My Understanding of Social Justice

Dear Dad,

I am glad to know we agree that there are more reasons for poverty than that poor people just don’t want to work. Most of your comments since we started this discussion have stressed the idea that it does not help the poor, or anyone for that matter, to forcibly take money away from hard-working people in order to give something to people who haven’t worked for it. One of your main points, if not the main point, is that when honest, hard-working people build wealth only to have it taken away from them by the government in order to provide goods or services for people who have not worked hard to earn those things, then everyone loses. I understand this. I take seriously the passages you quoted from 2 Thess 3:10 and 1 Tim 5:8. But those two passages are not all the Bible has to say about economic justice.

I agree that if someone is poor because they choose not to work or because of other unrepented sin, they don’t need handouts, they need admonition and accountability. If someone is poor because of someone else’s sin or some catastrophic event, then they need compassion. If someone is poor because of flaws in the economic, political or social system, then what they need is justice.

I know that many people think of the word ‘justice’ only in terms of the definition “the administering of deserved punishment or reward.” That’s not what I’m talking about. What I mean is “conformity to moral rightness in action or attitude.” And I’m not talking about it only in terms of the actions or attitudes of individual people, but of entire systems. Sometimes the same flaws in the system that make it impossible for the poor to get out of poverty give the wealthy an advantage to gain more wealth. This is not right. This is not how God intends for His people to live. When I talk about social justice I am not talking about punishing any one. I am talking about taking an honest look at the flaws in our system that help the rich get richer at the expense of the poor and trying to conform that system to a closer idea of how God intends His people to live. The Bible has a lot to say about that, and I hope our discussion gets us into some of those passages. I’m not claiming I have the answers, or that I know exactly how to apply these passages. Finding those answers seems extremely complicated to me, but it also seems extremely important, so I want to wrestle with it and figure out what I can do.

Do you agree that there are flaws in our system that make it very difficult, if not impossible, for some poor people to get out of poverty? Do you understand what I mean by social justice? Do you think this is something Christians should be wrestling with?