Defining Social Justice | Dr. Voddie Baucham

as has been said my assignment is to define this idea of social justice if you'll give me a moment here and I think it's very important for us to do this but before we do this let me just quote a Nobel laureate Frederick Hayek because I think his words sort of sum up my approach and my attitude as it relates to this subject hi greats I have come to feel strongly that the greatest service I can still render to my fellow men would be that I could make the speakers and writers among them thoroughly ashamed ever again to employ the term social justice I think that is a worthy goal to make speakers and writers everywhere ashamed to ever again use the term social justice and why why would I want to do that well let me quote someone else who's not a Nobel laureate but insightful nonetheless in Diego Montoya you keep on using that word I do not think it means what you think it means the biggest problem with the concept of social justice with the word social justice with the terminology of social justice is that it does it mean what we think it means and oftentimes when we address the issue of social justice those who have decided to go ahead and use the terminology one first for the terminology to be understood based on their intentions and not based on the broader understanding and that is simply number one not fair and secondly quite naive so I want to look at three things number one I want to look at the meaning of social justice and as we do this here's what I'm not arguing I'm not arguing that we need to reduce this to a question of semantics and then move on that would be inappropriate if while we're talking about here is semantics that would be inappropriate but that's not my argument but we do need to look at the term secondly I want to look at the movement and thirdly the mission the meaning of social justice the movement of social justice there is a social justice movement and it has a mission let's look first at the meaning of social justice Kevin de young in a very insightful article is social justice a gospel issue rights this social justice is a nebulous term unassailable to some and arousing suspicion in others the young goes on in its article to say that if this is what you mean by social justice then no it's not a gospel issue but if this is what you mean then yes we can agree that it's a gospel issue the only problem is that social justice actually does mean what the young posits in his first argument and not that which he agrees with in the end William young writes while often an amorphous term social justice has evolved generally to mean state redistribution of advantages and resources to disadvantaged groups to satisfy their rights to social and economic equality I'll say more about that as we go along but let me just sort of unpack that for a moment social justice has evolved to generally mean state redistribution of advantages and resources to disadvantaged groups [Music] advantages resources groups those are incredibly important words to satisfy their right to social and economic equality their right to social equality and their right to economic equality here's why this becomes problematic God demands justice amen God demands justice justice is not optional for the believer in justice is sin therefore if social justice is truly justice then disagreement cannot be allowed now think about any social justice issue that comes to mind and you already understand why this is problematic because in any social justice issue that just came to your mind there are people on one side arguing for social justice that say the answer is a the injustice is a and there are people on the other side arguing for social justice and they're saying that the injustice is big [Music] they can't both be right except in the social justice world because the social justice world is not about justice we must be about justice the micah chapter 6 verses 1 through 8 here with the lord says arise plead your case before the mountains and let the hills hear your voice hear you mountains the indictment of the Lord and you enduring foundations of the earth for the Lord has an indictment against his people and he will contend with Israel o my people what have I done to you how have I wearied you answer me for I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery and I sent you before I sit before you Moses Aaron and Miriam all my people remember what veil a king of Moab have advised and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him and what happened from she teamed a gill gong that you may know the righteous acts of the Lord what then shall I come before the Lord and by myself before God on high so I come before him with burnt offerings with calves of a year Oh will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams with ten thousands of rivers of oil so I give my firstborn for my transgression the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul he has told you O man what is good and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice to love kindness or mercy and to walk humbly with your God justice is not optional we must do justice let's look at the mission of social justice as we continue to try to understand its meaning the mission of social justice really happens in stages we've heard about some of it number one identifying disadvantaged groups and it's important to understand that social justice is not about the individual it's about the group and this is why I mean you can say as much as you want about an individual having success but the issue is not individuals who have success or whether individuals can have success hooray there was a by ethnic man who was the president right but but again that does not negate the issues inherent to the group as a whole so the mission of social justice first is to identify disadvantaged groups and I say groups and not minorities often we talk about disadvantaged minorities but that is not the case and you need only one example to prove that that's not the case and that example is women women are more than 50% of the population they are a majority however women are considered for the sake of social justice a disadvantaged minority I mean I don't write the rules y'all okay there's more of them than there are of us but they are a minority so I did the identification of disadvantaged groups this is incredibly important it's the way that we do in politics we don't want to know if this candidate is ahead in the polls that's that's that's not enough we want to know that this guy is doing really well with red-headed left-handed white females and this guy over here is really doing well with blue-collar for truck driving what yummy wheat we want to know which groups they are representing because politics now is identity politics and we want to know what you will do for our group not necessarily who you are what you believe but what you will do for our group so identify disadvantaged groups secondly assess group outcomes again this is not about individual outcomes this is about group outcomes we have to assess group outcomes thirdly assign blame for disparate outcomes assign blame for disparate outcomes if this group is is having a negative outcome in this particular area then we need to find out who's to blame for that if this group doesn't do as well academically if this group doesn't do us well economically if this group is not as well represented politically and then finally there needs to be a redistribution of power and resources in order to redress those grievances that's the answer and that has to be the answer according to social justice social it is so you may say well wait a minute this group may be disadvantaged in this area because of something within that group uh-uh-uh-uh-uh that's victim blaming [Music] yeah but there could be statistical reader how I want to hear about your statistics you're blaming the victim the answer is a redress of grievances that's the ideology of social justice listen to this from John Rawls in his book a theory of justice really a seminal work on the topic he writes since the principle for an individual is to advance as far as possible his own welfare the principle for society is to advance as far as possible the welfare the welfare of the group social justice is the principle of rational prudence applied to an aggregate 'iv conception of the welfare of the group the welfare of the group another author puts it this way 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 and by the way all of those who have them are assumed to have unjustly gained them on they are a member of an aggrieved minority group so if you're a white person who has acquired wealth that's unjust it's unjust black people dominate the shortest and the longest race in the Olympics justice make up the majority of the NBA in the NFL justice DTC the idea here is if the disparity accrues to the benefit of a group that is identified as an oppressed minority then the disparity is not to be looked at social justice entails a redistribution of resources from those who have unjustly gamed them to those who justly deserve 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 redistribution the redistribution that that's the goal redistribution of both resources and of power redistribution from those who have gained them unjustly to those who actually deserve them and here's what's interesting we're talking about groups so what that means is we're not saying that you were uncommon you could have worked hard in fact you could have come from nothing from less than nothing pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps worked from the bottom of the ladder all the way to the top you can be a self-made man but if you're a self-made man the determination of whether you have it justly or unjustly has nothing to do with how you got there and has everything to do with what group you belong to so you can be a white person from Appalachia who was born with nothing and clawed yourself out it doesn't matter you are the privileged one and if you stand shoulder to shoulder with the son or daughter of colon Powell who grew up with privilege and power the answer is whatever they have they deserve and whatever you have you did not because social justice examines the group it looks at the group level the mission of social justice then addresses myriad issues but let me just give you one example there's a group called faithful America on their website they identify themselves as the largest fastest growing online community of Christians putting faith into practice for social justice so again they're using they're using the word they understand what the word means by the way if you just look at the Oxford Dictionary of the English language if he they agree social justice is distributive justice so there is there is complete agreement in the academic world as complete agreement in the political world there's complete agreement in society at large as to what we when we use the word social justice faithful America has on their page some of their victories and exploits in fighting for justice again largest online Christian group fighting for social justice what have they accomplished well they fought back against Hobby Lobby that's number one on their list they fought back against Hobby Lobby why do they need to fight back against Hobby Lobby because Hobby Lobby was fighting for the oppression of minorities or nama no okay convinced Google to drop World Vision convinced Google to drop World Vision three forced MSNBC to drop the Family Research Council they're using a seen a pattern here for helped students win justice for a fired principal the fired principal was a sodomite openly gay men they went to war and one justice for this individual defended an unjustly defrocked pastor who's the unjustly defrocked pastor well he's a Methodist pastor who against the orders of his denomination performed a same-sex wedding for his son and his son's partner and now it was unjust for him to be fired now remember folks in justice equals sin it is a sin not to perform same-sex unions this is their argument and in the last one on their prayer and I love that they just have this tacked on fought the fracking industry justice now if you think that those don't make any sense then you don't understand the social justice movement let me explain this for you there are three main areas encompassing the social justice movement three main areas there are there are others for sure and we'll talk about some of those but there are three main areas the first is minority equality writ large minority equality okay the second one is feminism and women's rights and the third one is lgbtqa+ rights minority equality when they talk about minority of chronic equality this idea that we've already talked about success and wealth are a result of illegitimate privilege unless that success and wealth has been accrued by someone who does not belong to the illegitimately privileged class so for example asians are a minority right asians are minority however on college entrance college admission their whooping everybody not everybody they've whooping everybody that's beyond everybody right economically they surpass whites but again not an issue why because any quality equals injustice unless it accrues to the benefit of a minority or let's say not a minority but to an oppressed group because remember women are majority but they are given minority status feminism and women's rights again this is another one it is always always part of the argument this is the heart of the social justice movement the feminist movement is there you cannot and I believe it's a naive for those who want to say you know on the one hand well no we don't want to promote feminism and we don't want to promote LPG lgbtqa+ rights and all this other stuff really we just want and and we don't even we don't even want in on all of the so-called minority equality movement it's just racial equality and even specifically they're just black people or white people that's like putting hot water in the front of your bathtub and saying you don't want the back to heat up you can't get away from it and in the third one lgbtqa+ rights and by the way I'm not being funny when I say LGBTQ a plus L lesbian be bisexual G gay T transgender q queer or questioning and a is for allies LGBTQ lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer and questioning and their allies and Plus because we don't want to offend anybody because they haven't been included as part of the acronym there was a book called after the ball probably you may have even heard me speak about this book after the ball the subtitle is how America will overcome its fear and hatred of gays in the decade of the 90s he's written by two Harvard professors professors Russell Kirk and hunter Matson one a professor in psychology the other professor in marketing and there their book in their own words was a propaganda strategy their propaganda strategy had three phases phase number one desensitizing phase number two jamming and phase number three conversion these are also the phases of brainwashing couldn't they acknowledge this in their book desensitizing what do we do in the desensitizing well you you get straight people used to seeing gays gay people gay relationships gay sex get them used to seeing it and Kirk and Matson in the book say this is the analogy that they use write it they they may have an aversion initially to taking this shower but eventually they'll get used to being wet just bombard them through the media bombard them through television bombard them through movies bombard them through the educational system to where it's just normalized and here's what's interesting we've lived in in Zambia now for the last three and a half years and I come back three or four times a year the family is here we're on a two-month furlough and I've been getting mom my football fix you know the playoffs are going on and I've been getting some other stuff like that do we just you know done even when I was here maybe maybe not now that I can't do it I need it so anyway I'm watching and I'm noticing a number of things I'm noticing that there are a couple of commercials that I'm seeing a couple of companies that are running commercials and I keep seeing these commercials over and over again one of them is a company that is promoting the sale of jewelry right and for special occasions and there's vignettes of various couples and in every one of their commercials there's at least one vignette of a same-sex couple and again a lot of people that I talk to they go oh yeah why cuz we desensitized I mean it's just there all the time I've noticed and virtually every football game that I see in college football game or a professional football game there's commercials in it there's always at least one of the commercials that includes a female football player when did this social justice social justice minority equality feminism women's rights and lgbtq+ rights and and now we sort of move beyond you know there's the desensitizing then there's the jamming and the jamming what they do is they say they want to reduce the so-called psychic rewards they want to you know identify the idea of being against same-sex marriage with the idea of being a skinhead or a neo-nazi or whatever some of you're still offended because i used the word sodomite earlier I did that intentionally because I was going to talk about being desensitized and being jammed the reason that you felt uncomfortable with me using that word it's because you've been jammed so word the Bible uses Amen the word homosexual very recent invention the word gay up until I mean I mean just a single within a single lifetime you've seen gay going from meaning happy and right queer the word queer anybody read the secret garden right to see garden assist as I said I it's the book that we read secret garden right we were listening to the secret garden during one of our trips and I did several I like half a dozen time the word queer is used means used to me somebody is a little strange we've been desensitized we've been jammed and then there's conversion conversion is when people become allies become allies how do you make people allies to the lgbtqa+ community Perkin medicine by identifying gays and gay people as aggrieved minorities and hitching their wagon to the civil rights / social justice movement so that the idea of being anti-gay is equivalent to the idea of being a member of the KKK what about other issues because there are other issues one environmentalism and climate change is a social justice issue and according to most people it is the number one social justice issue because I don't know if you realize this or not climate change primarily affects minorities don't ask me to explain I'm just telling you income inequality global inequality so you've heard about white privilege right but but the same article basically puts American privilege on par with white privilege so here it's white privilege globally it's American privilege so think about social justice in the American context and then back up and look at the entire world and America is the rich bad guy who has unjustly acquired his wealth who needs to be brought to heel and have that wealth redistributed to the rest of the world how you gonna do that go back to number one climate change how you're gonna deal with climate change well easy you guys pay immigration universal health care animal rights veganism and vegetarianism and access to abortion how much to look at two of these cuz some of y'all like veganism and vegetarianism um yes if I can show you how to show you this website black feed Black veganism rooted in social justice what does black veganism have to do with social justice well the article goes on to say for a lot of black people it's the link between social justice and food access veganism gives black youth personal autonomy we take back control of our own diet in a system in which we are not in control of many of the things that we purchase how about the issue of abortion or access to abortion women on the web has an article abortion a matter of human rights and social justice they say here's the here's the great irony because there are a lot of people who would argue that abortion is absolutely a justice issue the murder of the unborn is a justice issue amen and ironically the murder of the unborn disproportionately affects the unborn who if they were born would look like me to justice issue right but within the social justice movement it is access to abortion that's the social justice issue do you see that got less than two minutes left three issues here as far as this terminology goes there's three things we need to think about number one clarity does using the terminology of social justice give us the greatest clarity I say absolutely not because whenever we want to argue that social justice is a gospel issue the first thing we have to do is move away from the definition of social justice that everybody already knows we have to define it in a way that the Oxford Dictionary of the English language doesn't define it we have to define it in a way that schools of sociology and social justice yes Stanford University of Texas University of Chicago a number of schools are offering degrees in sociology and social justice and the way we define it in order to say this is a gospel issue looks nothing like the way it's being defined in the culture at large so no we lose on the clarity issue the second one is toxicity I believe it's toxic it's toxic terminology when you see some of the groups that are using this terminology who are identified with this terminology it's toxic thirdly necessity is it necessary for us to use social justice terminology in order to get at the issues that we're trying to get at I don't think it is there are alternatives and we need to use those alternatives finally the use of this terminology has a chilling effect first of all it begs the question literally not I don't mean it raises the question a lot of people use begs the question when they mean raises the question that's a whole other issue of using wrong terminology but I mean begging the question in terms of debate right arguing facts that are not in evidence it begs the question if I say something is a social justice issue if you and I are having a disagreement and I declare that it's a social justice issue I've already declared that my position is the high ground and it confers omniscience upon the person using the terminology because there could be myriad factors that would explain an inequity and when I say that is a social justice issue I'm assuming that I understand all of those factors and then finally it shuts down debate argument discussion because see God demands justice the minute I say this is a justice issue I've just said to you that if you're not on the side of it that I'm arguing you're in sin so it has a chilling effect we have people scared to talk to each other well because of this terminology that is really well-established clearly understood why go through the gymnastics necessary in order to use the terminology now I believe it's because unfortunately we're trying to satisfy the very people from whom the terminology comes and that's a fight worth fighting [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Sovereign Nations

Views: 507,909

Rating: 4.8698235 out of 5

Keywords: voddie baucham, friedrich hayek, kevin deyoung, william young, group identity, Micah 6, bible, victim blaming, john rawls, faithful america, equality, After the Ball, marshall kirk, hunter madsen, LGBTQA+, veganism, abortion, Sovereign Nations, G3 Conference, Social Justice, G3, 2019, Atlanta, Georgia, Conference, Gospel, Christianity, Religion, Faith, Theology, GICC, philosophy, postmodernism, truth, Bible, live, event, new, politics, education, SJ&G, snc2019, g32019, conference, G3PreCon

Id: YFNOP2IqwoY

Length: 37min 20sec (2240 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 30 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/javamanatee]

I wish more evangelical teachers could speak with this much clarity on this issue, especially given events of the last couple of months!