The One About Social Justice

In today's episode, I take what started as one episode, then turned into two, then three, then four, and then all the way back to just one again. In other words, the longer I studied on the topic, the deeper the rabbit hole got, and I had to make a decision -- turn this into a 5-part series, or just condense and stay on the surface. I decided to go with the latter option. As stated in the podcast, here's the section from one of the drafts with most of the quotes:  [On the San Diego Foundation’s website, you’ll read that United Nations defines social justice as follows: “Social justice may be broadly understood as the fair and compassionate distribution of the fruits of economic growth.” Ok, so the United Nations is linking it primarily to economics here. Next, to hear the National Association of Social Workers tell it, “Social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities.” Ok, so these folks go a little deeper and say that it’s not just economics that need to be redistributed — it’s politics and social rights and opportunities. There’s some ambiguity here, but that’s to be expected with a nebulous term like this. Let’s continue and see if we can’t get a little bit more elucidation on this. Another organization, the Center for Economic and Social Justice, states the following: “Social justice is the virtue which guides us in creating those organized human interactions we call institutions. In turn, social institutions, when justly organized, provide us with access to what is good for the person, both individually and in our associations with others.” Ok, so this is the clearest definition so far. Although after that, I admit to wondering what they mean by economic distribution as well as distribution of political and social opportunities. Who’s doing the distributing of the economics and opportunities? And to whom? And from whom are we redistributing? And based on what metrics? So I’m still compelled to ask, “what is social justice?” I eventually found a website called “Investopedia,” which had this to say: “Social justice is a political and philosophical theory asserting that there are dimensions to the concept of justice beyond those embodied in the principles of civil or criminal law, economic supply and demand, or traditional moral frameworks.” Ok, so this means that social justice means we’re not just applying justice in the traditional way, where “justice is blind,” so to speak. Let’s continue with the quote to understand a little bit more: “Social justice tends to focus more on just relations among groups within society as opposed to the justice of individual conduct or justice for individuals.” So this means not only are we taking off justice’s blindfold, but we’re now using group factors to decide on justice rather than individual factors. The quote continues: “Historically and in theory, the idea of social justice is that all people should have equal access to wealth, health, well-being, justice, privileges, and opportunity, regardless of their legal, political, economic, or other circumstances.” Now listen to this last part carefully: “In modern practice, social justice revolves around favoring or punishing different groups of the population, regardless of any given individual's choices or actions, based on value judgments regarding historical events, current conditions, and group relations. In economic terms, this often means redistribution of wealth, income, and economic opportunities from groups whom social justice advocates consider to be oppressors to those whom they consider to be the oppressed.”] Links to help you:  https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabiti-anyabwile/reparations-are-biblical/ https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/social-justice-not-what-you-think-it