“Make no mistake about it, the Word of God is sufficient and the very moment that we take a step away from the sufficiency of God’s Word we take a step into darkness.”
Social Justice has an incorrect beginning and a flawed conclusion, says Josh Buice in an essay he penned for The Statement On Social Justice and the Gospel (SJ&G). For evangelicals who wish to know more about the controversy over the encroachment of social justice (Marxism) into the visible Church, Buice explains how it all happened. Before he begins he informs us that the SJ&G, a statement he signed, “was not framed to address the secular culture’s version of social justice. It was formed to speak into the culture of evangelicalism itself and to point out the inaccuracies of the evangelical version (which is connected to the secular movement too).
So with this backdrop in place, listen as Buice reveals the clear and present danger of “Social Justice Christianity” aka “Woke Church” (Black Liberation Theology) that a growing number of well meaning evangelicals now identify with. He writes:
The Reformation was a recovery of God’s Word. For ages, the Bible had been lost in the darkness of Roman Catholicism. Once the Word of God was unleashed upon the people—light entered the scene. When talking about church history, people often ask what Martin Luther’s great accomplishment was in the work of the Reformation. Some point to his Ninety-Five Theses while others point to how God used him to reintroduce singing into corporate worship. Without a doubt, his greatest accomplishment was the translation of the German Bible. This project unleashed light into a world of darkness and was the fuel of the Protestant Reformation. When people lack a sufficient Bible they lack a guiding light.
We have seen this pattern work its way into evangelical circles in the past. With the rise of theological liberalism, it was more than the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886–1968) and German theologian Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) who were permeating the ideas of an insufficient Bible. Theological liberalism ran through seminaries and local churches and major denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention. The Conservative Resurgence was a return to the Bible and anytime in history where there is an awakening—the Bible is at the center. That reality presupposes the fact that for darkness to prevail, people must be led away from the Bible. That was the pattern in the pre-Reformation era and it was the same pattern in the days prior to the Conservative Resurgence.
Make no mistake about it, the Word of God is sufficient and the very moment that we take a step away from the sufficiency of God’s Word we take a step into darkness. Let me begin by stating that while I disagree with the social justice agenda and believe it to be a dangerous movement, I likewise believe that we can be guilty of talking past one another and at times—misrepresenting one another in this debate. We need to deal with the issues, the terms, the definitions, and connect the dots to the problems while at the same time seeking to represent people properly. We all have blind spots in this area, and for that reason, I open myself up for correction where necessary, but I do not apologize for standing in opposition to the social justice movement. Continue reading
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