Justice

 

Is there such a thing? One atheistic friend confided, “Since we do not have freewill, we couldn’t have acted otherwise, and this insight has helped me to deal with my guilt and shame.”

In essence, he was saying that he cannot be truly held responsible for rape or of breaking his wife’s arm.

Others who have adopted a cultural Marxist perspective deny justice in another way. The insist that what we call “justice” is no more than a tool that the white ruling class has invented to maintain control and to protect their own interests. Consequently, there is no moral truth, no right and wrong. Everything is just an exercise of power of the oppressing white elite.

It should be no surprise that since Marxism has reduced everything to the exercise of power, which Marxists have no reservations about using to secure their goals even as they justify it as the pursuit of “justice.” Just look at their placard, “No justice, no peace!” However, for them, “justice” is a matter of destroying the present system. Think “Cancel Culture.”

Our present administration seems to be relying on the Marxist playbook. From this POV, our prisoners are not the guilty but the oppressed. Consequently:

•    President Biden on Monday will commute the sentences of nearly all of the 40 murderers on the federal government’s death row, in another move to thwart President-elect Donald Trump’s stated goals. Under Mr. Biden’s order 37 of the 40 men on federal death row — all of whom had been convicted of murder — would have their sentences reduced to life imprisonment without parole.

•    On Dec. 12, the outgoing president commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people, including a woman who killed two of her ex-husbands and another lover; a woman who stole $54 million from a small town in Illinois; and a Pennsylvania judge who sentenced minors to harsh prison sentences for petty crimes in exchange for kickbacks from the prison operators. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/dec/23/joe-biden-commutes-sentences-37-murderers-death-ro/?fbclid=IwY2xjawHff0tleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHT-7X5egS5mCBR8SmPoVHxER0255o52mTwxgucTLlZ_PxgfKYQc42j2w4A_aem_W1R6yMI0jl6DGCgRBZdPhw

A concern for justice and the welfare of the innocent victims and for the safety of those who had testified against their perpetrators should have required Biden to keep them interned. It should have also caused him to bar the entry of many criminals into this nation. Aren’t our elected officials bound to protect to innocent against the guilty! Not if he believes that the guilty are the white oppressors who are allegedly trying to keep down the oppressed colored minorities and sexual non-conformists!

Unfortunately, those with this POV had largely gained control of the centers of influence. Of course, Marxist Critical Race Theory (CRT) has long been in the making. Derrick Bell argued in his article about Brown v. Board of Education [1954, “Segregation Unanimously Rejected”] that critical race theory asserts that the majority will only secure civil rights for minorities when it serves the majority’s self-interest. When whites adopt black children, they are accused of doing so to prove that they aren’t racist—no consideration of virtue.

This is a good example of Marxist deconstruction of the Christian West. According to CRT, any good that comes out of the West “serves the majority’s self-interest.” No wonder many college students want to see the destruction of the West. However, black scholar, Voddie Baucham, has written, “According to CRT, everything is merely a struggle for power.”  He provides an accurate portrait of CRT’s strategy to vilify the “oppressors”:

•    “Systemic racism is the cause of disparities. If you doubt that, it is because you are a racist who wants to protect your power and keep those disparities in place. This has to be true because, if you were not racist, you would know that the cause of disparities is… racism.” (Fault Lines)

Under CRT, Justice is no longer about  individual guilt or innocence. A CRT founder, Derrick Bell, wrote, "The whole liberal worldview of private rights and public sovereignty mediated by the rule of law needed to be exploded." https://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2021/06/23/the-movement-against-critical-race-theory-is-deeply-necessary-n2591397

Ibram X. Kendi, the author of the best-seller, How to Be an Anti-Racist, has ironically written that: “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

Only power speaks. CRT will resort to violence and coercion. Even the cultural Marxist of the Frankfort School, Max Horkheimer, had written “It is not economics that creates oppression but rather the nuclear family, traditional institutions, and concepts of race, gender and sexual identity. These are the chains of tyranny which must be broken by revolution.”

Instead, the real oppressors are one’s own conscience, whose accusations of guilt are projected on those who disagree. Consequently, It is easy for them to conclude that their opponents are the oppressors.

What has happened to our concept of justice? Under CRT, justice is no longer a matter of the guilt and innocence of the individual but one’s group identity. The only ones who are safe are those who are deemed to have the right identity or affiliation. Any opponents are to be destroyed. After all, they are the oppressors who have kept the oppressed in bondage.

Indeed, our nation had been guilty of systemic oppression. However, there is little recognition and appreciation that the situation is now radically different. Shelby Steele is a Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. In White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era, Steele argues that the black community now suffers more through paternalistic programs and the victimization narrative than from their Jim Crow legacy:

•    What I've encountered in my life, most often in the white world, is good will, is people have who have wanted to help me. When I was younger and starting a career, people who mentored me, who really felt it was important to give me the best opportunity to pursue my dreams. And my sense is that that's really been an experience for most blacks who have tried to venture out and develop themselves…

•    One of the most remarkable things in all of human history is the degree of moral evolution, that white Americans have made from the mid-60s to this day. No group of people in history have morally evolved away from a social evil that quickly and to that degree in this sort of short span of time. And very often, in our calculations in thinking about race, we don't give whites credit for that.

A CHRISTIAN RESPONSE TO THE PRESENT BORDER CRISIS?

 

 

Globalists promote a border-less world. How should the Christian respond to this claim? Of course, immigration reform is necessary. However, presently we must enforce the laws that we now have. While we Christians have a responsibility to love all people, here are some thoughts to guide Christian compassion:

1.    Unless Christian compassion begins at home or it will create bitterness. What if I was to love all wives and children as my own? This would create bitterness and impede other attempts to love. Instead, well loved families are best able to help others. Might this also pertain to nations! Mustn’t love begin with our own and our neighbors?

·       Galatians 6:10 So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

Am I loving my neighbors if I am exposing them to harm?

2.    We cannot reward evil. God does not bless the unrepentant (Luke 13:1-5); nor should we. God has ordained government (Romans 13:1-5) and even borders and national sovereignty (Acts 17:26-27). He thwarted man’s attempt at creating a one world government (Genesis 10). He also commanded us to respect our government even when we do not like it:

 

 Many of the caravans have already proven that they refuse to respect our laws and prefer to illegally and forcefully break into our country. To allow disregard for some laws is to encourage disrespect for all laws and would put our citizens in jeopardy. However, regarding the illegals already in our country, Christian mercy should not be withheld.

3.    To aid and abet the entry of the caravan and to provide sanctuary for criminals is to resist the legitimate and just concerns of our rule of law.

 

·       1 Peter 2:13 Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme,

4.    To reward those who will break the law because of public opinion or the pressures that the migrants are exerting is to undermine the rule of law. It sends the wrong message. It says that we are willing to break the law. It also says that the violent and forceful will get their way while the ordinary citizen or asylum-seeker will not. This represents the undoing of justice, the equal application of the law to all. It will breed defensiveness and fear instead of trust and respect. This will inevitably create cynicism and contempt for the law and the institutions that are supposed to maintain it, and will eventually lead to collapse if unchecked. When people do not respect the system, they will take the law into their own hands.

5.    To allow one migrant caravan is to invite many more. We cannot coherently refuse the next caravans, once we allow the first. Law must always be about setting limits.

6.    Indiscriminately allowing in un-vetted migrants is equivalent to emptying prisons of convicted criminals. This represents neither Christian love nor justice. If we do not enforce national boundaries, then we leave it to citizens and states to form their own boundaries. If government will not protect the innocent, then the innocent must protect themselves. Inevitability, this will lead to chaos. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people must first protect its own before all else. According to Jesus, even the corrupt Sanhedrin was to be obeyed:

·       Matthew 23:2–3 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice.”

7.    A borderless world is a world of disorder and instability. It is an unfounded dream of human togetherness, peace, and a refusal to regard the lessons of history and the many bloody attempts to create an international workers’ paradise. The scent of weakness is an invitation to the violent.

 

·       Romans 13:1-5Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience.

8.     The Old Testament is often erroneously used to justify “open borders.” Admittedly, the ideal was to provide “one law” for alien and Israelite alike. Consequently, the alien was forbidden to practice their alien religion:

·       Deuteronomy 17:2-3, 5 “If there is found among you, within any of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, a man or woman who does what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, in transgressing his covenant, and has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have forbidden, then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing, and you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones.”

Israel was to show the world the goodness and justice of their God, not by sending missionaries out but by welcoming those to an opportunity of tasting a better life:

 

·       Deuteronomy 4:5–8 “See, I have taught you statutes and rules, as the LORD my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?”

 

We are no longer a melting pot or are able to inspire conformity to a broken system.