A gospel beyond Justice?

“…if the church gets converted, the whole world will follow.”

-Rob Bell and Don Golden, Jesus Wants to Save Christians

So one of the really redeeming things coming into vogue today is the renewed understanding of the centrality of Justice to the Gospel.  But, as there always is in theological or philosophical renewal, there is a counter-reform pushing as well.  Many are starting to hit the blogosphere and publishing houses alike more and more with a plead to “get back to the Gospel,” a call to be less concerned with social justice than more centered on the Gospel.  It’s becoming a very popular slogan with a lot of concerned culture warriors, and because so many speak it, it’s worth a second look (or a bit of deconstruction).

I hear that “get back to the gospel” thing, and I feel I’m so far gone from that perspective that I literally cannot grasp how that makes sense to anyone.  Like, if I try really hard, I get how it makes sense within a very narrow framework, but then we must step back a step and ask the obvious question “So God’s Justice and God’s Gospel don’t intrinsically have anything to do with each other?- that is, while justice and gospel can be liked, they can also occur separately, without one another?”

I don’t think you can have Gospel without Justice.  Not the Gospel of Christ at least.  Remember, Jesus defined the Gospel (and shouldn’t we let him define it?) as “the Kingdom of God is at hand,” not “accept me as your personal savior and ask forgiveness for your sins so you can go to heaven.”  Not to mention, nobody really defined the Gospel in the latter way until the industrial age.  I realize those last two sentences may sound outlandish to some.  Don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying there’s nothing personal about the message (there is); I’m just saying Jesus himself didn’t define it that way.  The Kingdom (which is a social word) aspect is primary to Jesus, so if we put emphasis on the personal over and above the corporate, we disagree with the Christ.  So I think the extent to which we see Gospel as interconnected to Justice is the extent to which we agree with Jesus, who opened his preaching ministry with a social justice quote from Isaiah (Luke 4).

It boils down to this: you cannot possibly care about Justice more than the real Gospel (or vice versa), because the two are inseparably linked.  Not “can’t care about” as in “you should not”; I mean “can’t” as in “it’s not actually possible.”  And I’ll insist if you care more about the gospel than you do about Justice, you aren’t chasing in the same understanding of the Gospel that Jesus spoke of.  Remember, Jesus himself defined the Gospel, and as vague as his only definition was, it was unmistakably intertwined with social Justice.

So let us cease with sectioning thoughts that we could  ever abandon the actual Gospel in our passion for social Justice.  It’s not possible.  And let us accordingly not entertain the thought that we are speaking of or living Jesus’ Gospel if we do not speak and live Justice.  This should be an indictment of us all.