I am James Hong and welcome to the Surpassing Value Podcast. The fuel and desire for this podcast was born out of a compulsion to flesh out what's been going on in the midst of an ocean of megaphones that may not actually withstand the test of scrutiny. As a signpost theologian, I will do my best to filter out the impurities and point people in the right direction.

For episode number five, I wanted to talk about the term "social justice." This term has been thrown out quite often and in many different situations. Everyone seems to have their own tinge, their own stance, their own opinion. Everyone seems to state that their view on social justice is correct and whether or not we should embrace it, whether or not it is right, wrong, good, evil, biblical, unbiblical.

Moreover you have proponents who are quick to embrace it or discard it for their own reasons. Let me give you some responses, some typical responses to social justice that are common today that you've probably heard in some variation. I believe in social justice because Republicans are evil. Republicans believe in gerrymandering.

Republicans don't care about life after the child is born. I believe in social justice because Jesus was countercultural and Jesus would have believed in social justice. I am a political agnostic, but clearly social justice is not a concept we could disagree with. Now, these responses are in no way exhaustive, but they are somewhat indicative of the attitudes one would have towards the concept of social justice.

Now embedded in these responses is some definition, however blurry, some conception they have of social justice, which is why the speaker is able to answer the way they do. It would appear though that more than a concrete definition that springs forth, the idea of being pro-social justice to the contemporary proponent of it, or here, conjures up events and more likely than not, disdain for those events.

This is particularly true for events where one party is a civilian and the other party is some type of law enforcement. For many people, you could replace social justice with the word compassion and that would be enough. For many others, you could replace the word social justice, the term social justice, with government assistance or liberalism or higher taxes for the rich or evaluation of police protocols or some variation thereof and that would be enough.

The thing is though, we need to agree on a definition to have a meaningful conversation, but nearly all people engaged in this conversation are simply not able to define the term. They're able to conjure up feelings, images, video clips. People are quick to cast aspersions and caricature an opposing viewpoint, thereby vilifying anyone seemingly associated with that viewpoint.

This gives people the feeling of moral superiority without engaging in actual intellectual rigor, which is very convenient to the one destroying the straw man. There is what I would call emotional intelligence involved, but very rarely is there abstract intelligence involved. It is incredibly dangerous to state you believe in something so readily when you can't even define it.

Moreover, you've probably heard many people say something to the effect of, "Social justice is everywhere." But is it really? If we're going to make claims like that, we should be able to back it up. Now sometimes people make that claim and they just don't have the time to do so, so I get that.

But not backing it up is not helpful, particularly now since many people will internally disagree with that sentiment without actually verbalizing that they do. I want to tell you from the beginning, right now, that I do indeed that this ideology is everywhere, and my aim is to prove it in this episode.

So let me ask this question again. Can anyone really define the term "social justice"? Where does it come from? What was its origin? After all, as stated, if we're going to evaluate this new theory, this new phenomenon, this new doctrine, should we not first be able to agree on a consensus definition?

Of course. We absolutely have to define our terms. The reason it is so imperative to define our terms is because defining terms is equivalent to building a foundation for the subsequent inquiry, for the subsequent investigation, for the subsequent discussion. If we do not define our terms, it's not just time that we're wasting.

Not defining our terms allows these very slithery ideologies to go unnoticed or even escape being brought to light. 2 Corinthians 10, 4-5 says this, "For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying arguments and all arrogance raised against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ." Ephesians 5, 11 states, "Do not participate in the useless deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them." Now if you are participating in a worldview and you don't even know it, you won't be able to bring it to light.

If we're going to bring every thought captive to Christ, you won't be able to do that if you do not know what you are talking about. When you look at the history of destructive ideologies that have ravaged societies and cultures and false ideologies that have confused the church, the common denominator has always been ambiguity, amorphousness.

They are slithery, slippery, and more often than not, seem good. This is much like the false teachers themselves, because even Satan presents as an angel of light. You see that with the prosperity gospel teachers of the world, the Joel Osteens, the Joyce Myers of the world. So in this episode, the bulk of the following segment is going to include lengthy quotes from various scholarly works as it relates to social justice.

The reason I am doing that is to present to you how widespread this undefined, ambiguous concept of social justice has permeated into our society and also the church. The reason I'm reaching out to scholarly works is because today's intellectual obscurities will become tomorrow's cultural norm, and we are already at tomorrow.

There are many reasons for that, and when I say for that, the fact that intellectual obscurities, yesterday's intellectual obscurities become tomorrow's cultural norm, or today's intellectual obscurity will become tomorrow's cultural norm. There are many reasons for that, and I do want to devote some time in a future episode as to how and why that happened.

If you want to just speed ahead, feel free to read the British historian Paul Johnson's book "Intellectuals." That will give you an idea of what I'm talking about. To give you an example of an intellectual obscurity becoming a cultural mainstay, you need to look no further than Karl Marx.

Marxism quickly became the world's dominant ideology, and we thought for a time that it was stamped out, but it is absolutely making a comeback. So on to social justice in the academic literature. On to social justice in the academic literature. V.H. Schmidt, S-C-H-M-I-D-T. He writes in the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences in 2001.

He states this, and I quote, "The concept of social justice is used very differently in the available literature. So if one is not already committed to a particular definition, it is hard to distill a common core out of its many usages. To some extent, this has to do with the term's indiscriminate application to almost any kind of distribution problem without consideration of the different quality of problems arising at different levels and in different subsystems of society.

A first desideratum is therefore that these differences be adequately acknowledged in attempts at theorizing about the concept. Social justice in the design of a society's basic structure may not mean the same as social justice in the determination of wage levels by firms or in the distribution of household duties.

To the extent that there are overlaps between the term's meaning and links between single-justice problems and/or levels of societal aggregation, they must be carefully examined and extracted. But if the term 'social' is to have any serious meaning at all, then it is also important to develop a clear sense of the types of problems it is to be applied to, of their differences, their relative interdependence and independence.

Or to put it differently, what is needed is greater clarity about the locus of regulation of different categories of problems. Some such problems need to be regulated at the macro level, others are better left to lower-level instances, and it is quite likely that even a well-ordered basic structure will leave many problems of social justice unresolved and hence cannot prevent all injustices in the spheres for which it provides no determinate answers.

If this is the case, then it is all the more important that the theoretical discussion be more focused and less diffuse." Do you see what Schmitt is acknowledging here? He acknowledges that there is no real consensus definition for social justice. So before anything substantive could happen according to V.

H. Schmitt, we need to define what exactly needs the redress, what exactly needs the remedy. Now when you look back upon history, one of the main underlying problems with terms and concepts that do not have a clear definition is that it could evolve and carry with it a qualitatively different understood meaning while backpacking with it the same ethos.

In Conceptions of Teacher Education, J. A. Whitcomb, in International Encyclopedia of Education, 2010, he writes this with respect to having a social justice approach towards education. "A social justice approach to teacher education begins with the idea that a central purpose of education is to redress social, economic, and political inequities.

Its intellectual roots lie within a radical progressive tradition. In this conception, a good teacher understands socioeconomic and political forces that maintain structural inequality and oppression, including how schools as institutions reinforce the status quo and further inequitable educational experiences. Given the centrality of race, ethnicity, and class inequality, a social justice approach to teaching involves an ongoing commitment to grapple with these matters.

A teacher for social justice enacts curriculum so that students develop both a critical social consciousness and the intellectual and practical tools to be agents of change. Students study the experiences of those who have been marginalized along with possibilities for liberation. The teacher also ensures that students learn skills and knowledge associated with the most powerful cultural capital, thereby helping to promote access to all levels of society.

Classrooms are democratic communities where the teacher helps construct an ethos of care and respect. Finally, a social justice teacher also embraces an identity as a community activist and sees this work as an extension of her teaching." Whitcomb is essentially embedding the idea of almost a missionary within the vocation of teaching.

That is plainly what Whitcomb is advocating here. Again, I'm quoting to you scholarly articles, scholarly works that are uplifted by our culture. And Whitcomb is saying that you need to have this mindset. And if you follow the language here, the language is identical to what you would read in Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto.

Moving on to medicine and public health. In expanding the concept of public health, Theodore H. Tolchinsky, he's an MD and also has a master's in public health, along with Elena A. Varvakova, also an MD, has a master's in public health and also a PhD. They write in The New Public Health in 2014 with respect to social justice as it relates to medicine and public health, "Social justice is a matter of life and death.

It affects the way people live, their consequent chance of illness, and their risk of premature death. We watch and wonder as life expectancy and good health continue to increase in parts of the world and in alarm as they fail to improve in others. A girl born today can expect to live for more than 80 years if she is born in some countries, but less than 45 years if she is born in others.

Within countries, there are dramatic differences in health that are closely linked with degrees of social disadvantage. Differences of this magnitude within and between countries simply should never happen. These inequities in health, avoidable health inequalities arise because of the circumstances in which people grow, live, work, and age and the systems put in place to deal with illness.

The conditions in which people live and die are in turn shaped by political, social, and economic forces. Social and economic policies have a determining impact on whether a child can grow and develop to its full potential and live a flourishing life, or whether its life will be blighted. Increasingly the nature of the health problems rich and poor countries have to resolve are converging.

The development of a society, rich or poor, can be judged by the quality of its population's health, how fairly health is distributed across the social spectrum, and the degree of protection provided from disadvantage as a result of ill health. So even in the area of medicine and public health, social justice is now a matter of life and death.

So if it's a matter of life and death, embedding that ideology would be naturally the only thing to do. Not just the right thing to do, but the only thing to do. And notice here the language that is used here is very similar again to the language mirrored in the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.

It is a single variable approach that packaged within it assumes certain factors to be true. And you could hear the globalist agenda within this quote. And if it's a matter of life and death, why wouldn't anyone, any good-hearted person, why wouldn't anyone who has any type of compassion want to adopt this approach when it comes to medicine and public health?

Stephen Bales, Professor of Humanities and Social Science at Texas A&M, in 2018, he writes, responding to the question, "What is social justice?" This is going to be a little bit longer, but it's going to be worth it. He writes, and I quote, "Social justice, thought, and action weaves itself throughout world history, working as a counterpoint to humankind's unfortunate propensities for greed, power, and physical and economic violence.

The fundament of this thought and action has come out of philosophy, religion, and politics. It has originated organically as a reaction to exploitation and oppression. Sometimes it is a combination of two or more factors. It never separates, however, from the context of history, cultural, and human-social relations." According to Bales, social justice is an evolved concept that may mean different things to different people at different times.

Moving on, and I quote, "Social justice emerged in its modern conceptualizations out of the inequities heaped on a mid-19th century European working class by the capitalist mode of production. From this miasma, Karl Marx developed his principle of needs, the theory that establishes the material framework for development of individual abilities and potentialities on an equal footing.

Concepts of social justice and human rights continue to develop over the next century and a half in the face of unbridled industrialization, incessant wars, imperialism, colonialism, and globalization. This development did not result in any consensus on a technical definition, with differing and sometimes competing or even blending versions of social justice such as Marxist, feminist, Christian, anarchist, and conservative, and liberal." As an idea, social justice remains ambiguous, and its theoretical and practical realization rests upon context, economics, cultural milieu, and the historical moment.

This consideration, we shall see, has implications on implementations related to modern library work, which operates in a neoliberal, late capitalist environment." Unquote. I want to stop there for a second. We see Bayles here. He is being forthright with the influence that Karl Marx has had on today's understanding of social justice.

I am not putting words into his mouth. That is what he's stating. Let me move on here. Quote, "The Oxford English Dictionary defines social justice broadly as justice at the level of a society or state as regards the position of wealth, commodities, opportunities, and privileges. Human rights is a closely related concept, albeit a more abstract one that often calls for the fulfillment of baseline requisites as opposed to parity of distribution.

It is impossible to see the practical realization of the latter concept without the sufficient realization of the former and vice versa." Unquote. I want to stop there. For Bayles, baseline human rights could only be fulfilled if there is a parity of distribution. Baseline human rights could only be fulfilled if there is a parity of distribution.

Parity of distribution meaning equality of all outcomes regardless of whether or not that is equitable. I'm going to illustrate to you why that is so dangerous in a second, but for now, I'm not assailing anyone here. I'm just quoting them. I've given you a little bit of an analysis already, but my point in quoting these people is to show you what they are saying.

I've stated already how much I dislike setting up straw men and then taking out the straw men. That is intellectual dishonesty. Which is why I went into great lengths to quote them and in so doing paint an accurate picture of what is objective reality and then proceed to do an accurate analysis of that objective reality.

Let me go on. Quote, "While many of these definitions highlight economic factors and the equitable distribution of resources, social justice is more than just a way of understanding material apportionment. Marx suggested this when he theorized that the ultimate object of communism is the full realization of one's humanness. His notion was that gaining true freedom returned to people the agency to realize their liberation from the exploitive material and ideological handicaps that abuse their humanity.

Those theorists today, Marxist or otherwise, agree that social justice extends past the economic to incorporate political, cultural, religious, and sexual freedoms and that we should aim at a humanity liberated from all unjust social, political, and ideological constraints." According to Bayles, social justice extends beyond economics and into every sphere of life.

Every sphere of life. I am not saying that everyone who is "pro-social justice" adopts these views. I'm not saying that. What I am saying though is that the vast majority of people using this term are probably conjuring up images and events and when they do so, they're borrowing from a worldview, a term that's completely loaded, not understanding the term itself as opposed to having a well thought out understanding of the term.

What they don't understand is that the worldview, the framework that is espoused by social justicians come from the quotes I've just given you. That much is a fact. That is why I went to great lengths to quote from these scholarly articles to prove to you that yes indeed, social justice is everywhere.

Yes indeed, it's a lens that you see everything else through. All these quotes came from different academic areas, yet they were unified in their glorification of social justice while at the same time maintaining that they really don't have a concrete definition of it. That was from the academic literature itself.

I could have shown you more, but I think you got the picture. What are some takeaways here from everything that I've quoted to you? From the worldview that was espoused by these social justicians that are fair to them, that are fair to them. I'll give you a couple. The social justicians are operating under a worldview seeking a redistribution of wealth, power and influence, not based on equity.

The social justicians are operating under a worldview that is atheistic in nature. The social justicians are operating under a worldview that inherently consists of centralized power of the state, because that's the only vehicle in which you can pull this off. That inherently consists of centralized power of the state.

The social justicians are operating under a worldview that inherently believes in some shifting version of right and wrong. The social justicians are operating under a worldview that inherently believes that the execution of their vision must be accomplished since it is a matter of right and wrong, of life and death.

The social justicians are operating under a worldview that inherently believes in equality of outcomes through the vehicle of a centralized state. And if that is going to happen, it is not going to be, like I said earlier, it is not going to be based on equity, but it must inherently intrinsically be based on partiality.

It must be based on partiality. Remember when I told you in the first episode I considered myself a signpost theologian? Signpost theologians sift and filter through ideas. It's a made up term. I found in my estimation two of the best responses to this. And I'm going to quote them both for you.

I considered synthesizing them myself, but the reason I didn't was because I didn't want to come off like it was my own work. But more than that, more importantly than that, I found it to be perfect just the way it is. First work. This is Michael Novak, N-O-V-A-K. Michael Novak, he was a George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion.

George Frederick Jewett, J-E-W-E-T-T, Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy. He passed away in 2017. Working for the Heritage Foundation, he penned an article entitled, "Social Justice is Not What You Think It Is." I'm going to quote to you a portion of this long article. Novak says this, and I quote, "Let us begin by asking what most people think social justice is.

After that, let us review how the term arose. It is a Catholic concept, later taken over by secular progressives. What social justice actually is turns out to be very different from the way the term is used now popularly." With respect to distribution, he writes, and I quote, "Distribution. Most people's sense of social justice is generic, amounting to nothing more than what we find in the dictionary under social justice, the distribution of advantages and disadvantages in society." Now, notice that the dictionary definition introduces a new key term, "distribution." Alas, the original notion of social justice had very little to do with distribution.

Worse, this newly added term suggests that some extra-human force, the visible hand, does the distribution. That is some very powerful human agency, usually the state." With respect to equality, he writes, and I quote, "Equality. Furthermore, the expression 'advantages and disadvantages' supposes there is a norm of equality by which to measure disadvantages.

Consider this professorial definition, 'Although it is difficult to agree on the precise meaning of social justice, I take that to, most of us it implies, among other things, equality of the burdens, the advantages and the opportunities of citizenship. Indeed, I take that social justice is intimately related to the concept of equality and that the violation of it is intimately related to the concept of inequality.

This definition expresses a whole ideology, that equality is good and ought to be enforced." And note what has happened to the word equality. In English, equality usually suggests fairness, equity, or the equitable. But what is equitable is often not to give the people the same portions, but rather to give what is proportionate to the efforts of each.

In European languages, most thinkers follow the model of the French term, egalité. Egalité means the equals sign. Equal. This on one side is equal to that on the other side. Egalité is a quite different notion from the English equitable. This French continental usage is captured in the American Sociological Review.

As I see it, social justice requires resource equity, fairness, and respect for diversity, as well as the eradication of existing forms of social oppression. Social justice entails a redistribution of resources from those who have unjustly gained them to those who have justly deserved them, and it also means creating and ensuring the processes of truly democratic participation in decision making.

It seems clear that only a decisive redistribution of resources and decision making power can ensure social justice and authentic democracy. In brief, shifting to the French egalité changes the entire meaning of equality from equity or fairness to arithmetical uniformity. This is really a dreadful change because where people take equality very seriously, they soon insist on uniformity.

In the Inca society under Spanish rule, the first utopia was attempted. People were assigned by social class certain colors of robes to wear, and regimented hours were established for everything that was done throughout the day, even lovemaking hours with great emphasis on bringing forth more children. If you are going to make everybody equal, you really have to make uniform crucial items of daily life." Do you see what Novak is saying here?

Equality was once conventionally associated with equity. Now equality means arithmetical uniformity. Equality once meant to give what is proportionate to the efforts of each. It once meant to give what is proportionate to the efforts of each, but now means merely the same portions regardless of any other factor. To give you an example, you have two people.

One person works 80 hours a week, the other person works 20 hours a week. You give to the person who works 80 hours a week whatever is equivalent to the amount of time that they worked. You give to the person who worked 20 hours a week equivalent to that person, the 20 hours.

But under equality of outcomes, we're not talking about equity. We're talking about arithmetical uniformity. So instead of giving them what is proportionate to the amount of hours that they worked, you each give them $1,000 irrespective of how much they worked because under this social justice theory, we're trying to achieve equality of outcomes and not what is proportionate to the efforts of each.

The meaning changes while as I stated earlier, it backpacked the ethos of equity. It's a sleight of hand just like when the magician pulls a coin from your ear. This is the perfect segue here for me to just read off to you a piece written by one of the preeminent cultural theologians of our time.

It is a bit long, but more than worth it. This was written by Daryl Bernard Harrison of the Just Thinking Podcast. He wrote a blog post on equity or equality, equity or equality. You can just input his name into a search engine and you will find this blog post.

I'm just going to read it out for you because it is that good. Daryl Bernard Harrison in a blog post entitled "Equity or Equality?" He writes, and I quote, "The Old Testament provides an excellent, though rather disturbing example of the distinction between equity and equality. It is found in 1 Kings 3.16-28, which records the account of two mothers, both of whom are prostitutes, which petitioned King Solomon to settle a dispute between the two of them that involved two babies, one dead and one living.

As the situation unfolds, it becomes apparent that the two discordant women possess vastly contrasting paradigms of what justice is. One viewed it in terms of outcome, equality, whereas the other viewed it in terms of truth, equity. In the end, King Solomon judged with equity, not equality, a decision that subsequently garnered him great acclaim throughout the nation of Israel.

King Solomon chose equity over equality, knowing full well that his decision would mean that one of the two maternal petitioners who stood before him would depart from his presence childless. He understood that his primary responsibility was to God, and as such, that he would judge his people, the small and the great, on the basis of the truth of God, and not on subjective outcomes.

And yet interestingly, if not ironically, therein lies the rub for many social justice equalitarians today, namely, that equity is no guarantee of outcome, and for social justice equalitarians, outcome is everything. Everything. The first occurrence of the word "equity" in scripture is in Psalm 98, where the psalmist, speaking of God, declares, "And he will judge the world in righteousness; he will execute judgment for the peoples with equity." The word equity in Psalm 98 is the Hebrew noun meishar.

It is an architectural term that denotes straightness, levelness, and evenness in measurement. The word carries with it the concept of judging with a straight line, one that is devoid of ethical or moral defects, irregularities, or deformities such as partiality, prejudice, or bias. As John Calvin states in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, "In all laws we must bear these two things in mind, what the law prescribes and how equitable it is, for it is on equity that the law's prescription rests.

Since equity is natural, it is inevitably the same for all peoples. Thus all the laws on earth, whatever their particular concern, should be about equity. As for the laws, regulations, or prescriptions, because they are conditioned by circumstances on which they partly depend, there is no reason why they should not be different, provided they are all directed to the goal of equity.

Now as God's law, which we call moral, essentially bears witness to the natural law and to conscience which our Lord has imprinted on all the hearts of all men," Romans 119, "there is no doubt that the equity of which we now speak is wholly revealed in natural law. That is why equity must be the goal, the rule, and the finality of all laws." There are professing Christians today, particularly in America who are under the guise of justice, are proffering a gospel of equality over and above a gospel of equity.

This reality has become increasingly evident given the current socio-political milieu in which equality, not equity, is regarded as the highest standard of biblical probity and virtue. But for King Solomon to have employed that kind of judicial hermeneutic and resolve the dispute that was before him through a deliberate or premeditated bias toward equality rather than equity would have been to distort justice (see Deuteronomy 16, 19-20).

How could it possibly have been justice to divide a living baby in two solely on the basis of accusation and not truth? True biblical equality means that each person and situation is judged with equity, not partiality. Truth always must be the goal, not outcomes. Equality inherently involves prejudice, and God has expressly commanded in his word that his people are not to harbor such sinful bias in their hearts (see James 2.9).

Equity seeks first to discern what is objectively true and, subsequently, to render a ruling or verdict solely on that basis. Equality, on the other hand, prioritizes pursuing a desired or preferred outcome without regard to that which is objectively true. Scripture teaches that the providence of God reigns over all outcomes and judgments that come to pass in this world.

So when the outcome of a disputed matter is not what you or I may have desired, as believers in an altogether holy, just, and righteous God, we remain steadfast in the hope that one day all wrongs will be made right, just as God, who cannot lie, has promised. Biblical justice is first and foremost a matter of equity, not equality.

Equity not equality. There is a distinction to be made between the two, and it is not an insignificant one. Any concept of equality that is not fundamentally rooted in equity can never be regarded as justice. Followers of Jesus Christ are to judge with truth in mind, not outcome. This principle was emphasized by Jesus himself in John 7.24, where he says, "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment." John 7.24, "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment." King Solomon applied that principle in his dealings with the two women in 1 Kings 3.

His righteous judgment was not rendered on the basis of emotional pleadings or subjective presuppositions but on objective and impartial truth, even though for one of the two women who entreated him, the outcome would be other than what she desired. Followers in Jesus Christ are to judge with equity and leave any consequences to an omniscient and omnipotent God who alone is sovereign over all outcomes." That was Daryl Bernard Harrison of the Just Thinking Podcast in the blog post entitled "Equity or Equality." I don't want to add to that because that was so great, but let me just say this thing.

He is not saying, he is not saying that we should not care for the poor or for the disenfranchised. That is not what he is saying. Always think critically. What he is saying is wholly and distinctively different, W-H-O-L-L-Y, wholly and distinctively different from the imperatives of defending the vulnerable and doing biblical justice.

Do not conflate the two. There is so much more I could say regarding this topic, but I already know how long this episode is. I plan on doing a chapter two to this episode. If you are listening to this episode and you have questions, as always, feel free to just email me at thesurpassingvalue@gmail.com.

In the chapter two of my episode, my tentative plan is to do a book review of two books and sort of amalgamate them. It will be a combination of synthesizing and doing a book review. I am fortunate to be a part of the launch team for a book coming out on December 22nd by Professor Thaddeus Williams.

It is called "Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth." It is a great book, but that will probably be my chapter two to this episode. Thanks for making it to the end. I'll continue to try to make the journey worth it. To him, the honor, glory, and eternal dominion, James Hall-Mellon.

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