Social Justice and the Gospel

June 23, 2008

Earlier today Josh Harris posted this quote from Mark Dever on his blog:

“The world will always applaud us for doing these kinds of things (social action/social justice). They will never applaud us for doing evangelism. So there is every pressure on us to sort of ‘make nice’ with the world around us and do whatever we can get the world’s respect. …I’m just warning your generation: If you look at the generations before you–your grandparents and great-grandparents–they tried this, they went down the path where they were all about social justice and what they did was lose the gospel. And the next generation? Their churches were gone anyways so nobody was doing social justice out of them.”-Mark Dever, Boundless Show podcast #19 (audio clip taken from 25:39-28:14 markers).

Upon reading it, I just couldn’t resist…I had to leave a comment. I rarely comment on other blogs, but felt strongly that I had to on this one. Here’s what I wrote:

Josh,

While I have a great deal of respect for Dever, I have to disagree with his statement here (and I hate to do that because I know he is A LOT smarter than me!).

I do agree that the Church needs to work hard to protect the Gospel of Christ crucified and risen for sinners. I agree that we need to preserve its centrality in the mission of the Church. And I agree that simply doing social work is NOT the Gospel. But it seems to me that Dever goes a bit farther than I am comfortable with.

Just because ‘our grandparents’ generation worked hard for social justice and ended up losing the gospel, that does not mean that we have to do the same. It means we need to learn from their mistakes, while still striving to obey the multitude of commandments in both testaments about ‘doing justice’. I am glad that Dever exhorts individual Christians to involve themselves in works of justice, but I don’t see why we should view the biblical commands to pursue justice as being only for individuals, and not the Church as a whole.

I know that Dever is seeking to guard the Church from a common mistake that many emergent Christians are making in this area, but from what I am reading, it seems to me that Dever is tipping the pendulum too far in the opposite direction.

I think a more balanced approach is taken by Tim Keller in his book Ministries of Mercy, especially chapter 7 on Word and Deed. I don’t think he could rightly be accused of ignoring or minimizing the centrality of the Gospel in the mission of the Church, but he sees mercy ministry as a part of the Church’s calling, inseparable from its call to herald the Gospel through the proclaimed word. If you’ve not checked it out, I highly recommend it.

Thanks for your blog and other ministries, and for leading countless young people in adopting a ‘humble orthodoxy’.

Larry

I’m curious: what does the rest of blog nation think about this?

Posted by Larry | Filed Under Links, Quotes, Seeking Him 

Comments

One Response to “Social Justice and the Gospel”

  1. Gino on June 23rd, 2008 6:45 pm

    Larry,

    Two good posts today brother… I wanted to reply to both but only time for one right now.

    Being that you are smarter than me and Dever is A LOT smarter than both of us, I too hesitate to disagree with him. But disagree I must.

    It appears that Dever (as so many others do as well) is really polarizing gospel and social justice, rather than seeking the integrated middle. One thing I find interesting in both this quote and the one you posted from Carson is that most are quick to point out when this tension between doing justice and evangelism is off, but rarely are we hearing about those who are living and serving in the tension rightly. That isn’t so much a critique of Dever or Carson (or the many others) but just a recognition that we are speaking of a challenging and important subject which ought to humble us before the Lord.

    One thought on Dever’s quote… Was it our grandfathers’ doing justice that led them to lose sight of the gospel or was there a loss of the gospel first? If approval of the world was the objective, then social justice wasn’t/isn’t the problem, idolatry was/is. Perhaps the gospel wasn’t lost because of pursuing social justice, rather the pursuit of approval (which I think comes down to not grasping the gospel) led the improper pursuit of social justice.

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