This drives my sister crazy. She is the manager of a major book retailer. She has customers come in asking for said books that she is not able to order for them

gullchasedship

Sunday, May 23, 2010 3:31 am

I never knew that liberalism's care for the poor and oppressed was a sign of their liberalism. I always thought it was their abandonment of the gospel.

Douglas Wilson

Sunday, May 23, 2010 5:19 am

Gull, when churches abandon the gospel, they don't put out press releases announcing they have done so. They do things to distract us from that glaring reality. In this case, the banner waved, has been, for many years, social justice.

Josh Reighley - Beck

Monday, May 24, 2010 8:09 am

The problem I see is that Beck is a Mormon, preaching a Civil religion, and then he is calling Christians heretics for emphasizing something that the bible emphasizes.

He might be right about the codewords in certain circumstances, perhaps most circumstances -- But there are a lot of good bible believing churches that actively attempt to free people from the prison of Poverty -- ministering to single moms etc. Many of them are put there as a result of other people's sins (Deadbeat former husbands etc) The fact that a church pursues "Social Justice" is not prima facia evidence that it's congregants should run from heresy.

Phillip Harrison

Tuesday, May 25, 2010 3:50 am

Giving and ministering to the poor FROM ONE'S OWN RESOURCES and IN THE NAME OF CHRIST is of course absolutely Biblical, but that is not what is being discussed here. As currently used, the term "social justice" is indeed a code word for what ultimately leads to the government taking the fruit of one's labor to fund its socialist programs. Nancy Pelosi actually said that churches need to get on board because it is "the Gospel in action".

Michael Duchemin - "Coded Message"

Tuesday, May 25, 2010 9:02 am

I can't think of "code words" without thinking of Frank Schaeffer's nonsense. I had to watch it again and laugh.

"When you start comparing a democratically elected president who is not only our first black president but a moderate progressive to Adolph Hitler, you have arrived at a point where you are literally [sic] leaving a loaded gun on the table saying the first person who wants to come along and use this: go ahead; be our guest."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E1SLJgATvM&feature=PlayList&p=AF6E8FFAE000F31B&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=90

Jane Dunsworth

Wednesday, May 26, 2010 10:12 am

And yet, isn't it a better idea to use words properly and reclaim them, than to ban them for their associations? Will we have any words left to use if, every time someone starts consistently misusing some, we stop using them entirely to mean things within their legitimate range of meaning?

If there's a better term for a biblical idea of "social justice," then by all means use it. But let's not concede the whole language, step by step, to those who misuse it. And lets especially NEVER be afraid to talk about things because someone might get the wrong idea of what we mean by it, or misuse biblical ideas in some fashionable way.