The pre-packaged cake mix, with its convenient instructions, “Just add water!”, was invented in the USA by the P. Duff and Sons company during the Great Depression, but only exploded on the market post World War II. This easy way of cooking, by just adding one or two items, took off as food companies began producing many household food items with the same popular instructions to ensure a hot selling product. By the 1990s, a survey was conducted that showed when women said they baked something from scratch, what they actually meant is they used a mix. The survey shockingly indicated that with enough repetition and time, people’s very concept of baking had been redefined.[1]
Similarly, the global culture seems to be taking a tip or two from the American food industry. For whatever political agenda one wants to sell, “Just add justice!” can be added to your preferred topic to conveniently produce a hot selling item, such as gender justice, racial justice, reproductive justice, environmental justice, land justice, etc. With enough repetition of the use of these terms and with enough time, culture’s concept of justice gets redefined, turning political interests into something totally other––a moral mandate.
We are now living in a time when people’s concept of justice is blurred, confused or is extrapolated to everything in sight. And this confusion has reached into the church as well, muddying the understanding of biblical justice particularly as “social justice advocates love to pretend the Bible speaks where it doesn’t and doesn’t speak where it does.”[2]
Take, for example, racial justice. Should reparations be paid out today for past racial injustices? Many argue that today’s generation needs to pay reparations for the ills of the past on issues like slavery, land seizures or other cruel treatment of the oppressed, paying for the impact these injustices have had on future generations. If we are to right the wrongs of the past, which ills do we right and how far back do we go? Do we right all of them or just some of them? Will the families of the Jewish or Gypsy Holocaust victims receive money from the Germans? Will the Huguenot descendants receive payment from the French? Will the Puritan descendants receive a payout from the British? Will the Ndebeles of today receive reparations from the Zulu? Afterall, how is it justice to only right some ills and not others?
Are reparations a biblical concept? Yes, they are, but in what context is it applied? When we look at Exodus 22:1-14, we see the context of reparations are directly between the one who was wronged and the one who committed the wrong. The Bible reminds us in Ezekiel 18:19-20, “The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.”[3] Biblical justice does not promote the concept of a current generation being responsible for their ancestors’ sins, but rather it promotes making right the wrongs we commit against one another. Jesus even takes this to another level in the Sermon on the Mount, indicating that when wronged, we don’t have to seek out reparations but instead are to offer forgiveness to the individual who wronged us.[4]
What about reproductive justice (which is really just a more politically correct and favorable wording for “the right to abort”)? Again I ask: Who’s reproductive rights are at stake here? What about a man’s reproductive justice? Does he get a say in what happens to his offspring? What about the fetus’ reproductive justice? Do they get a say in what happens to their body and their future offspring? What about “their body, their choice?” Does only a woman have access to reproductive justice, getting a say at what happens to her body and her shared offspring? Does the Bible speak to reproductive justice/abortion?
While the Bible doesn’t directly state that a woman cannot abort her baby, the ten commandments does give a general command that humans are not to commit murder (Ex 20:13), as the punishment for murder is “a life for a life” (Deut 19:21). Does this command expand to include a fetus? In turning to Exodus 21:22-25:
If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
Notice if the fetus is born prematurely, reparations must be paid directly by the offender for the consequences it has caused; however, if the fetus dies, note that the fetus is treated as equal with a human victim of murder, for the punishment meted out––”a life for life”––is the same treatment as if an adult were killed.[5]
The life of the fetus is of great value to God who created it in his image (Gen 1:26–27), who was busy knitting it together in its mother’s womb (Ps 139), creating it fearfully and wonderfully, despite what circumstances in which the baby was conceived.
What about environmental justice? Surely it is our biblical mandate to be responsible stewards of God’s world, caring for his creation, as part of our role as Christians. As Adam, God’s representative, was to work and care for the garden (Gen 2:15), aligning himself with God’s creative act of bringing order out of chaos, most evangelicals believe we too are to care for the beautiful world God gave us. But exactly how and to what degree we ought to do this is another story.
In evangelical churches today, environmental justice, often termed “creation care,”[6] is being pushed as a Christian’s moral duty with the solution suspiciously sounding in lock step with the environmental agendas pushed by particular political parties and globalist leaders. With selective science showing human-caused climate change, environmental justice activists persuade Christians that the best way to “love your neighbor” is to reduce carbon emissions, use sustainable energy (you know, electric cars with batteries made from kilograms of minerals mined deep within the earth rather than burning that nasty fuel), use sustainable farming practices (no farting cows or fertilizers, please), and buy carbon credit coupons as an indulgence to pay for your airplane traveling sins.[7]
I’m no environmental expert, but when environmental justice is being morally placed on par with the top two biblical commandments in a Pharisaical-like addition and the moralistic, “biblical” cure prescribed in evangelical churches sounds exactly like the extreme political agenda being pushed by a particular political side, my suspicions tell me that perhaps I’m being manipulated.
Growing up on pre-mix cakes, I didn’t really know what real cake tasted like until we moved to Zimbabwe where no pre-mix boxes could be found! If you wanted to eat cake (or anything else!), you had to start with raw ingredients. Only upon invitation into many Zimbabwean homes and tasting actual, delicious, homemade cake did I begin to realize that I had grown up on cheap imitations, tricked into thinking the reinvented and manipulated cake mix was the real deal.
Likewise, only when we return to the biblical text and re-taste the Bible’s own examples of justice do we begin to realize culture’s redefinition of “Just add justice!” tastes a bit “off.”
Sources:
[1] Michael Y. Park, “The History of Cake Mix, The Invention that Redefined Baking,” Bon Appétit, January 23, 2013, https://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/pop-culture/article/cake-mix-history.
[2] Ad Robles, Social Justice Pharisees: Woke Church Tactics and How to Engage Them (Nashville: Morgan James Publishing, 2022), 50.
[3] Exodus 34:7 must be understand together with Ezekiel 18:1-20, concluding that while we may inherit the consequences of the sins of our fathers, this passage cannot mean we inherit the guilt of the sins of our fathers.
[4] For more on reparations and racial justice, see Ad Robles, Social Justice Pharisees: Woke Church Tactics and How to Engage Them (Nashville: Morgan James Publishing, 2022), 67–72.
[5] For more on reproductive justice, see Ad Robles, Social Justice Pharisees: Woke Church Tactics and How to Engage Them (Nashville: Morgan James Publishing, 2022).
[6] Jonathon Moo, “Loving God and Neighbor in an Age of Climate Crisis,” L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture, February 13, 2023, https://cfc.sebts.edu/vaith-and-science/jonathan-moo-loving-god-and-neighbor-in-an-age-of-climate-crisis/.
[7] Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda (New York: Broadside Books, 2024), 1–30.