Are Reformed Evangelicals Against Human Decency?

Church Heresies that Encourage American Socio-political Dysfunction - Part 1(b) 

It seems almost ridiculous to ask whether any Christian would be against human decency, but in recent years, the most popular Reformed Church leader in America has gone far, far out of his way to attack the concept of “social justice.” This post will discuss a series of sermons by right-wing preacher, John MacArthur, where he bizarrely attacks the idea of “social justice” as though it is the very concept of evil. (He actually attacks a strawman – a false definition.)

 Is Social Justice the same thing as Human Decency?

Human decency means treating others the way you want to be treated – to love your neighbor as yourself. (BibleVerses) The word “Social” pertains to the organized groups we live in. “Justice” means fairness and equal treatment under the law (and in the eyes of GOD). Most formal definitions of “social justice” have three general ideas in common: 1) equal rights, 2) equal opportunity and 3) equal treatment – all things guaranteed by law under the US Constitution. Everyone wants to be treated fairly. The question is, why would a famous preacher want to attack the concept of decent treatment for all people?

John MacArthur vs Social Justice

In a short interview on Youtube - which one of his followers gleefully titled “John MacArthur destroys the social gospel in 2 minutes…” - MacArthur makes several biblically false arguments against social justice. He says (paraphrase): “Jesus didn’t do anything to change the social structure or bring about social justice. He didn’t try to fix law courts, end poverty, or overthrow slavery – (so) there was nothing of social justice in the ministry of Jesus.” MacArthur is obviously making a biblically twisted argument, meant to signal his right-wing libertarian followers that they don’t need to be concerned with social justice, i.e., human decency – that somehow, they can set decency apart from their version of Christianity, especially when it conflicts with their political goals. 

BIBLE

At the very beginning of the New Testament, JESUS says: If you are hateful towards other people, you are as guilty (spiritually) as a murderer. Don’t retaliate or seek revenge, but love your enemies; pray for those who persecute you. Mat 5:21, Mat 5:43 People at that time believed in taking revenge, and the Jewish leaders not only hated their non-Jewish enemies, they also despised the poor and downtrodden among their own people.

Wasn’t it a fundamental change when JESUS taught that the most respected class in Jewish culture, the religious hierarchy, far from being blessed, where in fact greedy hypocrites that HE judged worthy of damnation in hell? Mat 23:15, 1Joh 2:15 This was a complete restructuring of the people’s understanding. They thought that the rich were blessed but JESUS told them that because the rich loved money, they were actually the enemies of GOD. Mat 6:24 

Keep going... OK I will

As I mentioned above, MacArthur has a whole series of sermons (three hours’ worth) on the topic, which I discuss below. But first, I want to note that I am not fixated on opposing or “exposing” John MacArthur. (I would personally prefer to just ignore everything he says.) I focus this series on him because he is regarded as the top right-wing political christian teacher of our time, and it seems that many other right-wing political Christians are emboldened by his hate-tinged political talking points. Another popular Calvinist, John Piper, recently said that MacArthur’s type of preaching sends his people out into the world seething with anger… IOW, it is a message of hate, essentially right-wing propaganda that makes political christians hate worldly people instead of being examples of Christian love that would make them want to come to Christ. (Note that this attitude is generally in line with Calvinist doctrine.)

The Tactics of Twisting the Truth

Why do people create strawmen? In general, it is a dishonest way to discredit your enemy / victim. White Christian nationalists want to believe that America was and is destined to create a Christianized world kingdom, so they must pretend that America is not and has never been evil – that it wasn’t founded on chattel slavery and genocide. For white Christian nationalism to work, the victims must be erased, or in this case, disqualified. MacArthur is using the BIBLE to cast the historical victims of America (lumping them in with modern lifestyle sinners) as responsible for their own victimization. He is very good at making his views sound reasonable, until you realize that every twisted statement follows the same general pattern; a series of equivocations followed by a false or unproven conclusion (e.g., we are all victims in one way or another, so people claiming to be victims don’t even deserve our sympathy).

The following are just some of the falsehoods from each of the four sermons:

Sermon 1 (There is a link to the sermon transcript under each video.)

Note that he uses Ezekiel 18 as a framework for this entire screed. Although this is Old Testament, he keeps calling it the Gospel for some reason. The theme of Ezekiel 18 is “The Soul Who Sins Shall Die.” It teaches that each person will be judged for their own sins. The tie-in has to do with the common racist talking point that no one alive today is responsible for slavery or genocide, so it should just be forgotten. Of course, this is a hypocritical pretense that overt, even legal, racism hasn’t plagued black Americans since the formal end of enslavement. In fact, MacArthur often claims that institutional racism doesn’t even exist.

He starts out with a twisted statement, a false strawman definition of social justice (the equivocations and false conclusions are in bold text):

“You don’t find social justice as such in the Bible. Social justice is a term that describes the idea that everyone has the right to equal upward mobility – everybody in a society: equal upward mobility, equal social privilege, equal finances or equal resources. And if you don’t have those rights and you don’t have those opportunities the society is, by nature, unjust.”

He refers to “self-perceived” victims as though victimization by racism doesn’t exist.

At 1:10 MacArthur says “social justice is part of classic socialism.” Classic socialism is communism. This is a lie. False redefinition of words is a classic political tactic used to create “dog-whistles” to attack political enemies. Calling your chosen adversary an evil communist is a century old political smear used whenever average Americans start to demand justice.

He brings this one out of the blue:

Let me make it clear. In God’s eyes – listen – no one is a victim. We are all perpetrators of open rebellion, scandalous, blasphemous sin against God. We are all rebels, we are all obstinate, we are all stubborn. Sure, the exiles, they were in Babylon because of bad choices kings made, because of bad choices that their ancestors made to bring the idols into the land.

This isn’t really accurate, most of the Israelites, not just the rulers, were in open apostacy against GOD before they lost their kingdom.  

They were in captivity because of those choices. That created the context in which they live. But Ezekiel says to them, “The soul that sins shall die.” Here we have the critical fundamental principle of the gospel; no one is a victim. From God’s viewpoint, no one is a victim.

This is followed by another unsupported conclusion, also based on Calvinist doctrine: 

They (the victims of America) don’t take responsibility, they just blame somebody else; and they’re perfectly happy to blame God.

People might blame false Christians, a historically racist church, or religion in general, but when was the last time you heard a black person blame racism on GOD? Then here comes the equivocation followed by a false conclusion wrapped in Calvinist doctrine:

Look, I know people have suffered injustice, I get it; that’s a fallen world. But I also know the Bible is explicit. If you are a preacher, regardless of what people’s social condition is, you have one job, and that is to warn them of wickedness and the coming judgment of God… Is it our duty to affirm that people are victims of the sins of somebody else? You know where that leads? They’re going to blame God. And if they blame God for their condition, how are they going to go to God because they think He’s merciful? You acknowledge that somebody got a bad deal in history; you’ve indicted God, because He’s the author of history. That’s a slippery slope.

This is the false conclusion – Christian nationalists refuse to shoulder any blame at all, even for modern racism, so they create a trope saying that victims of American racism are blaming GOD! It is all wrapped in a weird apology for the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. One of the main objections to Calvinism is that, via predestination, GOD directs people to do evil. MacArthur refuses to admit that America is responsible for any evil, so he offers an illogical mishmash saying that you cant acknowledge historical reality because to a Calvinist, this is blaming GOD. He goes on to conclude the message without ever explicitly mentioning the victims of 400 years of slavery and racism – which is of course, what this screed is really all about.

Sermon 2

Sample ridiculous false conclusion:

Everybody wants to find victim status in some way, because only victims are empowered in the culture, only victims have moral authority.

At the end of Sermon 2, after droning on about how social justice is not in the BIBLE, MacArthur turns on a dime and admits that Eze 18 does in fact address social issues:

This righteous person, in verse 7, “does not oppress anyone.” This is now social virtues of love and mercy, compassion, generosity…. “He doesn’t commit robbery, gives his bread to the hungry, covers the naked with clothing.” You can see here that this kind of life, the life of a righteous man, does address social issues, right? These are all social issues. It addresses social issues absolutely. They are avoiding adultery. They give the highest level of care. They don’t oppress anyone ever. They restore to the debtor his pledge. They don’t commit robbery. They give bread to the hungry, cover the naked with clothing. This is what a righteous person does. This is the result of salvation. This is the result of the gospel changing a life.

So, social justice is, in fact, in the BIBLE, even in his hand-picked verses. But is this attitude – the acts of Ezekiel’s righteous man - the real attitude of right-wing political Christianity in modern America? Doesn't the right-wing church politically oppose all these things?  

Sermon 3

Main false conclusion:

No person is being punished (by GOD) for somebody else’s sins (true, this is the theme of Eze 18) so… …no one is a victim of anybody else’s sins. (A ridiculous statement – is a murder victim the victim of another’s sin?)

In other words, the victim of injustice is a sinner who is responsible for his own victimization! Blame the victim, indeed.

Sermon 4

Strange unproven conclusion:

The Christian message is hopelessly lost if people get caught up in social issues.

He offers no proof of this. Did the Christian message get lost when black and white Christian abolitionists in the north worked to end chattel slavery in the south? It took 100 years but the “Christian” denominations that separated to support the slave system finally admitted their evil.  

Conclusion

MacArthur’s main false conclusion is:

“You (black people) are not victims, you are willful sinners. You are guilty for blaming past generations for your “delusional” victimization.”

Then here comes the Calvinist projection:

“Sinners (victims of injustice) are not victims of an unjust sovereign God. They’re not victims of an indifferent God. They’re not victims of another generation.”

GOD allows good and bad things to happen to all people on the earth; but to say that enslaved and genocided people were not victims of the people who killed and enslaved them is just plain crazy. The ultimate dog-whistle false conclusion is that: since ongoing racism isn’t actually real, the right-wing political church does not need to concern itself with addressing inequity in the past or in the present. Does this selfish attitude represent the main teaching of the BIBLE - to love your neighbor as yourself?