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00:00:00.000 | I am James Hong and welcome to the Surpassing Value Podcast.
00:00:15.620 | The fuel and desire for this podcast was born out of a compulsion to flesh out what's
00:00:19.740 | been going on in the midst of an ocean of megaphones that may not actually withstand
00:00:24.600 | the test of scrutiny.
00:00:26.620 | As a signpost theologian, I will do my best to filter out the impurities and point people
00:00:32.320 | in the right direction.
00:00:37.320 | For episode number five, I wanted to talk about the term "social justice."
00:00:46.320 | This term has been thrown out quite often and in many different situations.
00:00:52.480 | Everyone seems to have their own tinge, their own stance, their own opinion.
00:00:58.380 | Everyone seems to state that their view on social justice is correct and whether or not
00:01:06.520 | we should embrace it, whether or not it is right, wrong, good, evil, biblical, unbiblical.
00:01:15.040 | Moreover you have proponents who are quick to embrace it or discard it for their own
00:01:22.520 | reasons.
00:01:23.520 | Let me give you some responses, some typical responses to social justice that are common
00:01:27.960 | today that you've probably heard in some variation.
00:01:33.080 | I believe in social justice because Republicans are evil.
00:01:38.720 | Republicans believe in gerrymandering.
00:01:42.400 | Republicans don't care about life after the child is born.
00:01:46.440 | I believe in social justice because Jesus was countercultural and Jesus would have believed
00:01:52.360 | in social justice.
00:01:54.680 | I am a political agnostic, but clearly social justice is not a concept we could disagree
00:02:01.640 | with.
00:02:02.640 | Now, these responses are in no way exhaustive, but they are somewhat indicative of the attitudes
00:02:10.320 | one would have towards the concept of social justice.
00:02:15.320 | Now embedded in these responses is some definition, however blurry, some conception they have
00:02:24.000 | of social justice, which is why the speaker is able to answer the way they do.
00:02:29.680 | It would appear though that more than a concrete definition that springs forth, the idea of
00:02:38.040 | being pro-social justice to the contemporary proponent of it, or here, conjures up events
00:02:48.760 | and more likely than not, disdain for those events.
00:02:53.440 | This is particularly true for events where one party is a civilian and the other party
00:02:58.440 | is some type of law enforcement.
00:03:01.560 | For many people, you could replace social justice with the word compassion and that
00:03:07.240 | would be enough.
00:03:08.840 | For many others, you could replace the word social justice, the term social justice, with
00:03:14.180 | government assistance or liberalism or higher taxes for the rich or evaluation of police
00:03:21.900 | protocols or some variation thereof and that would be enough.
00:03:26.280 | The thing is though, we need to agree on a definition to have a meaningful conversation,
00:03:35.280 | but nearly all people engaged in this conversation are simply not able to define the term.
00:03:43.620 | They're able to conjure up feelings, images, video clips.
00:03:51.480 | People are quick to cast aspersions and caricature an opposing viewpoint, thereby vilifying anyone
00:03:59.160 | seemingly associated with that viewpoint.
00:04:06.440 | This gives people the feeling of moral superiority without engaging in actual intellectual rigor,
00:04:14.080 | which is very convenient to the one destroying the straw man.
00:04:17.700 | There is what I would call emotional intelligence involved, but very rarely is there abstract
00:04:25.080 | intelligence involved.
00:04:27.880 | It is incredibly dangerous to state you believe in something so readily when you can't even
00:04:36.980 | define it.
00:04:38.980 | Moreover, you've probably heard many people say something to the effect of, "Social
00:04:44.600 | justice is everywhere."
00:04:47.160 | But is it really?
00:04:49.500 | If we're going to make claims like that, we should be able to back it up.
00:04:53.960 | Now sometimes people make that claim and they just don't have the time to do so, so I
00:04:57.200 | get that.
00:04:58.800 | But not backing it up is not helpful, particularly now since many people will internally disagree
00:05:07.860 | with that sentiment without actually verbalizing that they do.
00:05:14.200 | I want to tell you from the beginning, right now, that I do indeed that this ideology is
00:05:21.160 | everywhere, and my aim is to prove it in this episode.
00:05:27.660 | So let me ask this question again.
00:05:30.200 | Can anyone really define the term "social justice"?
00:05:37.000 | Where does it come from?
00:05:38.080 | What was its origin?
00:05:40.440 | After all, as stated, if we're going to evaluate this new theory, this new phenomenon, this
00:05:45.080 | new doctrine, should we not first be able to agree on a consensus definition?
00:05:52.560 | Of course.
00:05:53.560 | We absolutely have to define our terms.
00:05:57.480 | The reason it is so imperative to define our terms is because defining terms is equivalent
00:06:06.480 | to building a foundation for the subsequent inquiry, for the subsequent investigation,
00:06:13.920 | for the subsequent discussion.
00:06:16.240 | If we do not define our terms, it's not just time that we're wasting.
00:06:23.400 | Not defining our terms allows these very slithery ideologies to go unnoticed or even escape
00:06:34.920 | being brought to light.
00:06:38.080 | 2 Corinthians 10, 4-5 says this, "For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh,
00:06:44.200 | but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.
00:06:48.400 | We are destroying arguments and all arrogance raised against the knowledge of God, and we
00:06:54.080 | are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ."
00:06:58.720 | Ephesians 5, 11 states, "Do not participate in the useless deeds of darkness, but instead
00:07:05.800 | even expose them."
00:07:08.840 | Now if you are participating in a worldview and you don't even know it, you won't be
00:07:15.600 | able to bring it to light.
00:07:18.280 | If we're going to bring every thought captive to Christ, you won't be able to do that if
00:07:25.140 | you do not know what you are talking about.
00:07:30.200 | When you look at the history of destructive ideologies that have ravaged societies and
00:07:38.440 | cultures and false ideologies that have confused the church, the common denominator has always
00:07:46.120 | been ambiguity, amorphousness.
00:07:51.960 | They are slithery, slippery, and more often than not, seem good.
00:08:02.000 | This is much like the false teachers themselves, because even Satan presents as an angel of
00:08:09.520 | light.
00:08:11.360 | You see that with the prosperity gospel teachers of the world, the Joel Osteens, the Joyce
00:08:15.680 | Myers of the world.
00:08:19.960 | So in this episode, the bulk of the following segment is going to include lengthy quotes
00:08:30.240 | from various scholarly works as it relates to social justice.
00:08:36.440 | The reason I am doing that is to present to you how widespread this undefined, ambiguous
00:08:47.760 | concept of social justice has permeated into our society and also the church.
00:08:59.200 | The reason I'm reaching out to scholarly works is because today's intellectual obscurities
00:09:07.920 | will become tomorrow's cultural norm, and we are already at tomorrow.
00:09:16.400 | There are many reasons for that, and when I say for that, the fact that intellectual
00:09:21.920 | obscurities, yesterday's intellectual obscurities become tomorrow's cultural norm, or today's
00:09:28.400 | intellectual obscurity will become tomorrow's cultural norm.
00:09:31.600 | There are many reasons for that, and I do want to devote some time in a future episode
00:09:37.320 | as to how and why that happened.
00:09:41.220 | If you want to just speed ahead, feel free to read the British historian Paul Johnson's
00:09:48.520 | book "Intellectuals."
00:09:51.520 | That will give you an idea of what I'm talking about.
00:09:56.380 | To give you an example of an intellectual obscurity becoming a cultural mainstay, you
00:10:02.600 | need to look no further than Karl Marx.
00:10:07.560 | Marxism quickly became the world's dominant ideology, and we thought for a time that it
00:10:15.320 | was stamped out, but it is absolutely making a comeback.
00:10:22.880 | So on to social justice in the academic literature.
00:10:26.360 | On to social justice in the academic literature.
00:10:29.560 | V.H.
00:10:30.560 | Schmidt, S-C-H-M-I-D-T.
00:10:35.400 | He writes in the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences in 2001.
00:10:43.900 | He states this, and I quote, "The concept of social justice is used very differently
00:10:51.560 | in the available literature.
00:10:53.840 | So if one is not already committed to a particular definition, it is hard to distill a common
00:11:00.560 | core out of its many usages.
00:11:03.600 | To some extent, this has to do with the term's indiscriminate application to almost any kind
00:11:09.460 | of distribution problem without consideration of the different quality of problems arising
00:11:14.900 | at different levels and in different subsystems of society.
00:11:19.160 | A first desideratum is therefore that these differences be adequately acknowledged in
00:11:25.000 | attempts at theorizing about the concept.
00:11:29.160 | Social justice in the design of a society's basic structure may not mean the same as social
00:11:34.460 | justice in the determination of wage levels by firms or in the distribution of household
00:11:40.040 | duties.
00:11:41.040 | To the extent that there are overlaps between the term's meaning and links between single-justice
00:11:46.300 | problems and/or levels of societal aggregation, they must be carefully examined and extracted.
00:11:53.340 | But if the term 'social' is to have any serious meaning at all, then it is also important
00:11:58.120 | to develop a clear sense of the types of problems it is to be applied to, of their differences,
00:12:03.760 | their relative interdependence and independence.
00:12:06.400 | Or to put it differently, what is needed is greater clarity about the locus of regulation
00:12:12.240 | of different categories of problems.
00:12:14.940 | Some such problems need to be regulated at the macro level, others are better left to
00:12:19.860 | lower-level instances, and it is quite likely that even a well-ordered basic structure will
00:12:26.280 | leave many problems of social justice unresolved and hence cannot prevent all injustices in
00:12:32.960 | the spheres for which it provides no determinate answers.
00:12:38.040 | If this is the case, then it is all the more important that the theoretical discussion
00:12:42.920 | be more focused and less diffuse."
00:12:45.880 | Do you see what Schmitt is acknowledging here?
00:12:54.000 | He acknowledges that there is no real consensus definition for social justice.
00:13:02.120 | So before anything substantive could happen according to V. H. Schmitt, we need to define
00:13:08.160 | what exactly needs the redress, what exactly needs the remedy.
00:13:14.720 | Now when you look back upon history, one of the main underlying problems with terms and
00:13:19.720 | concepts that do not have a clear definition is that it could evolve and carry with it
00:13:27.800 | a qualitatively different understood meaning while backpacking with it the same ethos.
00:13:38.520 | In Conceptions of Teacher Education, J. A. Whitcomb, in International Encyclopedia of
00:13:52.400 | Education, 2010, he writes this with respect to having a social justice approach towards
00:13:59.160 | education.
00:14:00.160 | "A social justice approach to teacher education begins with the idea that a central purpose
00:14:07.480 | of education is to redress social, economic, and political inequities.
00:14:12.880 | Its intellectual roots lie within a radical progressive tradition.
00:14:17.520 | In this conception, a good teacher understands socioeconomic and political forces that maintain
00:14:23.320 | structural inequality and oppression, including how schools as institutions reinforce the
00:14:29.640 | status quo and further inequitable educational experiences.
00:14:35.160 | Given the centrality of race, ethnicity, and class inequality, a social justice approach
00:14:40.660 | to teaching involves an ongoing commitment to grapple with these matters.
00:14:46.440 | A teacher for social justice enacts curriculum so that students develop both a critical social
00:14:53.640 | consciousness and the intellectual and practical tools to be agents of change.
00:15:00.160 | Students study the experiences of those who have been marginalized along with possibilities
00:15:04.620 | for liberation.
00:15:06.180 | The teacher also ensures that students learn skills and knowledge associated with the most
00:15:10.620 | powerful cultural capital, thereby helping to promote access to all levels of society.
00:15:17.680 | Classrooms are democratic communities where the teacher helps construct an ethos of care
00:15:22.220 | and respect.
00:15:23.560 | Finally, a social justice teacher also embraces an identity as a community activist and sees
00:15:30.040 | this work as an extension of her teaching."
00:15:38.280 | Whitcomb is essentially embedding the idea of almost a missionary within the vocation
00:15:55.540 | of teaching.
00:15:57.620 | That is plainly what Whitcomb is advocating here.
00:16:01.900 | Again, I'm quoting to you scholarly articles, scholarly works that are uplifted by our culture.
00:16:16.020 | And Whitcomb is saying that you need to have this mindset.
00:16:24.220 | And if you follow the language here, the language is identical to what you would read in Karl
00:16:34.200 | Marx's The Communist Manifesto.
00:16:39.620 | Moving on to medicine and public health.
00:16:43.180 | In expanding the concept of public health, Theodore H. Tolchinsky, he's an MD and also
00:16:50.300 | has a master's in public health, along with Elena A. Varvakova, also an MD, has a master's
00:16:58.020 | in public health and also a PhD.
00:17:00.940 | They write in The New Public Health in 2014 with respect to social justice as it relates
00:17:07.820 | to medicine and public health, "Social justice is a matter of life and death.
00:17:14.980 | It affects the way people live, their consequent chance of illness, and their risk of premature
00:17:20.480 | death.
00:17:21.480 | We watch and wonder as life expectancy and good health continue to increase in parts
00:17:27.660 | of the world and in alarm as they fail to improve in others.
00:17:31.540 | A girl born today can expect to live for more than 80 years if she is born in some countries,
00:17:36.900 | but less than 45 years if she is born in others.
00:17:39.980 | Within countries, there are dramatic differences in health that are closely linked with degrees
00:17:44.260 | of social disadvantage.
00:17:46.420 | Differences of this magnitude within and between countries simply should never happen.
00:17:51.180 | These inequities in health, avoidable health inequalities arise because of the circumstances
00:17:56.340 | in which people grow, live, work, and age and the systems put in place to deal with
00:18:00.860 | illness.
00:18:02.240 | The conditions in which people live and die are in turn shaped by political, social, and
00:18:07.580 | economic forces.
00:18:09.340 | Social and economic policies have a determining impact on whether a child can grow and develop
00:18:13.700 | to its full potential and live a flourishing life, or whether its life will be blighted.
00:18:18.380 | Increasingly the nature of the health problems rich and poor countries have to resolve are
00:18:21.820 | converging.
00:18:22.940 | The development of a society, rich or poor, can be judged by the quality of its population's
00:18:27.980 | health, how fairly health is distributed across the social spectrum, and the degree of protection
00:18:33.400 | provided from disadvantage as a result of ill health.
00:18:43.440 | So even in the area of medicine and public health, social justice is now a matter of
00:18:52.480 | life and death.
00:18:55.380 | So if it's a matter of life and death, embedding that ideology would be naturally the only
00:19:05.240 | thing to do.
00:19:06.240 | Not just the right thing to do, but the only thing to do.
00:19:12.780 | And notice here the language that is used here is very similar again to the language
00:19:22.900 | mirrored in the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.
00:19:28.460 | It is a single variable approach that packaged within it assumes certain factors to be true.
00:19:42.140 | And you could hear the globalist agenda within this quote.
00:19:54.360 | And if it's a matter of life and death, why wouldn't anyone, any good-hearted person,
00:20:07.620 | why wouldn't anyone who has any type of compassion want to adopt this approach when it comes
00:20:17.740 | to medicine and public health?
00:20:23.300 | Stephen Bales, Professor of Humanities and Social Science at Texas A&M, in 2018, he writes,
00:20:30.500 | responding to the question, "What is social justice?"
00:20:34.780 | This is going to be a little bit longer, but it's going to be worth it.
00:20:38.600 | He writes, and I quote, "Social justice, thought, and action weaves itself throughout world
00:20:44.440 | history, working as a counterpoint to humankind's unfortunate propensities for greed, power,
00:20:50.360 | and physical and economic violence.
00:20:53.240 | The fundament of this thought and action has come out of philosophy, religion, and politics.
00:20:58.620 | It has originated organically as a reaction to exploitation and oppression.
00:21:03.900 | Sometimes it is a combination of two or more factors.
00:21:07.180 | It never separates, however, from the context of history, cultural, and human-social relations."
00:21:13.940 | According to Bales, social justice is an evolved concept that may mean different things to
00:21:21.460 | different people at different times.
00:21:25.100 | Moving on, and I quote, "Social justice emerged in its modern conceptualizations out of the
00:21:30.740 | inequities heaped on a mid-19th century European working class by the capitalist mode of production.
00:21:39.020 | From this miasma, Karl Marx developed his principle of needs, the theory that establishes
00:21:45.240 | the material framework for development of individual abilities and potentialities on
00:21:50.820 | an equal footing.
00:21:53.020 | Concepts of social justice and human rights continue to develop over the next century
00:21:57.700 | and a half in the face of unbridled industrialization, incessant wars, imperialism, colonialism,
00:22:05.300 | and globalization.
00:22:06.660 | This development did not result in any consensus on a technical definition, with differing
00:22:11.380 | and sometimes competing or even blending versions of social justice such as Marxist, feminist,
00:22:18.300 | Christian, anarchist, and conservative, and liberal."
00:22:24.240 | As an idea, social justice remains ambiguous, and its theoretical and practical realization
00:22:31.080 | rests upon context, economics, cultural milieu, and the historical moment.
00:22:36.660 | This consideration, we shall see, has implications on implementations related to modern library
00:22:42.220 | work, which operates in a neoliberal, late capitalist environment."
00:22:47.340 | Unquote.
00:22:48.340 | I want to stop there for a second.
00:22:51.100 | We see Bayles here.
00:22:54.460 | He is being forthright with the influence that Karl Marx has had on today's understanding
00:23:02.080 | of social justice.
00:23:05.700 | I am not putting words into his mouth.
00:23:09.340 | That is what he's stating.
00:23:13.500 | Let me move on here.
00:23:14.820 | Quote, "The Oxford English Dictionary defines social justice broadly as justice at the
00:23:21.080 | level of a society or state as regards the position of wealth, commodities, opportunities,
00:23:26.980 | and privileges.
00:23:28.300 | Human rights is a closely related concept, albeit a more abstract one that often calls
00:23:33.660 | for the fulfillment of baseline requisites as opposed to parity of distribution.
00:23:38.580 | It is impossible to see the practical realization of the latter concept without the sufficient
00:23:45.180 | realization of the former and vice versa."
00:23:48.700 | Unquote.
00:23:49.700 | I want to stop there.
00:23:51.580 | For Bayles, baseline human rights could only be fulfilled if there is a parity of distribution.
00:24:03.500 | Baseline human rights could only be fulfilled if there is a parity of distribution.
00:24:12.500 | Parity of distribution meaning equality of all outcomes regardless of whether or not
00:24:21.020 | that is equitable.
00:24:24.220 | I'm going to illustrate to you why that is so dangerous in a second, but for now, I'm
00:24:29.220 | not assailing anyone here.
00:24:32.380 | I'm just quoting them.
00:24:34.660 | I've given you a little bit of an analysis already, but my point in quoting these people
00:24:42.460 | is to show you what they are saying.
00:24:47.020 | I've stated already how much I dislike setting up straw men and then taking out the straw
00:24:55.180 | men.
00:24:56.780 | That is intellectual dishonesty.
00:25:00.180 | Which is why I went into great lengths to quote them and in so doing paint an accurate
00:25:09.220 | picture of what is objective reality and then proceed to do an accurate analysis of that
00:25:19.820 | objective reality.
00:25:24.700 | Let me go on.
00:25:25.700 | Quote, "While many of these definitions highlight economic factors and the equitable
00:25:31.180 | distribution of resources, social justice is more than just a way of understanding material
00:25:36.820 | apportionment.
00:25:38.740 | Marx suggested this when he theorized that the ultimate object of communism is the full
00:25:45.260 | realization of one's humanness.
00:25:48.980 | His notion was that gaining true freedom returned to people the agency to realize their liberation
00:25:56.900 | from the exploitive material and ideological handicaps that abuse their humanity.
00:26:04.380 | Those theorists today, Marxist or otherwise, agree that social justice extends past the
00:26:11.140 | economic to incorporate political, cultural, religious, and sexual freedoms and that we
00:26:17.980 | should aim at a humanity liberated from all unjust social, political, and ideological
00:26:26.620 | constraints."
00:26:31.240 | According to Bayles, social justice extends beyond economics and into every sphere of
00:26:42.100 | life.
00:26:44.100 | Every sphere of life.
00:26:51.500 | I am not saying that everyone who is "pro-social justice" adopts these views.
00:27:07.840 | I'm not saying that.
00:27:10.200 | What I am saying though is that the vast majority of people using this term are probably conjuring
00:27:18.960 | up images and events and when they do so, they're borrowing from a worldview, a term
00:27:29.800 | that's completely loaded, not understanding the term itself as opposed to having a well
00:27:38.960 | thought out understanding of the term.
00:27:43.560 | What they don't understand is that the worldview, the framework that is espoused by social justicians
00:27:52.880 | come from the quotes I've just given you.
00:27:56.120 | That much is a fact.
00:28:00.200 | That is why I went to great lengths to quote from these scholarly articles to prove to
00:28:06.480 | you that yes indeed, social justice is everywhere.
00:28:12.460 | Yes indeed, it's a lens that you see everything else through.
00:28:25.640 | All these quotes came from different academic areas, yet they were unified in their glorification
00:28:35.600 | of social justice while at the same time maintaining that they really don't have a concrete definition
00:28:46.040 | of it.
00:28:47.040 | That was from the academic literature itself.
00:28:49.800 | I could have shown you more, but I think you got the picture.
00:28:57.040 | What are some takeaways here from everything that I've quoted to you?
00:29:02.520 | From the worldview that was espoused by these social justicians that are fair to them, that
00:29:09.960 | are fair to them.
00:29:11.840 | I'll give you a couple.
00:29:13.840 | The social justicians are operating under a worldview seeking a redistribution of wealth,
00:29:21.040 | power and influence, not based on equity.
00:29:27.160 | The social justicians are operating under a worldview that is atheistic in nature.
00:29:34.560 | The social justicians are operating under a worldview that inherently consists of centralized
00:29:41.760 | power of the state, because that's the only vehicle in which you can pull this off.
00:29:48.920 | That inherently consists of centralized power of the state.
00:29:53.880 | The social justicians are operating under a worldview that inherently believes in some
00:29:59.940 | shifting version of right and wrong.
00:30:02.920 | The social justicians are operating under a worldview that inherently believes that
00:30:08.800 | the execution of their vision must be accomplished since it is a matter of right and wrong, of
00:30:16.160 | life and death.
00:30:18.180 | The social justicians are operating under a worldview that inherently believes in equality
00:30:26.560 | of outcomes through the vehicle of a centralized state.
00:30:38.160 | And if that is going to happen, it is not going to be, like I said earlier, it is not
00:30:44.480 | going to be based on equity, but it must inherently intrinsically be based on partiality.
00:30:56.080 | It must be based on partiality.
00:31:01.680 | Remember when I told you in the first episode I considered myself a signpost theologian?
00:31:09.680 | Signpost theologians sift and filter through ideas.
00:31:15.040 | It's a made up term.
00:31:17.000 | I found in my estimation two of the best responses to this.
00:31:23.120 | And I'm going to quote them both for you.
00:31:25.680 | I considered synthesizing them myself, but the reason I didn't was because I didn't want
00:31:33.760 | to come off like it was my own work.
00:31:36.800 | But more than that, more importantly than that, I found it to be perfect just the way
00:31:42.960 | it is.
00:31:45.360 | First work.
00:31:46.480 | This is Michael Novak, N-O-V-A-K.
00:31:50.080 | Michael Novak, he was a George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion.
00:31:54.300 | George Frederick Jewett, J-E-W-E-T-T, Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy.
00:32:01.520 | He passed away in 2017.
00:32:03.720 | Working for the Heritage Foundation, he penned an article entitled, "Social Justice is Not
00:32:15.200 | What You Think It Is."
00:32:19.160 | I'm going to quote to you a portion of this long article.
00:32:23.840 | Novak says this, and I quote, "Let us begin by asking what most people think social justice
00:32:30.520 | is.
00:32:31.760 | After that, let us review how the term arose.
00:32:35.800 | It is a Catholic concept, later taken over by secular progressives.
00:32:41.320 | What social justice actually is turns out to be very different from the way the term
00:32:46.160 | is used now popularly."
00:32:51.560 | With respect to distribution, he writes, and I quote, "Distribution.
00:32:56.060 | Most people's sense of social justice is generic, amounting to nothing more than what we find
00:33:01.440 | in the dictionary under social justice, the distribution of advantages and disadvantages
00:33:06.440 | in society."
00:33:07.440 | Now, notice that the dictionary definition introduces a new key term, "distribution."
00:33:14.200 | Alas, the original notion of social justice had very little to do with distribution.
00:33:21.760 | Worse, this newly added term suggests that some extra-human force, the visible hand,
00:33:30.800 | does the distribution.
00:33:32.400 | That is some very powerful human agency, usually the state."
00:33:40.240 | With respect to equality, he writes, and I quote, "Equality.
00:33:45.640 | Furthermore, the expression 'advantages and disadvantages' supposes there is a norm
00:33:52.580 | of equality by which to measure disadvantages.
00:33:56.720 | Consider this professorial definition, 'Although it is difficult to agree on the precise meaning
00:34:02.040 | of social justice, I take that to, most of us it implies, among other things, equality
00:34:07.480 | of the burdens, the advantages and the opportunities of citizenship.
00:34:11.560 | Indeed, I take that social justice is intimately related to the concept of equality and that
00:34:16.680 | the violation of it is intimately related to the concept of inequality.
00:34:21.460 | This definition expresses a whole ideology, that equality is good and ought to be enforced."
00:34:28.760 | And note what has happened to the word equality.
00:34:31.180 | In English, equality usually suggests fairness, equity, or the equitable.
00:34:37.760 | But what is equitable is often not to give the people the same portions, but rather to
00:34:44.080 | give what is proportionate to the efforts of each.
00:34:48.560 | In European languages, most thinkers follow the model of the French term, egalité.
00:34:54.280 | Egalité means the equals sign.
00:34:57.680 | Equal.
00:34:58.860 | This on one side is equal to that on the other side.
00:35:01.880 | Egalité is a quite different notion from the English equitable.
00:35:06.960 | This French continental usage is captured in the American Sociological Review.
00:35:13.520 | As I see it, social justice requires resource equity, fairness, and respect for diversity,
00:35:18.880 | as well as the eradication of existing forms of social oppression.
00:35:23.480 | Social justice entails a redistribution of resources from those who have unjustly gained
00:35:29.040 | them to those who have justly deserved them, and it also means creating and ensuring the
00:35:34.640 | processes of truly democratic participation in decision making.
00:35:39.920 | It seems clear that only a decisive redistribution of resources and decision making power can
00:35:46.080 | ensure social justice and authentic democracy.
00:35:51.280 | In brief, shifting to the French egalité changes the entire meaning of equality from
00:35:58.280 | equity or fairness to arithmetical uniformity.
00:36:04.560 | This is really a dreadful change because where people take equality very seriously, they
00:36:09.200 | soon insist on uniformity.
00:36:12.560 | In the Inca society under Spanish rule, the first utopia was attempted.
00:36:17.940 | People were assigned by social class certain colors of robes to wear, and regimented hours
00:36:22.400 | were established for everything that was done throughout the day, even lovemaking hours
00:36:26.960 | with great emphasis on bringing forth more children.
00:36:29.760 | If you are going to make everybody equal, you really have to make uniform crucial items
00:36:38.020 | of daily life."
00:36:42.840 | Do you see what Novak is saying here?
00:36:46.440 | Equality was once conventionally associated with equity.
00:36:50.560 | Now equality means arithmetical uniformity.
00:36:57.960 | Equality once meant to give what is proportionate to the efforts of each.
00:37:02.640 | It once meant to give what is proportionate to the efforts of each, but now means merely
00:37:08.660 | the same portions regardless of any other factor.
00:37:14.880 | To give you an example, you have two people.
00:37:18.440 | One person works 80 hours a week, the other person works 20 hours a week.
00:37:22.980 | You give to the person who works 80 hours a week whatever is equivalent to the amount
00:37:27.560 | of time that they worked.
00:37:29.160 | You give to the person who worked 20 hours a week equivalent to that person, the 20 hours.
00:37:35.220 | But under equality of outcomes, we're not talking about equity.
00:37:40.680 | We're talking about arithmetical uniformity.
00:37:44.200 | So instead of giving them what is proportionate to the amount of hours that they worked, you
00:37:48.960 | each give them $1,000 irrespective of how much they worked because under this social
00:37:57.440 | justice theory, we're trying to achieve equality of outcomes and not what is proportionate
00:38:06.840 | to the efforts of each.
00:38:11.040 | The meaning changes while as I stated earlier, it backpacked the ethos of equity.
00:38:23.360 | It's a sleight of hand just like when the magician pulls a coin from your ear.
00:38:32.200 | This is the perfect segue here for me to just read off to you a piece written by one of
00:38:41.440 | the preeminent cultural theologians of our time.
00:38:46.880 | It is a bit long, but more than worth it.
00:38:50.180 | This was written by Daryl Bernard Harrison of the Just Thinking Podcast.
00:38:57.140 | He wrote a blog post on equity or equality, equity or equality.
00:39:04.000 | You can just input his name into a search engine and you will find this blog post.
00:39:10.880 | I'm just going to read it out for you because it is that good.
00:39:15.360 | Daryl Bernard Harrison in a blog post entitled "Equity or Equality?"
00:39:21.660 | He writes, and I quote, "The Old Testament provides an excellent, though rather disturbing
00:39:27.080 | example of the distinction between equity and equality.
00:39:31.440 | It is found in 1 Kings 3.16-28, which records the account of two mothers, both of whom are
00:39:37.440 | prostitutes, which petitioned King Solomon to settle a dispute between the two of them
00:39:43.440 | that involved two babies, one dead and one living.
00:39:47.360 | As the situation unfolds, it becomes apparent that the two discordant women possess vastly
00:39:53.040 | contrasting paradigms of what justice is.
00:39:56.560 | One viewed it in terms of outcome, equality, whereas the other viewed it in terms of truth,
00:40:02.960 | equity.
00:40:04.040 | In the end, King Solomon judged with equity, not equality, a decision that subsequently
00:40:10.360 | garnered him great acclaim throughout the nation of Israel.
00:40:14.960 | King Solomon chose equity over equality, knowing full well that his decision would mean that
00:40:21.100 | one of the two maternal petitioners who stood before him would depart from his presence
00:40:26.800 | childless.
00:40:28.520 | He understood that his primary responsibility was to God, and as such, that he would judge
00:40:34.940 | his people, the small and the great, on the basis of the truth of God, and not on subjective
00:40:41.200 | outcomes.
00:40:43.200 | And yet interestingly, if not ironically, therein lies the rub for many social justice
00:40:49.560 | equalitarians today, namely, that equity is no guarantee of outcome, and for social justice
00:40:56.560 | equalitarians, outcome is everything.
00:41:00.600 | Everything.
00:41:02.080 | The first occurrence of the word "equity" in scripture is in Psalm 98, where the psalmist,
00:41:08.360 | speaking of God, declares, "And he will judge the world in righteousness; he will
00:41:13.220 | execute judgment for the peoples with equity."
00:41:17.320 | The word equity in Psalm 98 is the Hebrew noun meishar.
00:41:20.880 | It is an architectural term that denotes straightness, levelness, and evenness in measurement.
00:41:29.040 | The word carries with it the concept of judging with a straight line, one that is devoid of
00:41:35.600 | ethical or moral defects, irregularities, or deformities such as partiality, prejudice,
00:41:43.440 | or bias.
00:41:45.260 | As John Calvin states in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, "In all laws we
00:41:50.640 | must bear these two things in mind, what the law prescribes and how equitable it is, for
00:41:58.000 | it is on equity that the law's prescription rests.
00:42:02.800 | Since equity is natural, it is inevitably the same for all peoples.
00:42:07.240 | Thus all the laws on earth, whatever their particular concern, should be about equity.
00:42:14.360 | As for the laws, regulations, or prescriptions, because they are conditioned by circumstances
00:42:19.120 | on which they partly depend, there is no reason why they should not be different, provided
00:42:25.200 | they are all directed to the goal of equity.
00:42:28.260 | Now as God's law, which we call moral, essentially bears witness to the natural law and to conscience
00:42:34.660 | which our Lord has imprinted on all the hearts of all men," Romans 119, "there is no doubt
00:42:41.780 | that the equity of which we now speak is wholly revealed in natural law.
00:42:48.520 | That is why equity must be the goal, the rule, and the finality of all laws."
00:42:55.320 | There are professing Christians today, particularly in America who are under the guise of justice,
00:43:03.040 | are proffering a gospel of equality over and above a gospel of equity.
00:43:09.920 | This reality has become increasingly evident given the current socio-political milieu in
00:43:15.760 | which equality, not equity, is regarded as the highest standard of biblical probity and
00:43:22.200 | virtue.
00:43:23.320 | But for King Solomon to have employed that kind of judicial hermeneutic and resolve the
00:43:29.000 | dispute that was before him through a deliberate or premeditated bias toward equality rather
00:43:35.600 | than equity would have been to distort justice (see Deuteronomy 16, 19-20).
00:43:43.060 | How could it possibly have been justice to divide a living baby in two solely on the
00:43:49.380 | basis of accusation and not truth?
00:43:53.580 | True biblical equality means that each person and situation is judged with equity, not partiality.
00:44:04.460 | Truth always must be the goal, not outcomes.
00:44:10.380 | Equality inherently involves prejudice, and God has expressly commanded in his word that
00:44:17.660 | his people are not to harbor such sinful bias in their hearts (see James 2.9).
00:44:24.980 | Equity seeks first to discern what is objectively true and, subsequently, to render a ruling
00:44:31.780 | or verdict solely on that basis.
00:44:34.780 | Equality, on the other hand, prioritizes pursuing a desired or preferred outcome without regard
00:44:43.580 | to that which is objectively true.
00:44:46.980 | Scripture teaches that the providence of God reigns over all outcomes and judgments that
00:44:52.700 | come to pass in this world.
00:44:56.220 | So when the outcome of a disputed matter is not what you or I may have desired, as believers
00:45:02.820 | in an altogether holy, just, and righteous God, we remain steadfast in the hope that
00:45:09.100 | one day all wrongs will be made right, just as God, who cannot lie, has promised.
00:45:17.820 | Biblical justice is first and foremost a matter of equity, not equality.
00:45:25.740 | Equity not equality.
00:45:29.160 | There is a distinction to be made between the two, and it is not an insignificant one.
00:45:35.220 | Any concept of equality that is not fundamentally rooted in equity can never be regarded as
00:45:40.900 | justice.
00:45:42.740 | Followers of Jesus Christ are to judge with truth in mind, not outcome.
00:45:47.820 | This principle was emphasized by Jesus himself in John 7.24, where he says, "Do not judge
00:45:52.860 | according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment."
00:45:57.600 | John 7.24, "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment."
00:46:03.980 | King Solomon applied that principle in his dealings with the two women in 1 Kings 3.
00:46:10.460 | His righteous judgment was not rendered on the basis of emotional pleadings or subjective
00:46:14.900 | presuppositions but on objective and impartial truth, even though for one of the two women
00:46:21.060 | who entreated him, the outcome would be other than what she desired.
00:46:26.540 | Followers in Jesus Christ are to judge with equity and leave any consequences to an omniscient
00:46:33.900 | and omnipotent God who alone is sovereign over all outcomes."
00:46:46.640 | That was Daryl Bernard Harrison of the Just Thinking Podcast in the blog post entitled
00:46:54.220 | "Equity or Equality."
00:47:00.060 | I don't want to add to that because that was so great, but let me just say this thing.
00:47:06.480 | He is not saying, he is not saying that we should not care for the poor or for the disenfranchised.
00:47:19.700 | That is not what he is saying.
00:47:24.140 | Always think critically.
00:47:27.620 | What he is saying is wholly and distinctively different, W-H-O-L-L-Y, wholly and distinctively
00:47:38.900 | different from the imperatives of defending the vulnerable and doing biblical justice.
00:47:55.540 | Do not conflate the two.
00:48:01.660 | There is so much more I could say regarding this topic, but I already know how long this
00:48:07.020 | episode is.
00:48:10.300 | I plan on doing a chapter two to this episode.
00:48:15.500 | If you are listening to this episode and you have questions, as always, feel free to just
00:48:21.580 | email me at thesurpassingvalue@gmail.com.
00:48:29.820 | In the chapter two of my episode, my tentative plan is to do a book review of two books and
00:48:39.100 | sort of amalgamate them.
00:48:40.780 | It will be a combination of synthesizing and doing a book review.
00:48:45.000 | I am fortunate to be a part of the launch team for a book coming out on December 22nd
00:48:51.700 | by Professor Thaddeus Williams.
00:48:54.260 | It is called "Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth."
00:48:59.620 | It is a great book, but that will probably be my chapter two to this episode.
00:49:10.300 | Thanks for making it to the end.
00:49:12.660 | I'll continue to try to make the journey worth it.
00:49:17.420 | To him, the honor, glory, and eternal dominion, James Hall-Mellon.
00:49:32.980 | [music]
00:49:51.060 | (upbeat music)
00:49:53.640 | (upbeat music)