Both/And

Bottom line: God cares about personal salvation and social justice, and so should God’s church.

What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian? Martin Thielen*

There’s a lot of confusion these days that’s brought about by ideological divides. There are those who focus on social justice, and there are those who focus on personal salvation. The truth, as so often is the case, is in the middle somewhere.

Social Justice
It bugs the snot out of me that any time there’s a strong female character in a movie, the basement dwellers get all up in arms about the movie being a Social Justice Warrior (SJW) propaganda piece. As if the only strong protagonist can be a straight white male – because that’s what the world needs, more big strong men to save it.

In a few weeks, Viola Davis is starring in The Woman King, a story based on the real life Dahomey Amazons, an all-female military group that inspired the Dora Milaje from Black Panter. The trailer came across my Facebook feed a couple weeks ago, and I thought it looked incredible. Of course, I looked at the comments, and it was the cesspool that you would imagine, filled with anti-woman colonialism.

The scene in Avengers: Endgame when many of the female heroes came together was widely criticized as pandering to the SJW crowd. As was the focus on Rey in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. It’s the same thing every time.

There are those who think any kind of nod to a minority group is pushing the “gay agenda” or, what seems to be the newest insult, “grooming”. (On a side note: is there a gay manifesto available somewhere? Or a secret gay meeting that’s looking to shape the future? I keep hearing about the “gay agenda” but it’s primarily from conservatives. I’d like to read it for myself so I can get right to the source. Anyway…)

The term SJW seems to get thrown around as an insult, but is it really? People with no concern whatsoever for minorities seem to think it is. After all, it’s mostly people in the white male category that are complaining about it from what I can tell.

Now, I will say that there are some who focus on social justice to the detriment of personal salvation. There is an element of personal responsibility to the faith that we all have to face as well.

If we don’t have that element, then we aren’t any different from a civic organization that is trying to make the community a better place.

And, don’t get me wrong, I’m part of a civic organization that is trying to make the community and the world a better place. It’s a good thing. But, as the body of Christ, there is more to it.

Personal Salvation
I wrote a while back about the heresy of a “personal” Jesus. The idea here is that personal salvation is not the sole goal of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection.

Jesus’ ministry is about ushering in the kingdom of God. As we read through the gospels, we see that the kingdom of God is about more than personal salvation. Sure, that’s a portion of it, but it’s not the whole story. To say otherwise is to simply ignore the majority of Jesus’ teaching.

This is why it is heretical to focus solely on the personal salvation aspect of the life of faith. It minimizes Jesus’ own words. And it ignores the wider implications of the gospel. After all, the two greatest commands are to love God and love others. We can’t simply say we love others and then not care at all if they are suffering. Love compels action.

Both/And
The truth is, we need a balance of the two. We need social justice AND personal salvation. We need personal piety AND community action. Anything less is simply a partial gospel. It’s not the whole story and it’s going to be lacking something important.

*Amazon affiliate link. I used this resource for a sermon series a while back. In spite of the name, it’s not really about doing the absolute minimum to be considered a Christ. In reality, I’d say it’s about the basics of the faith more than anything else.