Dear idiots…
That’s how I want to begin this letter, with a pejorative. It is a true pejorative. Christians who defend “Social Justice” on the grounds that the Bible gives us imperatives to help the poor and unfortunate are idiots. They are a specific kind of idiot, however, and not just a random kind of idiot. They are useful idiots. That term, useful idiot, is a pejorative but it is not a random pejorative. The term has a meaning.
A useful idiot is someone who is an unknowing propagandist for a cause of whose goals they are not fully aware. The term was invented by Commie propagandists (some attribute it to Lenin) who knew that simpleton, slack-jawed halfwits could be best won over to subversive ideologies if they weren’t aware they were being won over to subversive ideologies. The term first appeared in print in a 1948 New York Times article, explaining how communism had grown in Italy and throughout Europe. Well-meaning but sub-intellectual people are easily swayed by just a bit of misinformation, ideological trickery, nuanced bias, and subtle propaganda.
Christians, like Mike Miller over at SBC Voices (and pretty much everybody else who writes over there), is an absolute, stone-cold, no-doubt useful idiot of the highest order. The dramatic left-wing push that has come from the Marxist brain-trust known as Tim Keller and former Democrat staffer, Russell Moore, relies on useful idiots to impact America’s pulpits. The goal is simple; turn the most trustworthy conservative voting block into a leftist voting demographic. George Soros and James Riady have financed the cause through New Calvinist organizations (Calvinists of an older, more nobler order have not been swayed). The Gospel Coalition and the ERLC have both been the engines driving the Marxist train. And useful idiots are jumping on board, making the “choo-choo” sound like excited three-year-olds, having no idea where the train is going but happy to be going anywhere. The idea, which is very coordinated and was crafted in the Evangelical Intelligentsia academy, is nothing short of a political ideology in clerical garb. If pastors will buy into the New Left’s propaganda, those in the pew will follow. When that happens, there will be no more conservative movement in America.
The term, “Social Justice,” has always been used interchangeably with the Social Gospel. They are synonymous and both represent Rauschenbuschism, the heretical doctrine best espoused by Walter Rauschenbusch. Albert Mohler and other high profile evangelicals denounced Social Justice just a few years ago on the presupposition that it is the same thing as Social Gospel. Perhaps Joel McDurmon put it best when he said, “…social justice” is a code phrase for socialism. It always has been.” The Dallas Statement has made the strongest and most explicit supporters of Social Justice suddenly complain that they don’t know what the term means, even though they defined it just a week before the Dallas Statement came out. And when they defined it, even The Gospel Coalition acknowledged that it is the product of Jesuit and Marxist revolutionary thought. In claiming the term is nebulous (it is not, and they’ve been using it for several years now), they can ignore the criticism.
Meanwhile – while claiming they don’t know what Social Justice is, exactly – useful idiots are defending Social Justice (geniuses, they are). And they do so much like Mike Miller at SBC Voices. I’ll cite him so that in the future when you see this abject idiocy, you can recognize and denounce it. He writes…
An influential Evangelical recently lamented that contemporary Evangelicals are displaying a “newfound obsession” with social justice. I think this man needs to study church history (which I am teaching on Sunday nights, by the way). 4th century Emperor Julian (a pagan) wrote, “Atheism [his term for Christianity, since Christians rejected all the pagan gods] has been specially advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers, and through their care for the burial of the dead. It is a scandal that there is not a single Jew [he did not distinguish between Jews and Christians] who is a beggar, and that the godless Galileans [again, the Christians] care not only for their own poor but for ours as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them.”
Of course, anyone paying attention (and I mean anyone) knows that the obsession with Social Justice is newfound within evangelicalism. While some might argue that Finney promoted “Social Justice” (and they have) through his efforts to ban alcohol, I’m not sure anyone of decent doctrinal rapport considers Finney a Christian, let alone an evangelical. His social activism fit in well with his Pelagianism, and the rest of us stand back and say, “case-in-point.”
Miller goes on to cite other ancient and near-ancient figures who acknowledge that Christians have gone around helping the unfortunate for about two millennia now. Although his examples are sparse, he ends with George Mueller, who is famous for his orphanages that were funded by sheer faith.
Let me then write to my dear friends and useful idiots out there…
Dear idiots,
I hope this letter finds you well. Helping the unfortunate – widows, orphans, the poor, the disabled, the elderly, the imprisoned, the hungry, the naked, the ill – is not “Social Justice.” It is not “Justice” because there is no divinely-given right to be helped and they have no entitlement to the resources of others.
There are imperatives in Scripture – in both the Old and New Testament – that command us to love our neighbor (Mark 12:31), care for the widow and orphan (James 1:27), and to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the imprisoned (Matthew 25:30-40). In other words, as an act of worship to God, we should obey Christ’s commands (John 14:15), which includes the Second Table of the law that dictates we love people and act accordingly.
However, and I pray this concept isn’t too much of a stretch for your brains, a command on our part does not equal entitlement on someone else’s. We are commanded to help the unfortunate, but the unfortunate cannot demand and neither should they feel entitled to our resources.
That being said, “justice” is giving someone what they deserve. You know, stuff like criminalizing abortion and then executing abortion doctors; that’s a justice issue. Paying someone wages they’ve previously agreed to work for; that’s a justice issue. Punishing the wicked, per 1 Peter 2 and Romans 13, those are justice issues.
On the other hand, giving people our resources – of which they are not entitled – is “mercy.” It’s good to help people. But this is why food pantries and crisis pregnancy centers and free clothing stores are called, “Mercy Ministries.” They’re not called “Justice Ministries.”
Justice and Mercy are not the same things.Now, here’s why your idiocy is useful to the Marxists. The only way that “helping the poor” (in the same way that Mike Miller over at SBC Voices suggests) is a matter of “justice” and not mercy is IF the poor are poor because they are unrighteously oppressed. If the poor are poor because they are victims due to systemic cultural oppression (this is what the Commies argue), as opposed to being poor because of laziness, lack of acumen, or sheer providential misfortune, THEN helping them is a matter of justice. If the poor have been subject to unjust weights and measures, THEN helping them is a matter of justice.
For example, if the rich in our society have faced unjust weights and measures (for example, taxing them at higher rates), then lowering their tax burden to be a rate commensurate with everyone else would be a “Social Justice” issue. However, Marxists would never view equal treatment of any class of people to be justice. Their goal is not equal treatment under the law, but redistributing resources through coercion. By the way, redistributing resources through coercion to people who are not entitled to it is called injustice.
While history is replete with examples of the Universal Christian Church being charitable and kind to the unfortunate, never – EVER – has charity been characterized as “justice” until it was wed with Marxist ideology.
Stop being useful idiots. Also, read your Bible.
Thanks.
[Editor’s Note: Written by JD Hall. By the way, if my use of the term, “useful idiots” – even when used in proper historical context – personally offends you, please be assured that your idiocy personally offends me]
