Ideas Have Consequences

JUSTICE (10 Words to Heal Our Broken World Series)

• Disciple Nations Alliance • Season 2 • Episode 42

Share episode

Is justice about dismantling oppressive systems and redistributing power to achieve equality of outcome? Or is that a redefinition of true justice? In recent years, postmodernism and neo-Marxist critical theory have shaped a new ideology labeled "social justice." Though it claims to promote equality and defend the oppressed, this worldview stands in stark contrast to biblical justice.

In this episode, we offer a defense of biblical justice and explain why we've moved away from the phrase "social justice." Join us as we unpack the foundational ideas behind these two opposing views of justice and explore the consequences of living them out in today's society.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, I think so much of the don't be judgmental today is just a denial that there's any kind of higher moral standard, right, you know? If that's true, then who are we to judge somebody else? They can do whatever they want and we have to, you know, withhold any kind of judgment over their behavior. But that's not true, right? God exists, right, and he did create. You know, because he exists, he is that standard himself, and any violation from that standard is going to have consequences.

Scott Allen:

Hi, friends, this is Scott Allen, president of the Disciple Nations Alliance, and I want to welcome you to another episode of Ideas have Consequences, the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. As we prepare to launch my newest book, 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World, restoring the True Meaning of Our Most Important Words, we wanted to go through each one of these 10 foundational words that are highlighted in the book, discussing their true meaning as well as how they've been fundamentally redefined in our contemporary culture. Now you might be asking why do words matter? Well, it's because words and definitions shape the way we think and feel, and that, in turn, determines our choices and our actions, and that shapes the kind of culture that we live in, for better or for worse. And so, if you want to work for a positive change in culture, in society, it has to begin by restoring the true meaning of our most important words.

Luke Allen:

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode. Dwight John Dad, thank you for joining today. How are you guys doing?

John Bottimore:

Good, great Good to be with you.

Luke Allen:

Good to be with you, great to have you guys here. For those of you guys who are new, my name is Luke Allen. I will be your host today for this episode of our mini-series, as we are preparing for the new book that my dad, scott Allen, has written and will be released in November. Allen has written and will be released in November. The title of that book is called 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World Restoring the True Meanings of Our Most Important Words. What are those words? They are as follows truth, human sex, marriage, freedom, authority, justice, faith, beauty and love. These are such important words and, as you guys have heard throughout this series, we are just unpacking these episode by words and, as you guys have heard throughout this series, we are just unpacking these episode by episode. And for today, we are going to be focusing on I always want to say one of the most important words. They're all important. This one's another important word, but before we jump into that, I just want to let you guys know that, for a limited time, we do still have spots open on our launch team. So if you guys would like to get a free copy, a free early release copy of this book, you can do that today by signing up for the launch team, and the way that works is we will send you, guys, if you sign up, a free copy of the book so that you can read it, review it, and then, at the publication of the book in November, you can hop on Amazon and just leave us a rating and review on Amazon or Goodreads. We'd really appreciate that. So it's a quid pro quo we give you a book, you leave us a review, and that's how the launch team works.

Luke Allen:

To sign up for that, just head over to 10wordsbookorg. Again, that is 10wordsbookorg and you can spell it either with the number 10 or T-E-N and sign up today. Unfortunately for our global audience, we only can give this offer to people living in the US or Canada, and that is going to be one copy of the book per address. So those are the rules of the game. But again, the address is 10wordsbookorg and, by the way, on that website that really is the landing page for all things 10 Words Book to Heal Our Broken World. So if you guys head over there, you can find out a lot more information about the book, see some endorsements about it, see the introduction, so on and so forth. To get into today's discussion. Like I said, this is an important word. In fact, this is such an important word that, dad, when you started writing this book back in, I don't know what, was it 2018, maybe even before that, probably 1999. Right.

Scott Allen:

It wasn't that long ago.

Dwight Vogt:

It's been a long journey.

Luke Allen:

It has been a long journey.

Dwight Vogt:

It's been a journey A good one.

Luke Allen:

I mean, yeah, it goes back quite a ways, but the reason it's taken so long journey. It has been a long journey. It's been a journey, a good one it has. I mean, yeah, it goes back quite a ways. But the reason it's taken so long is because you were working on the book chapter by chapter, and you got to this word that we're going to be talking about today and you realize this word has been so radically redefined right now that you had to take the manuscript, put it up on the shelf. Right now that you had to take the manuscript, put it up on the shelf, write an entire book about this word, which was the book that you wrote back in 2020.

Luke Allen:

I'm guessing a lot of our listeners will be familiar with that book. It's called why Social Justice is Not Biblical Justice an urgent appeal to fellow Christians in a time of social crisis. So, yes, today's word is justice. For those of you guys who have read that book, then today's discussion will hopefully be a great refresher for you, and if you have not read that book yet, then you can go ahead and grab a copy after this discussion. I've linked that book down in the show notes. Yeah, so, dad, to get us started today. Why is social justice, not biblical justice. How do you define justice in this chapter of your new book, both the true and the false definitions.

Scott Allen:

Yeah. So when we turn to the Bible, this is how I think you see justice in a very concise way, and this is how I put it in the book. It's conformity to God's moral standard, as revealed in the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament and the Royal Law In the New Testament. The Royal Law is love your neighbor as yourself. So that's it in a nutshell.

Scott Allen:

Justice involves living in right relationships with God and with other people and giving them their due, treating them as we ought, in other words, as image bearers of God. So that's basically what justice is. And then it also involves upholding justice, and so justice we understand justice as impartially rendering judgments and righting wrongs and punishing wrongdoing or lawbreaking. That aspect of justice is reserved for God himself or God-ordained authorities. That includes people like parents in a home or elders in a church in a nutshell, biblical justice. And then I've contrasted that with how justice is understood today in the culture, particularly by those who advocate for social justice. That phrase social justice and the way that they've redefined justice is along these lines Justice is deconstructing traditional systems and structures that are deemed to be oppressive and then redistributing power and resources from oppressors to their victims in the pursuit of what they call equity, or we might call equality of outcome. So same word, different dictionaries very different ideas.

Dwight Vogt:

Yeah well, I'm listening to that, Scott, and I know you could unpack that in an entire book, which you've done, but I'm going to jump in with just an observation right away, because you said two things that really jumped out at me. That frame justice so much broader than the social justice definition that you also shared, and that's this giving justice is giving people their due as image bearers. And then justice is alignment. You did more than this, but justice is alignment to a moral standard for goodness or righteousness. And I'm thinking of that first one, giving people their due as image bearers. Could you just sort of unpack that a bit? What does that mean?

Scott Allen:

Yeah, yeah. True justice means that we treat people as they really are, as image bearers of God, with incredible dignity and with worth. And so this idea of people as image bearers of God, with all of their value and their God-given rights to life and to liberty this idea is completely absent when justice is redefined, apart from God, so you don't see people in this way. So this is really, really basic to true justice, or biblical justice, is treating people as they truly are, you know, giving them their due, treating them with the respect that they deserve as image bearers of God, and this is why the Bible places such a high emphasis on treating all people, kind of even the most marginalized, the most broken, the most impoverished, with dignity and respect.

Scott Allen:

So this is this biblical idea of justice as doing good to people who are broken, marginalized and oppressed because they bear God's image, and it also requires.

Dwight Vogt:

if that's the moral standard image bearers of God then it means understanding what that means, you know, because if I'm going to hold somebody accountable to that, it's what does it mean to be an image bearer of God? So, yeah, yeah and that's really the.

Scott Allen:

that's the most basic thing that you have to understand about justice and I got this, dwight is it's this idea of alignment to a standard of what is good or right. And when you go to Webster's dictionary, this was kind of eye-opening to me when I did my research. He defines well, he comes up with this Latin word justus, I think, is how it's pronounced which means straight, actually straight. I thought that's kind of interesting straight, this concept of straight, and it brought to my mind like a plumb line, A plumb line exactly.

Scott Allen:

So if you want a straight wall, you have to have a standard. You know against which you measure straight. That's the plumb line. So then the question is for justice, you need a standard for what is not straight but good or right. And that standard is God himself. So it's his own character and, interestingly enough, you know God's character is holy, it's righteous, it's just, and even he himself can't violate it. So there's a limit. He even places a limit on himself. So in the Bible we read, for example, that God can't tell a lie. That would be to violate his own nature, because he's completely and utterly truthful. So justice in the Bible. The most basic thing you can say about it is that it's alignment to a standard, an eternal, unchangeable standard for good and right. That's true across all cultures and all times, and it's rooted in God himself.

John Bottimore:

And Scott. I would just add that the beauty of the Bible and God's standard is that that behavior and that justice is really a state of the heart and it's only possible being led by the Holy Spirit. It's a state of the heart and an intention standard, sometimes not just a standard of action. A heart and an intention standard, sometimes not just a standard of action. And the Sermon on the Mount and the state of our heart, above and beyond our actions, is just an incredible standard that we're called to as believers and possible only by the Spirit. So it's a higher standard, a more beautiful, powerful and comprehensive standard than anything that mankind can do on our own. But we of course take that standard in the rule of law and such and apply it to our own lives.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, that's right, john. And so, yeah, god, you know, of course he communicates his standard to us, otherwise we would have no idea of what this standard of righteousness or right is. And so he communicates it to us, you know, by writing it down. Actually, you know, god communicates through words and language, in the scriptures, and you see this you know, specifically in the Old Testament, in his writing, the Ten Commandments, the law, which then becomes this standard for what is right and wrong for not just the Jewish people but all people at all times. And he also communicates it, interestingly enough, to us inwardly, in our hearts. So we have a conscience.

Scott Allen:

Cs Lewis observed in, you know, in his famous book Mere Christianity I think it's the first chapter.

Scott Allen:

He titled that chapter Right and Wrong is a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe, and what he was getting at there is that, you know, no matter what culture you go to, whatever time period, there's this kind of strange standard that people have for right and wrong. That's largely similar, you know, not entirely, but largely similar, you know. And so he's asking the question where did people get that from? You know, how did they have—and the Apostle Paul in Romans says well, you know, god gave it, he imprinted it. This is his language, you know he imprinted it on the heart. So the law is both written down and delivered by God through the Ten Commandments, but also he's put it on our hearts and it's like you say, john, it's a very high standard, it's his own standard and consequently, in a fallen world, we all fall short of it. So you know, this is another important idea of biblical justice is that all of us are unjust. We all violate that standard. You know we've all broken the Ten Commandments at some level.

Luke Allen:

you know so yeah, there's a couple of these presuppositions that you have to kind of get right in order to understand justice. One of them like you just said is human depravity.

Scott Allen:

Yeah.

Luke Allen:

And then the other one that we were just talking about is that there needs to be an ultimate authority that's the plumb line.

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Luke Allen:

Which is God, which is justice, and that we're made in his image. Yeah, those three things.

Scott Allen:

And just how important that is too, luke. I just want to underscore that, because if the standard doesn't originate with him, then it's going to originate with somebody, some human being or really some powerful group or person. So those are the only two options. You can either have a moral standard that God himself defines for all of us, or we've got to live with some standard that some powerful group or human being is going to impose on the rest of us.

Luke Allen:

And I mean well, that's the truth of so many of these words in this book, the Ten. Words book is if we're not listening to God's definitions, the biblical definitions, then someone gets to do it. And do we really trust our human brothers to make those kind of decisions for us?

Dwight Vogt:

I'd rather not, and the other thing is that you underscored that if we go with God's definition, it also rings true with our own conscience, our own heart. So there's a sense of trueness to it, yeah.

Luke Allen:

So that brings me to my question, dad, I mean, this book is written for Christians by a.

Luke Allen:

Christian. However, how would you define justice for someone using more of kind of a natural law approach to it without you know using God in the definition or the Bible? You know natural law theory. We were talking about this with Katie Faust recently on an episode Dwight and I and how natural law theory, if it's done well and objectively, it will align with the biblical worldview, because the natural law is pointing to the natural world, which is God's world.

Luke Allen:

So, he wrote the instruction manual for it, so it's going to align with him. But in a roundabout way you can explain natural law without, with you know, kind of dereligifying it, as Katie said, um, to make it more widely. Uh, heard by everybody. So how would you go about that definition? I'm just curious.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, I think you know you appeal to people's sense, as Dwight was saying their sense of what is right and wrong, and particularly when it comes to things like basic human rights and human dignity.

Scott Allen:

In other words, you can be a non-Christian and have a strong sense that you know people ought not to be just sold into sex slavery, you know, if you have the power to do that, let's say, or taken into slavery of any kind, or murdered, you know. In other words, people have a deep sense, whether you're Christian or not, that human beings deserve some basic human rights and you hear that language of human rights all the time. The problem for non-Christians is it's, you know, it's just untethered, it's just floating out there in space. It's not actually rooted to God and it ultimately doesn't work if it's untethered from God, you know. But still, everyone's got a deep sense of that, you know, and people actually love that, that idea of human rights. You know the United Nations put that right in its charter, dwight, what's that called the Charter of Human Rights or Human Dignity, and they didn't appeal to God. But there it is, you know, in that United Nations charter.

John Bottimore:

So, yeah.

Scott Allen:

So I think too, you know, another way is just. We all don't like it when we're victimized by injustice, right. So if somebody steals something from us, right, we know that that's wrong and we, you know we rightly take offense, we cry out for justice, right, you know. So, christian or not, you know we all have this inward sense of right and wrong that's kind of imprinted on our hearts and that we function, you know, based on.

John Bottimore:

So I'm not sure if that's getting to your question too much, but yeah, I would say that the do unto others principle applies here, and most people would answer that the same way when they say do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That's very much kind of a common revelation that we have with one another on how we want to be treated justly.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, if you.

Dwight Vogt:

Google that particular golden rule.

Luke Allen:

You'll find out that just about all the religions and philosophies of the world have some version of that out, that just about all the religions and philosophies of the world have some version of that. What is the book launch team, you ask? Well, it's an agreement between us and you that, number one, we will send you a free, early released copy of this book in October. And then, number two, in response, you will read the book and leave us an Amazon review upon its publication date. And if you really want to be a super fan, you can even share the book with a friend. To sign up for the book launch team, head to 10wordsbookorg. Again, that is 10wordsbookorg. Again, that is 10wordsbookorg. Spell that either with a number or T-E-N. And, by the way, as an insider tip, don't wait too long to sign up because there is only 100 spots available on this book launch team.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, and I think natural law, you know, to me, the way I understand natural law is, it's just, it's a law, if you will, that aligns with God's created order, right, the way that he made things and kind of who he is. So, whether you believe in God or not, we all live in the world that he made. It functions according to certain laws, whether they be, you know, physical laws like the law of gravity, or moral laws Like do unto others as you would have them do unto you. We all live in that world and we have to function according to those laws, whether we believe in God or not. I'm not a big natural law theorist, but that's my understanding of it.

Dwight Vogt:

I think, appeal to first grade mentality. It's like I think of little first graders that you don't have to teach them that if you take somebody else's eraser it's stealing.

John Bottimore:

It's like hey, you took my eraser, or if?

Dwight Vogt:

somebody's talking and somebody talks over them. You shouldn't talk over that person, or you don't let them play on your team on the resource field. There's just this natural thing that happens in first graders, but you've got to teach them what pronoun to use. You got to teach them if one child is more privileged than another. That's not natural law, that's kind of you know. It's a construct, you know.

Scott Allen:

Right, right, yeah, I'm reading a book right now. That's kind of interesting. It's the third journey of Captain Cook. You know, he's the famous British explorer who mapped a good bit of our world in the late 1700s, and the chapters that I'm reading right now, you know he's showing up in places like Hawaii and he's meeting, you know, indigenous people for the first time. For the first time, and it's just a fascinating kind of cultural or anthropological you know reading, because they all you know they're different for sure, you know, and they've never met each other completely different cultural backgrounds, but they still know when you steal something it's wrong, you know, and that happens, you know.

John Bottimore:

So anyways it's kind of fascinating.

Scott Allen:

And that happens, you know.

Luke Allen:

So anyways, it's kind of fascinating. Yeah, dad, and just to dig into part two of your definition here, the true definition that you write in the book, it digs into the impartial rendering of judgment, righting wrongs and meting out punishment for lawbreakers, a task reserved for God and God-ordained authorities, including parents in the home, elders in the church, teachers in the school and civic authorities in the state. So this question of righting wrongs and rendering out judgment is a true part of justice. We see that all throughout the Old Testament, especially in the Pentateuch. How did you go about explaining that in the book?

Scott Allen:

I just think, you know, for most people, when we think about justice, it brings to mind things like the criminal justice system and punishment of wrongdoing, and courts and trials and prison and all of this kinds of thing. And so it's important to say how does that factor in? And I think, of course, justice involves, you know, doing what is right, treating people as we ought, but it also involves and we can be grateful for this the punishment of wrongdoing, of injustice or of evil, and that's something that we see in the scriptures. Clearly, that upholding justice means, you know, not just allowing injustice to go unchecked, but to call it out, to judge it and to punish it. There's a level of, you know, in God's character, a level of just hatred of injustice, of wrath, because injustice, evil, it harms people that he loves, and so he's not content just like any good father is not content just to be oh, you know allow their children to be treated unjustly, to be raped or murdered or whatever. You know, justice involves a judgment against that and a punishment. So in the Bible, that judgment and that punishment is done by God-ordained authorities. And so where the first part of justice, the doing what is right, treating other people as their due. This is kind of a duty of everybody. All human beings have this responsibility. This second part is not for everybody, it's for God and God-ordained authority.

Scott Allen:

So God himself, the Bible, makes it very clear he's the one who's going to punish injustice and he's going to do it perfectly. We see this especially at the very end in the book of Revelation, with the throne of judgment, and the Bible constantly refers to this throne of judgment where we will actually have to stand, all of us, and there will be a book that's open, that'll represent all of the thoughts and actions that we've done in our lives. Nothing's going to be hidden at that point and it's all going to be judged against God's law, against his perfect standard of righteousness. So he himself will judge and punish all wrongdoing. This is an amazing thought that not any violation, no matter how small or large, of his law, of his standard, will be unpunished, will be unjudged. It will all be judged and punished. Now, so God himself is the standard or, excuse me, is the one who does this judgment and punishment.

Scott Allen:

But then he delegates and we talked about this in authority. You know, God delegates this authority, kind of amazingly, to human beings too. Again, not all human beings, but certain God-ordained authorities. This would be parents in the home. So they've got—parents have got a responsibility for upholding justice in the home, that is, punishing wrongdoing and so disciplining their children. Same in a church. And civil authorities have this responsibility.

Scott Allen:

And right in the state Paul says that they bear the sword, civil authorities In other words, they rightly can put you in prison and hold you guilty in a court of law and punish you. So not everyone can do that, but civil authorities have that right to do that. So that's just. I think really it's also basic, but it's important to kind of lay that down as well. And it's really important that this is done, because where this upholding of true justice and punishment of injustice isn't done, things quickly spiral out of control. And frankly, we're seeing that in a lot of our cities here in the United States right now where, as we move away from biblical justice into social justice or false justice, you're seeing civil authorities frankly no longer punishing injustice and cities are becoming very chaotic. You know there's, you know, rampant kind of theft and violence is on the rise.

Dwight Vogt:

Scott, you also make a point in your video just about the idea of rendering justice as a government official or as a policeman or whatever that it's a matter of. There's a debt incurred against the victim and that has to be righted in this world. It's not just punishment, but speak to that.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, you know, the image of justice, that picture of lady justice is really a good one. You know we can think about her, that image, it's very biblical and she's got scales right and the scales are balanced. In other words, true justice requires scales to be balanced, such that if I commit a crime against you, dwight, if I steal something from you, that's the picture of the scales being out of balance. I've taken something from you and so now I owe you. So in order for justice to be rendered, I have to pay back. Then the scale is balanced again, and that could be property, it could be life, it could be reputation. Whatever I've taken or stolen, it creates an imbalance on that scale and justice requires that scale to be balanced. So that's very much a biblical idea.

Scott Allen:

You know, how that judgment is rendered is also really important in the Bible. In other words, it can't just be done at a whim, it has to be done very carefully, it has to be based on the truth. So in other words, you have to truly stolen something from me or done something wrong to me, not just my accusation of that, but it has to actually truly have happened. So the Bible says that accusations of wrongdoing have to be backed up by witnesses that's very clear in the Old Testament and not just any one witness too. It's got to be two or three witnesses that you know render truthful testimony. So truth is very important to justice and also impartiality. So the judge has to be impartial and can't be bribed, because God himself, as our ultimate judge, is impartial. He doesn't treat us based on some kind of—he doesn't treat us with favoritism, depending on our skin color or group or whatever. He treats us impartially and we're all judged impartially before the law.

Scott Allen:

That's the blind justice idea. The lady justice is wearing the blindfold and then the sword that she carries is the punishment. So all of those are really important aspects. And it's again, it's based on God himself and how he executes judgment. He does it impartially, he does it without taking bribes. You can't bribe him. But again, when all of these biblical ideas are gone, all of these ideas are threatened, right. So justice becomes—it's not based on impartiality. You know, certain powerful groups become favored, right, and you get, you know, this kind of lawfare that we're seeing in our own country right now, sadly.

John Bottimore:

So it's yeah, it's about clear and communicated standards that people know and they know when they're violating the law or not, whether or not, they want to get away with it or not, and it's as you said, it's also about consistency in applying the law, and a very, a very simple example are speed limits. So it's clear, it's communicated, it's posted, and whether there's consistency in applying it or not depends on your luck of where you are when the police comes or not, and so it's not perfectly applied in consistency. But that again is just a demonstration of there is no perfect impartiality except for from God. And Romans 13, of course, covers all of this very well.

Scott Allen:

Yeah.

John Bottimore:

And the establishment of authorities. And it says in verse 3, for rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, I think that Romans verse it's a really important one for justice, but it does presuppose the understanding that those civil authorities are upholding. You know the laws that they're upholding are in alignment with God's law. Now there is obviously times in human history when civil authorities don't believe in God. They dismiss God's higher law, they create man-made laws that are completely out of alignment with God's law. So, for example, in Nazi Germany you saw this where laws, civil authorities, created laws, for example, around how Jews were treated, and if you tried to rescue Jews that were being taken to the concentration camp, you were violating Nazi laws. So that Romans verse that you just quoted, john, doesn't really apply in that case, because the civil authorities there are not working for the good right as defined by God. They're actually doing just the opposite. So in that case you actually have a moral responsibility to disobey. There is a place in the Bible for civil disobedience if those human authorities are violating kind of openly violating and flaunting God's law.

Scott Allen:

So I think it should be done, obviously, very carefully. It shouldn't be our inclination to. Our inclination should be to obey human authorities, civil authorities, but only up to a point, right. If they are clearly violating God's law, we are not under obligation to obey those laws. In fact, it's just the opposite, Right?

John Bottimore:

Again, all of this demonstrates that only God is truly impartial and only he can do that. Only God is truly impartial and only he can do that, so only he can truly judge that proper behavior.

Scott Allen:

And that's a really important point actually, john, is that true justice? It's never going to be done perfectly in a fallen world. It's not that we don't try, you know, as parents, we have to try our best to discipline our kids. It's not that we don't try, you know, as parents, we have to try our best to discipline our kids. But even like you know, I found that to be one of the hardest parts of being a parent was to uphold justice in the home, because you don't really know exactly what happened. You know, and sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. You know and you know.

Scott Allen:

It's just very hard to do and it's hard in a family, it's hard in a society, but we have to try and we're actually held accountable. If we're an authority, we're held accountable by God for how we do that. But we can rest in the fact that God himself is a perfect judge and he's going to do it perfectly at the end. And I think that's really an important point to make, because, again, when justice is redefined apart from God, then there isn't this oh, we can wait for final judgment and we have to do it ourselves.

Scott Allen:

Right, we have to kind of create this perfect utopian society, which we never can do, we end up doing really horrible things, and I think this is why, in the parable of the wheat and the weeds, god said you know, when the servants said, hey, should we go out and uproot these weeds? You know, these weeds that were planted by the evil one, this injustice in the world should we root out? The injustice is kind of what they're saying. And God says you know, be very—in other words, be very careful. I'll take care of that when I come back, because if you do it as fallen people, you're likely to pull out the wheat, you know, which is true. You know we have a hard time exercising this justice, but nevertheless we have to do it to the degree we're able.

Dwight Vogt:

I don't remember the book, but Miroslav Volf is a theologian went to Fuller and he wrote something on the genocide in Kosovo. And he said at the end of the day, mercy and forgiveness can only be executed or be implemented because there is justice, eternal justice, because you know, how do you possibly forgive somebody who's killed your entire family? You know.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, yeah.

Dwight Vogt:

And yet he said but you've already said this, scott, but it's that assurance that there will be a real judgment that's real true and real honest and real fair. Yeah we need that actually, so we can move forward and we don't have to execute justice today and wipe out everybody who's harmed us you know.

Scott Allen:

But the other side of that too, dwight, is the Bible makes very clear is that we're all, when we stand before that final judgment and that book is opened and our life is put on display there, then we're going to be found to be lawbreakers and we're going to have to face the punishment for that which is death lawbreakers, and we're going to have to face the punishment for that which is death. But this really gets us to the heart of the gospel, right? The incredible good news that the Scripture provides, which is that there's a way of escape, because God himself, because of his love—so justice is core to God's character, but so is love and mercy, right, and because both of those are central to his character. He, you know, this is why we have the incarnation, god himself, taking on human flesh and coming down to earth and ultimately paying the price for the law-breaking, the injustice that we've committed. If we confess, right, that's the thing.

Scott Allen:

Oh Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner, you know, otherwise I'm going to pay that penalty myself, you know. But if we confess, God says you're forgiven. The penalty that you deserve is going to be paid for by my son on the cross, which is there's no, there's, no, there's nothing like that in any other belief system in human history. It's just incredibly remarkable where you get both justice completely upheld right alongside mercy and forgiveness, and, boy, that's so important for cultures and society. You need actually both of those things for cultures and society. You need actually both of those things. If you don't have justice, you just have evil run amok. But if you don't have mercy and forgiveness, you know, I always think of the famous Broadway play or book, you know, les Miserables, where the villain, you know, is this you know, javert, this guy who's committed to justice but without a shred of mercy, right, you know, destroys things when you have that. So the Bible, thankfully, gives us both justice and mercy.

Luke Allen:

When you explained that you were kind of just walking through the Roman's road right. That evangelism tool where you start out with no one is righteous, not even one.

Luke Allen:

The wages of sin are death, um, but then the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our savior. You know, um, I forget the other one. But sometimes, when, when Christians read these verses, we think okay, no one is righteous, not even one. If that's true, which it is, then who am I to judge someone else upon their behavior, upon their sin? Who am I to look at someone else who might not believe in God like I do, and yet uphold them to God's moral standard? You know, and we hear this all the time, aren't Christians not supposed to judge anyone?

Luke Allen:

You know, and then Christians think about it like well, should I, you know, because I'm not any better than they are. You know, we're just all image bearers and I sin too. And you know, I've got the speck of my own eye or the log of my own eye, and you know, shouldn't take speck out of someone else's. How do you respond to that here, Dad? For people that have been given that responsibility to enforce judgment and partially render judgment upon other people, yeah, I think the Bible says two things, luke, in response.

Scott Allen:

One is that, yeah, we should be very careful about rendering judgment against other people, because we ourselves are under God's judgment and we ourselves are lawbreakers and we've got, as you said, logs in our own eye. And so the Bible makes that very clear. Like you know, don't think more highly of yourself than you ought. You know you aren't, you know, perfect at all, and so be careful about judging others. It says that. It also says that if you are in a position of authority God-ordained authority you do have a responsibility to uphold justice and to make judgments not based on your own righteousness, but based on God's, and that's for the good of a society. So it says both of those things. They're not, I don't think they are contradictory to each other. We should be humble, right? Even if we have a position of authority, and authority to render judgment and punish, we should be very humble about that right, recognizing that we ourselves are under a higher authority, right?

Luke Allen:

So, yeah, yeah, the key is or I don't know about the key, but one thing that helps me when reconciling this is not to put the attention on myself as in. I am better than you. I am judging you.

Scott Allen:

Right.

Luke Allen:

You know that's pride, that's putting myself up, pushing them down but, instead looking at them and seeing, asking what is the highest good for you that I can help you towards? And if you're going away from that, then I might judge you. I might try to redirect you towards the best for you and that'll look like judgment, but in actuality I'm just loving my neighbor as myself, trying to uphold the.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, I think so much of the don't be judgmental today is just a denial that there's any kind of higher moral standard, right, and so just you know. If that's true, then who are we to judge somebody else? They can do whatever they want and we have to, you know, withhold any kind of judgment over their behavior. But that's not true, right, there is a God exists, right, and he did create us. You know, because he exists, he is that standard himself and any violation from that standard is going to have consequences in a real powerful way.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, and we'd better hope so I mean. That kind of brings us to our next point. What kind of culture does this biblical understanding of justice create? Like you just said, if there isn't a higher moral standard, then we're all our own moral standards and we all go about trying to make our own justice in the world's absolute chaos, then we're all our own moral standards and we all go about trying to make our own justice in the world's absolute chaos, because we all have our own understanding of that and we all want to feel justified in ourselves.

Luke Allen:

A bunch of selfish people running around judging each other. That doesn't work. So this other definition, definitely just right off of the face value, seems to work better. But let's dig into that a little bit. What kind of culture does this biblical view of justice create?

Scott Allen:

Yeah, well, I think there was a— I wish I had this in front of me now—but there was a kind of a social experiment that was done.

Scott Allen:

I think it was in Toronto. There was this time when there was a strike and the police all went on strike and for some period of time, maybe a week or two, there literally wasn't any law enforcement in the city. So then you know what happened, and even in Canada, this buttoned-down kind of society, things just went absolutely berserk, they went chaotic. So this is the world, this is the fallen world, apart from justice, right, you know, any kind of justice, things just break down dramatically. So the converse of that is where biblical justice is understood and upheld.

Scott Allen:

You have order, you can have harmony, and you need that right. People need a degree of order in order to function right, a level of trust and order in order to just live my life and do my work and kind of rise to that full potential that God has. You just can't do that in a society where there's just violence and corruption and disorder and all sorts of brokenness. So, yeah, biblical justice is the thing that makes that possible and it does it in a really beautiful way. It does it in a humble way. It treats, you know, even people that are lawbreakers with respect with you know, as we say due process, because they're image bearers of God right. So it's careful to render judgment. It understands that we're all under God's ultimate judgment. You know there's a degree of mercy and justice that go together. So these are all kind of fruits, I think, of a society shaped by biblical justice.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, john, you look like you have something to say yeah when people do this we demonstrate law-abiding behaviors.

John Bottimore:

We have courage if there's something that needs to be done and the marginalized or poor or somebody being hurt by this. We have courage if something needs to be done, but we also expect and can trust that those authorities that are established by God are going to do things to ensure that the consequences of misbehavior are handled. So, all of these things together, we can observe a city or society that is going to be healthier than the opposite.

John Bottimore:

You used your Toronto example or Canada example, and so that's what we observe and that's what we expect in those kinds of societies. Societies and again, it starts with the people, because the justices and the police and fire and others that are there can't be everywhere. So it really depends on a just people who understand what is good and right and uphold that Not perfectly, but generally uphold that. That's a good looking society, yeah.

Dwight Vogt:

I think of my parents' hometown. It was a little town in northwestern Oklahoma that was a law and order town and you could go out at night and not worry about anything. You could leave money on the counter and not worry that somebody would take it. You can leave your car running on a cold day on the street and it will be just fine. So you get a really flourishing, beautiful society.

Scott Allen:

when there's justice and people live by it and people implement it. Yeah, yeah, I think another fruit of biblical justice is, you know, just, yeah, I think another fruit of biblical justice is, you know, just, you see, a lot less corruption and bribery in societies that are deeply shaped by the Bible, because God himself says in the scriptures that he is impartial and he takes no bribes. And so, as Darrow, our friend, often says, you know, we build societies or cultures in the image of the God that we worship. So if the true God that we worship takes no bribes, that's going to reflect itself in the culture that we create and there's going to be less corruption, less bribery. You know, when we don't worship the living God, you know, we tend to be driven by our selfish desires, and you know, then you get all sorts of corruption, bribery, and that really destroys, you can't? It just destroys societies as we know.

Luke Allen:

I liked what you were saying, John, about the importance of encouraging this throughout a society and a culture, and I think for a lot of sometimes we have those discussions in the church of should the Christians, should Christians, try to influence culture or is that too secular for us and we need to stay in our sacred lane as Christians, and I think this is a perfect example of that is. Don't you want to follow the Great Commission? Go and disciple the nations to create cultures and societies where justice is implemented. It's the best for everyone. Don't we want that? Isn't that part of our commission as Christians? And where you see Christians do that, it's beautiful.

Luke Allen:

And obviously that's us working through God's power, being his hands and feet, but still it can really transform a nation.

John Bottimore:

Absolutely, yeah, well said, well said. Good Christians should be good citizens, and I think another measure of a thriving society is that it attracts investment, and I'm not only talking about investment of economic kind, but it really does, and so there's no fear to invest because you see the fruit and this kind of infrastructure is really attractive to investment and job creation and all.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, you're not going to invest if you think it's all going to get stolen or robbed and taken from you. Exactly Right right?

Luke Allen:

Well, we are on the clock, so I think it's time to move into halftime and prepare for the second half of the game here. So I think it's time to move into halftime and prepare for the second half of the game here. Dad, would you mind just reading the two definitions for us again before we move into the conversation around the false definition here.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, let's see. Let me get back to that really quick here. No, problem.

Scott Allen:

So, yeah, the true definition. I'll just read the beginning of it. It's conformity or alignment is another word conformity to God's moral standard as revealed in the Ten Commandments and the royal law Love your neighbors yourself. It's living in right relationship with God and with others, giving them their due as image bearers of God. Now, today, that's been redefined and in our culture people understand justice in a different way. It's the tearing down of traditional structures and systems that are deemed to be oppressive and the redistribution of power and resources from oppressors to victims, in the pursuit of equity or equality of outcome.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, so let's dig into that second definition there. Um, right away, dad you were mentioning before lady justice. Um, and she has a blindfold on and I think the blindfolds and we already talked about this, but justice should be blind, impartial. Um, this second definition. That's the first thing that jumped out to me here. It is not impartial at all. And there's this, there's, there's this push to restructure society in order to make it more just, which requires partiality.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, yeah.

Luke Allen:

So yeah, let's dig into that.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, I think the first thing to say about this redefined notion of justice is that there's no mention of God. Right, so God's absent. And so you think, well, how can we have justice apart from God? Well, you're still going to have some, you know, basis for right and wrong, and we see that here in this redefined justice. But the basis for that, the standard for that, isn't God himself, it's people who are in power. Essentially, you know, they're determining what is right and wrong. So you have a very inverted morality with this redefined justice.

Scott Allen:

So, as I mentioned I don't know if I mentioned it in this discussion or not, but the person that probably is most responsible for kind of the ideas behind this redefined justice is Karl Marx, and he actually borrowed, you know, the Christian notion of right and wrong from the Bible. Right, you know, if you don't have a God, you really don't have any basis for right and wrong. But he borrowed this understanding of right and wrong or morality, and then he kind of secularized it and he defined it this way. He said you can divide the entire world into two groups oppressors and victims. And in this world, oppressors are evil right, that's the source of evil and injustice, whereas victims, those who've been victimized by the oppressors, are good, right, they're sinless, if you will. So this is kind of this inverted morality, if you will, of Karl Marx. And then he goes on and he defines oppression. It's not rooted in human hearts because, unlike the Bible, there isn't any kind of doctrine of human depravity or sin. So he says, all of this injustice is rooted outside of man, in society and in social systems and structures. So, for example, marx had said the structure that's creating the injustice here is capitalism, this economic system. On what basis is it unjust? Because it results in inequality, economic inequality between capitalists, owners of property and workers, capitalists, owners of property and workers.

Scott Allen:

And it's interesting, for him justice was not alignment to a standard of goodness based in God. Justice was equality of outcome. Because it's a really different idea. It's a lack of any kind of disparity between groups. It's a lack of any kind of disparity between groups. Everyone's the same.

Scott Allen:

Cs Lewis kind of defined this notion this way. He said let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or more handsome than the mass. Cut them all down to a level all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies, all equals. So this kind of Marxist idea of justice is to cut everyone down until they are the same, equal right. Nobody's got more money, nobody's got less. You know, they even look the same. So you saw, for example, in the Maoist revolutions in China, people would even dress the same, right. You know they had to all be the same. All equals Ciphers is the word he used.

Scott Allen:

So this idea of equality by the way, equality is an idea that you see in the scriptures for sure. For example, we see equality in the fact that God created all human beings with equal dignity. We all equally bear God's image, right. And you also see it in the fact that when God judges us in Revelation, we're going to be judged equally before the law, right. So equality is a biblical idea. But this idea of equality or equity, of everyone being the same, isn't a biblical idea at all, actually. So you know, to make everyone the same, you have to do all this powerful social engineering and you have to take away people's freedom, right. And that just runs completely counter to the Bible, completely counter to the way God created us as human beings. Thoughts on that.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, well, just a quick thought. Yeah, I think that's right, that's a good way to explain that, but you made it sound very, very bad, you know, and yet, at the same time, this definition is the predominant definition, I would say, of most cultures around us. And if it's such a bad definition, then why do so many people believe it? You know, if Karl Marx was so evil, then why do so many people follow him?

Luke Allen:

And I think, like most lies that are very, you know, sell well, is it's based on truth, a little bit of truth and then there's a lie mixed in and you got to give Marx a little bit of credit with his first hypothesis, or his first theory is that there is real injustices.

Luke Allen:

He lived during the height of the Industrial Revolution, we saw child labor. We saw people working 24-7. There was extremely wealthy people monopolizing everyone else and stepping on them and there was some real inequality. And he saw that and he tried to come up with a solution to that. And we still see that today. There's people that are desperately poor around us, and sometimes it's because other people are oppressing them. That's definitely real.

John Bottimore:

So then we look for a solution to that real.

Luke Allen:

So then we look for a solution to that, and Marx somewhat answers our hypothesis as well. So there's definitely something deep in our hearts that this kind of calls to, and you have to recognize that. And yet his solution is definitely wrong Making everyone the same is very evil, as you were just saying. You're right.

Scott Allen:

Luke no, and it's really a good point. I mean, there is a real thing called oppression. The Bible speaks about it and there are victims of oppression in a fallen world. You know, and so you're correct, that Marx was looking at a real thing. You know, he did his theorizing in London, in the I believe it was in the early 1800s, mid-1800s, and he thought that London was ripe for a communist revolution because there was such dramatic inequality between factory owners and people that they were exploiting the child laborers. And you know, if you've read any of Charles Dickens' books, you know he often talks about England during this time and the French, the same conditions that gave rise to the French Revolution. So it's real.

Scott Allen:

I think where it goes wrong is that, you know, he assumes that. You know he sees a real thing and then he kind of makes it an ultimate thing. In other words, that's all that exists, such that if you are a wealthy capitalist, proper owner, let's say, the only reason for that is because you've stolen right, you've taken from somebody, you've oppressed them. Okay, that may have happened, but it may not have. You might have worked very hard right, and you might actually be generous and you might even share what you've earned, you know, with other people, right?

Scott Allen:

Marx doesn't. He doesn't give any credence to that, right, you know you got it because you stole it, right? So at the root of it is this kind of idea of envy of I've been exploited, I'm not being treated fairly. It's interesting that I listened to Jordan Peterson talk about this and he traces this all the way back to Cain and Abel, right? He said that kind of the root of the Marxist idea. You can find the seeds of it in the heart of Cain, right? They both brought, you know, Cain and Abel both brought their offerings to God, but God was pleased with Abel's and not with Cain's and Cain became embittered, right, about that, and angry and he felt like I'm not being treated fairly, you know. And those are kind of those ideas that you know give rise to this system of belief. I thought that was interesting anyways, yeah.

John Bottimore:

Yeah, back quickly too, about the falsity of equality of outcome. We don't have equality of outcome, even within a family.

John Bottimore:

No Siblings within a family take different paths, some work harder, some study harder, and we have different outcomes, even within a family where virtually everything is equal in terms of their upbringing and standards and all of that.

John Bottimore:

So to expect that we could have that in a society is just not possible, even if we wanted it. And then to move to talk about wanting betterment for everyone, we do. I mean, that's a great Christian principle of compassion and we should do that and we should love our neighbors ourselves and want that for other people through compassion, but not being compelled, and so that's that's the idea of marxism is that we're compelled through, uh, through things being taken away and given to others and things, and there's therefore there's there's no agency on the on the part of the lower and there's no agency on the part of the lower, and there's no incentive and no motivation to work hard and to earn and to grow on the part of those who do have something and maybe have the kinds of skills and talents that can help create for the betterment of all, and so it may ultimately result in an equality of outcome, but in a low, miserable state, and no one wants that.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, you're right, john. It has to be forced or imposed through these kind of powerful social engineering, because it goes against our basic human nature, which means that God created us free, right, and our free choices result in different outcomes. I mean, that's just how God made us and you know, you even see this. For example, I always think of the parable of the talents. You know, the owner of the, whatever it is, the land, the king, you know, goes away to a distant country and he leaves his followers with some talents. They don't all get the same amount, by the way.

Scott Allen:

You know. One gets one, one gets two, one gets three, they're different and then when he comes back, he holds them accountable for what they did, the choices that they made, for how they invested those talents, and he expected a return on his investment. And so, interestingly, you know, the one that had one buried it right. The one that had two and three, they invested it and got a return. God, you know, said well done, that's what I wanted and took the, you know, from the one, took it and gave it to the one that had three right. So it just completely goes against this idea of equality of outcome, because God holds us accountable for the choices that we make and the talents that he gives us, and he wants us to invest those and make wise choices. So the only way you can have this perfect equality of outcome is by tearing everyone down, essentially so, mm-hmm.

Scott Allen:

They breed tribalism, which is yeah yeah, there's all sorts of things that are wrong with this notion of justice. I think one of the greatest things that's wrong with it is that it says that evil doesn't exist in the human heart. It exists with a particular group of people. Right, they're the source of evil, they're what's wrong with the world, and whenever you think that way, it's completely dangerous and deadly. So the Nazis thought this way. The problem with the world are the Jews, right, the problem with the world are the Hutus. Or the problem with the world today, you hear in social justice circles, are whites or whiteness, or people that uphold Christian morality. You know so whenever evil is sourced, you know so. Whenever evil is sourced not in the human heart, equally, I guess, but with a particular group, and this group is innocent, that group is guilty you just tear society apart. You're asking for you know, I mean it's a short step to genocide. You know when you think that way.

Scott Allen:

So, anyways, we talked originally about Karl Marx's kind of Marxist theory has been reconfigured for our present day, and the dividing line isn't so much class and economics as it is.

Scott Allen:

There's other divides that are much more prevalent today, and so I just mentioned one race, so the divide between whites and people of color is exploited in today's social justice, Marxist kind of idea the divide between men and women and the divide between, let's say, people that uphold traditional Christian views on sexuality, male-female marriage etc. And people who don't, who want to, just, you know, practice sex in any way that they wish or their sexual identity. So you see the same basic ideas of Marx but kind of reconfigured, and there's a whole story on how that happened and why that happened. In short, it was because the old ideas weren't effective in places like England and the United States. They didn't lead to the kind of communist or socialist revolutions that Marx envisioned. So a new generation of Marxist theorists said we've got to come up with some changes to the basic ideas that will be effective in societies like the United States. And so they were right. They were highly effective and, you know, really did lead to an institutionalization of this kind of false Marxist view of justice in our society.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, and if you're curious to learn more about that cultural Marxism in the you know modern day name that goes under, which is social justice, then I would recommend checking out why Social Justice Is Not Biblical Justice. Again, that's linked in the show notes. Before we get wrapped up today, let's quickly talk about how do we, as Christians, recover the true definition that we're talking about at the beginning of this podcast, the one that actually leads to flourishing and is in order with the world that God created for us to live in. Dwight, I'm tagging you for this one.

Dwight Vogt:

I think we go back to the beginning of the discussion and we know the definition of justice that it's giving people their due as image bearers. We understand what that means to be an image bearer and what it means to give a person their due is that and it means to align our lives and help others align to a moral standard that's for goodness and righteousness. That begins with God and his word, ten Commandments, our natural consciences, and we begin there and we practice that and it's a good starting point.

Scott Allen:

I totally agree, dwight. You have to you recognize a counterfeit by looking at the originals. We have to really know the true thing clearly. I wrote that book, by the way, because a lot of Christians. I was surprised just how much they'd absorbed at some level this kind of Marxist social justice idea of justice, and I thought they just hadn't studied the original well enough to recognize the counterfeit. So they allowed these kind of Marxist ideas at some level to shape their thinking. And no surprise, because this is what's taught in public schools, this is what you know, this is DEI training in our institutions. I mean, we're kind of bombarded really by these ideas of justice. So unless there's a real intentionality, this is what you're going to— you know, we are shaped more deeply by the culture than we realize. This is what you're going to come away with. So I think that is the challenge we face right now. We've lived now for several years under kind of heavy propaganda and teaching and indoctrination on this false justice, such that even Christians haven't sorted it out, you know.

John Bottimore:

Yeah, and Dwight said it earlier, we live as Christ commands us to live. The greatest commandment and the second commandment to love our neighbors ourselves. I've mentioned this before, not necessarily on podcasts, but with you all. One of my favorite books was the Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky back in the early 90s, and it's really about demonstrating that compassion and that love for our neighbors and ourselves. And he has a quote in there which I can't say verbatim, but it basically says that it's not about us giving things and giving money, but it's about how we give of ourselves, give of our time, give of our talents, give of our love to one another.

John Bottimore:

That really makes this kind of thing. So we want great outcomes for society. We want great outcomes for all kinds of people. We serve the poor for society. We want great outcomes for all kinds of people. We serve the poor, we serve the marginalized, but we do it from Scripture and the basis of Scripture and the basis of Christ's love, not compelled to do it and not doing it by the wrong way. So it's a beautiful expression of living for Christ if we do it properly.

Luke Allen:

Yep, yeah, that's a good place to wrap up. This is another one of these words that you're going to hear tossed around all over the place inside the church, outside the church, we hear justice everywhere, but just as Christians, we've got to be careful about how people are defining that, especially people that have influence over us authors that we're reading pastors, and just line up their definition with the true one and see if it's a counterfeit. Hopefully it's not, but just be very careful with this word going forward and make sure that you're protecting or promoting the true definition. Yeah, again, I just want to remind you guys that there is a few spots left on the launch team so you can go and sign up today at 10wordsbookorg and get your free copy of the book, early released copy. I also wanted to let you guys know about our upcoming Bible study video course that is going to be accompanying the book, coming out at the same time in November. Dad, would you mind telling everyone about that real quick? I know you're working on that right now.

Scott Allen:

Would you mind telling everyone about that real quick? I know you're working on that right now. Yeah, so for each of the 10 words, we've created, with the help of our good friend Jeff Krieger, some really wonderful videos that kind of get to the essence of both the true definition and the counterfeit for each of these 10 words in a very creative way, very interesting to watch, in a very creative way, very interesting to watch. And so we're creating around those videos a 10-week course so that you can go study the scriptures yourself more deeply and then come together with other Christians and watch the video and discuss and pray and just learn together and deepen your own understanding. Really excited about this course, it's going to be, lord willing, coming out simultaneously with the book. So we'll have both this podcast series that we're working on now, the book itself, and then the course as well, the video course.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, exactly, and the video course will be coming out on the same day that the book is published, hopefully, which is November 19th. So you can mark that in your calendar if you would like to hop on Amazon that day and give us a review if you're on the launch team. If not, obviously you want to read the book before you give us a review and let us know your thoughts after that. But November 19th is the big date again.

Luke Allen:

For all things, ideas or ideas have consequences is this podcast, but for all things 10 words book go to 10 words bookorgorg, and on that page you can sign up for the launch team. You can also sign up for the course once that comes out and you can order the book once that comes out as well. So, yeah, all things will be on that page. You can also, of course, get updates about the book on our social media here at the Disciple Nations Alliance. We are the Disciple Nations Alliance on Instagram, facebook and YouTube, and for any other information about our ministry here at the DNA, you can go to disciplenationsorg. Anyways, that's enough for today, guys. Thanks again for listening. We always appreciate your time and attention, and thanks again for listening to this episode of. Ideas have Consequences.