¿Cómo Say What?

This week radio and TV (self-described) clown, Glenn Beck, encouraged his “followers” to leave their churches if those churches taught or identified with social justice/economic justice. Beck went on to uncover the roots of “social justice” in Nazism, something “you won’t hear anywhere else.”

In some ways, Beck embodies the fears of many in our society. I have had multiple conversations this week about the use of the word social and about the relationship between justice and the Good News. I thought I’d refine my position in more than 140 character tweets and less than 2 hours discussions on the phone.

What is the Gospel? In the broadest sense, it quite literally means the “Good News,” which I would describe as God’s movement to make the world right. In terms of the Bible, it could be summed up as Luke 4:18ff. In a very real sense, the Good News is justice. It’s hope and liberation for the poor, the oppressed, the sick, the outcast, the prisoner, the bereaved, and it’s God welcoming us into God’s kingdom. The power (and maybe the problem) with this is the Good News is quite different in different social contexts. Those who are poor and oppressed and imprisoned and outcast are suffering under the injustices of their–and our–societies.

So, for example, oppression of women happens, not because women are ontologically less than men, but because our society constructs womanhood in such as way that is fundamentally unjust and flawed. Whether it’s by making menstruation taboo or denying women a role in public worship, our society hinders and dehumanizes women in ways which directly conflict with God’s eschatological plan for God’s creation. Justice, in this case, includes ways to make right those wrongs, ways that break cycles of injustice and oppression.

Given that injustices are institutional expressions of oppression and prejudice (which are themselves social constructs), justice must be embodied by members of that same society. Justice dismantles the social constructs that oppress and exclude, and then justice embodies God’s Kingdom (or eschatological vision). In this sense, too, the Gospel must be contextualized; the Good News is always arriving. Jesus brought this message to a specific geographic place and time, not through a series of propositions in a timeless void. That’s why we ask: “What is the gospel?” instead of, “What was the Gospel?”

That’s why I have said, “The Gospel is a social construction.” For victims of sexual slavery in Thailand, the Good News looks very specific. For the mental disabled, it also looks specific, as it does for war-weary Afghans and Iraqis. In order to respond to the fears and misgivings and prejudices of our societies, we must give ourselves and our Christian sisters and brothers space to bring Good News to various social contexts.

The Bible of our Christian communities and the communities of the Bible provide a hermeneutic and critique of society at large. At this point, someone may charge that I’m still a cultural imperialist, supplanting my cultural values on others. But here’s where I’ll claim God as revealed in the person of Jesus and revealed in the communities by the Spirit. Because, as Mary reminds us, God lifts us the weak and casts down the mighty, Good-News-bearing communities don’t align themselves with powers that be. Which is further reminder why the Gospel must continually be constructed socially.

You might also enjoy:

1. At the Altar and On the Streets
2. students and justice