Beyoncé at Halftime: Children, Social Justice & the Empowering of Women

John Stonestreet of Breakpoint had some good thoughts related to Beyoncé's halftime show at the Super Bowl. Please take a minute and read or listen to it in its entirety.

In all fairness, I didn't even see the halftime show, so I can't comment directly on its content. What I can heartily agree with though are some of the broader themes Stonestreet discusses as he addresses the hypersexualization of youth in our culture and the damaging effects it has. He states,

This is a social justice issue. And to the hipster Christian writers so concerned with social justice who celebrated Beyoncé’s performance as “empowering women,” shame on you. Beyoncé is unbelievably talented. But using sexuality for power is not a triumph for feminism. It only leads to the objectification and victimization of women, especially young ones. I will tell you that wives, watching their husbands watch Beyoncé, weren’t empowered.

Click here for the entire post.

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom

"[I]f neighbors see church members loving their city through astonishing, sacrificial deeds of compassion, they will be much more open to the church's message.  Deeds of mercy and justice should be done out of love, not simply as a means to the end of evangelism.  And yet there is no better way for Christians to lay a foundation for evangelism than by doing justice."

Tim Keller

Book Review - Generous Justice

Tim Keller’s most recent book, Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just, is a short, helpful book on the area of social justice. In this book, Keller examines the connection between the grace of God and the resulting justice exhibited by those who are his.  “A true experience of the grace of Jesus Christ,” he argues, “inevitably motivates a man or woman to seek justice in the world.”  When he says this, Keller uses the term justice to essentially mean “care for those who are vulnerable.” 

He argues that just as Christ Jesus did not give us what we deserved, but rather poured out his mercy on us, so too we must not condition our “justice” on whether a person (in our eyes) deserves it.  In fact, the thrust is that I must not consider primarily what I’ve earned a situation, but rather must consider first and foremost the dignity that is owed to all as those who are created in the image of God.

Though I sometimes disagree with how Keller gets there, I almost always appreciate where he ends up.  This is certainly the case with this book.  He challenges my notions of individualism and instead calls me to think in communal terms.  “The strong must disadvantage themselves for the weak, the majority for the minority, or the community frays and the fabric breaks.”

While Keller focuses this book on deeds of mercy, he is careful not to conflate them with gospel proclamation, saying that both are necessary in the church.  But he does make the point, “People who strongly believe in the doctrine of justification by faith alone will have this high regard for God’s law and justice.  They will be passionate about seeeing God’s justice honored in the world.”

And this is, essentially, the challenge Keller presents:  “If you are a Christian, and you refrain from committing adultery or using profanity  or missing church, but you don’t do the hard work of thinking through how to do justice in every area of life – you are failing to live justly and righteously.”

Justice in the Public Square

Often we hear people make assertions that the separation of church and state demands that we not bring our personal morality or religious convictions into any discussion on public policies.  I'm currently reading Generous Justice by Tim Keller.  In his chapter entitled Doing Justice in the Public Square, Keller argues that Christians' work for justice should be marked both by "humble co-operation" with secularists as well as what he terms "respectful provocation."  By this he means, "Christians should not be strident and condemning in their language or attitude, but neither should they be silent about the Biblical roots of their passion for justice."

I especially appreciated this quote which was included in the chapter:

But what I am suggesting is this - secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Oh yeah.  The quote was actually a citation of something said by President Obama.  Just thought that was interesting and I am happy to say I agree with him wholeheartedly.

Can a Message of Social Justice Be "The Gospel?"

Today over at his blog, The Gospel-Driven Church, Jared Wilson analyzes the confusion that many have as to what exactly "the gospel" is.  With his usual insightfulness, he specifically counters the notion that "the gospel" is a set of things we are to do and not to do.  Good deeds are indeed good, he points out, but they are not the good news.

Heck, Angelina Jolie has adopted, what?, 300 orphans? Isn't George Clooney saving the world? Matt Damon fights for social justice, and he does it without a splinter's notion of the gospel.

Are we supposed to be doing these things too? Yes. It is the command of God to love our neighbor. But social justice is not unique to Christianity, and in fact if social justice is the good news, we bear the same message as lots of people who are going to hell. Social justice, then, is salvifically neutral. And therefore, while it accompanies and may testify to the good news, it cannot be the good news itself.

Wilson goes on to point out that instead of being something we do, "the good news" is the message of what Christ has already done (living, dying and rising again to reconcile sinners to God) and what he is currently doing (empowering our conversion and obedience).  Read the whole post here.