Why Good People Need Jesus

Part 6, When All You Have is a Hammer Everything Looks Like a Nail

I'm a progressive Christian, so I spend most of my time talking to and counseling other progressive Christians. And among this group when we talk about "being a good person" there is a specific moral vision in mind. Being a good person means being a social justice warrior. 

Now, in many conservative circles calling someone a "social justice warrior," being "woke," is a pejorative term. To care about oppression, well, that's just the worst. But I'm a progressive, so being called a social justice warrior, in my book, is a compliment. Every Christian should be a social justice warrior. Why? Because Jesus was a social justice warrior. As Jesus described his mission in his first sermon in Nazareth: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."

If "setting the oppressed free" is not a part of your personal mission statement you shouldn't be calling yourself a Christian.

So, being a good person is being a social justice warrior. Which brings us to the point of this series: Do social justice warriors need Jesus? 

Yes, of course they do, for all the reasons I've discussed so far and more to come. Today, though, I'd like make a specific point about social justice itself. 

To state the point clearly: Life is morally nuanced and complicated, and the moral worldview of the social justice movement, without Jesus, is too narrow, impoverished, and simplistic to deal with the moral complexity of the world. 

Basically, life is complex, but when all you have is a hammer everything starts to look like a nail.

Justice is just one tool in our moral toolbox. A critical, essential tool. But one tool can't do all the moral work life demands of us. Justice is a hammer, and when you're looking at a nail--say, oppression--the hammer is the tool to pick up. But the moral drama of our lives isn't just about oppression. We're dealing with all sorts of things, from forgiveness to mercy to shame to guilt to joy to truth to peace to reconciliation. And hitting mercy, for example, with a hammer just isn't a good idea. You'll break it.

As an obvious example, ponder how the social justice movement struggles with the issue of forgiveness. Can the canceled be forgiven? Someone gets canceled for something they've done in their past. Time passes. The person goes through a season of confession, repentance, rehabilitation, growth, and making amends. Can they be forgiven?

As you know, the social justice movement struggles here, with the issues of mercy, grace, forgiveness and reconciliation. And the reason for this, I'm pointing out, is that justice is a hammer and while a hammer is an excellent tool for nails it is not so great with other moral tasks. Forgiveness is a different problem than injustice. You need different tools.

And so, why do social justice warriors need Jesus? Lots of reasons, but the reason I'm pointing to today is that social justice warriors need, to change the metaphor, more colors in their moral crayon box. The world is a moral rainbow and all social justice warriors have is a single black crayon. But life is too complex for moral monochrome. 

To return to the tool metaphor, social justice warriors need Jesus because they need more tools in their moral toolbox. The moral work of life is too complicated to tackle with just a hammer. The moral drama of life isn't putting up a swing set in the backyard, easily tackled with the single tool enclosed in the box. The moral life is building an entire house. Moral life is cement work, brick laying, carpentry, plumbing, electrical, roofing, painting, and so on. You need more than a hammer. 

Social justice warriors need Jesus so they can grow up and into a richer, more complex moral universe, a deeper moral vocabulary that matches the complexities of our lives. Only religion provides us with such a deep, rich, various, complex, and multifaceted moral universe and vocabulary.