Labelling Social Justice as Dangerous

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Labelling Social Justice as Dangerous

Herb Montgomery, June 7, 2024

If you’d like to listen to this week’s article in podcast version click on the image below:

Our reading this weekend from the gospels is from the book of Mark:

Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”

So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can the Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”

He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.”

Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”

“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.

Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mark 3:20-24)

Scholars refer to this week’s story as the Beelzebub controversy. It is written in the language and worldview of those living at the time of this story, and there is much in it for us to glean for our time today. 

To help us understand the backdrop of this language and worldview, Gerd Theissen’s words are helpful:

“We may understand the kingdom of Satan as a symbolic accentuation of the negative experiences of earthly rule. According to the apocalypse of the shepherds in Ethiopic Enoch 85–90, when Israel lost its political independence, God relegated rule over it to the fallen angels, the subjects of Satan. The mythological events here reflect political ones.” (Gerd Theissen, The First Followers of Jesus: A Sociological Analysis of the Earliest Christianity, p. 76)

A common worldview of those within Jesus’ society was that our world was made up of a dualism of the seen world and the unseen world. These two worlds were connected. The unseen world was divided into the kingdom of God and kingdom of Satan. Those in power were connected to and even, at times, conduits of these unseen powers. Whatever we make of this way of interpreting our world today, consider the concrete events that the language of “kingdom of Satan” is attempting to describe. The Roman Empire had possessed the Temple State, whose capital was the temple in Jerusalem, as well as the synagogue system and the everyday lives of Jewish people. Socially, politically, economically, the people were now possessed by Rome/Caesar. A more obvious example is the story of the demoniac in Mark 5. Jesus asks the possessed person for his name and the name given is the name of largest military unit of the Roman army: “My name is Legion” (Mark 5:9). The Roman legion often “possessed,” inhabited, or was stationed in areas known to cause problems for the Pax Romana.

Jesus is leading a Jewish renewal/reformation movement calling his society back to the social justice ethics found in the Torah and building on them. He’s calling for the year of Jubilee when all debts are cancelled (the record of these debts were held in the Temple). He’s calling for resource-sharing and wealth redistribution, for the marginalized to be gathered in, for the farm lands lost to predatory creditors to be restored to their original owners, and for those made “last” in society to be treated the same as the “first.”

There were those who benefited financially and powerfully from Rome’s coopting of the Jewish temple state. Those who had much to lose were against Jesus, and their tactic is nothing new: Inspire the masses with fear of the very thing that could be the means of life-giving change for them, but would mean loss of privilege and wealth for those in power. We see the same tactic used today. Those working to shape our world into a safer, more compassionate, just society are now often referred to as “woke.” But woke is a term with a long history in marginalized communities simply endeavoring to survive harm being committed against them. We see the same fear tactic with Critical Race Theory. We witness it every time programs calling for social well-being are labelled by the Right as socialism or communism to cause people to be afraid that their freedoms are being taken away. Terms like “the radical Left” also inspire fear. 

Jim Wallis, in his recent book, The False White Gospel, recounts an anecdote of his personal experience with fear-mongering from Glenn Beck:

When television personality Glenn Beck had his highly rated show on Fox News, he urged people to leave churches that preach “social justice.” Said Beck: “I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church website. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! They talk about economic justice, rights of the workers, redistribution of wealth and, surprisingly, I love this, democracy.” Beck, who is a Mormon, said the message of social justice has infected all faiths. He called it a “perversion of the gospel.” Beck advised people who attend churches where pastors preach a message of social justice to report it to their bishop or other church authority. Then this very loud and noxious broadcaster decided to put some of those “social justice” perpetrators on his famous blackboard to remind his listeners day after day of who they should look out for. And after a blazing attack on me personally, Beck put me on his blackboard and began to regularly assail me on his show. (Jim Wallis, The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy, p. 119-120)

As we consider our reading this week, it’s helpful to remember that when Jesus is referring to the strong man’s house. The strong man in the contemporary worldview would have been simultaneously referring to both the strong man in the unseen world, i.e. “the Satan,” and the strong man in our seen world, i.e. the Roman Empire. Here Jesus is referring to how Rome (the strong man) had taken over the Temple state centered in the Jerusalem temple. Remember the Mark’s Jesus says, “No one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house.” The plundering here is the liberation of the Temple from the Roman Empire including the redistribution of the resources taken from the Jewish people through Rome’s cooption of the Temple and those resources being given back to the poor. This language is used repeatedly in Mark referring to the temple:

On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’” (Mark 11:15-17, emphasis added))

“Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn.” (Mark 13:35, emphasis)

In Mark, when Jesus arrives at the temple/house toward the end of Mark’s gospel, Jesus will “exorcise” those who have turned the temple/house of prayer into a den of thieves in preparation for the One who will come and reclaim his domain, reign, or to use Mark’s language, “kingdom.”

In Mark, the people don’t buy into the lies being told about Jesus. The oppressed and marginalized continue to follow Jesus. His following continues to grow until Jesus is gathering such a following that he must be silenced. 

What can we glean from this today?

In Binding the Strong Man, Myers shares a statement from Juan Luis Segundo that serves as a warning.

“The blasphemy resulting from bad apologetics will always be pardonable…. What is not pardonable is using theology to turn real human liberation into something odious. The real sin against the Holy Spirit is refusing to recognize, with “theological” joy, some concrete liberation that is taking place before one’s very eyes. (Signs of the Times, Theological Reflections, p. 30 quoted by Ched Myers in Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus, p. 167)

Turning human liberation into something odious. Refusing to recognize with joy the concrete liberation of those our systems are harming. How often have Christians found themselves obstructing or afraid of social changes toward justice and equity? 

I think of how certain Christians have feared the women’s liberation movement, opposed the abolition of slavery, or are still opposed to making our world a safer place for those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer/questioning. I think of how certain Christians are opposed to political movements attempting to make our world safer for children by passing background checks for firearms. The number one cause of death of school age children in the U.S. is not library books or drag queens, but mass shootings. Certain Christian leaders seek to inspire fear among middle class people about programs to have the ultra-wealthy pay their fair share of taxes to fund more programs for the poor and disenfranchised. 

Sometimes I wonder if we are even reading the same gospel stories about Jesus, the peace maker, the liberator of the poor, the Jesus who included those his society was pushing to the edges. 

If we take nothing else from this week’s reading, my prayer is that it helps us to consider whether we are genuinely using the wisdom of Jesus’ teachings as we assess the work and progress of those presently shaping our world into a safer, compassionate, just home for everyone. Are we putting our own effort behind and alongside those engaged in this work, or are we saying, “By the prince of demons they are driving out demons”? May we have the wisdom to see the that world is not being “turned upside down” but right side up (Acts 17:6).

Discussion Group Questions

1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your discussion group.

2. Do you have experiences of being told to be wary of something that latter you discovered was being mischaracterized? Share an experience with your group.

3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone? 

Thanks for checking in with us, today.

I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate. 

My latest book Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and also on Audible in audio book format.

As always, you can find Renewed Heart Ministries each week on X (or Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s Threads. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. 

If you would like to listen to these articles each week in podcast form, you can find The Social Jesus podcast on all major podcast carriers. If you enjoy listening to The Social Jesus Podcast please take a moment to like and subscribe and if your podcast platform offers this option, consider taking some time to leave us a positive review. This helps others find our podcast as well.

You can watch our new YouTube show called “Just Talking” each week. Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking. If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.

And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.

Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.

I love each of you dearly,

I’ll see you next week.

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New Episode of JustTalking!

Season 2, Episode 16: Mark 3.20-35. Lectionary B, Proper 5

Labelling Social Justice as Dangerous

Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.

If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.

You can find the latest show on YouTube at:

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New Episode of The Social Jesus Podcast

A podcast where we talk about the intersection of faith and social justice and what a first century, prophet of the poor from Galilee might have to offer us today in our work of love, compassion and justice. 

This week:

Season 1 Episode 9: Labelling Social Justice as Dangerous

Mark 3:20-24

“The Beelzebul controversy makes me think of how certain Christians have feared the women’s liberation movement, opposed the abolition of slavery, or are still opposed to making our world a safer place for those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer/questioning. I think of how certain Christians are opposed to political movements attempting to make our world safer for children by passing background checks for firearms. The number one cause of death of school age children in the U.S. is not library books or drag queens, but mass shootings. Certain Christian leaders seek to inspire fear among middle class people about programs to have the ultra-wealthy pay their fair share of taxes to fund more programs for the poor and disenfranchised. This story serves as a warning and helps us consider whether we are genuinely using the wisdom of Jesus’ teachings as we assess the work and progress of those presently shaping our world into a safer, compassionate, just home for everyone.”

Available on all major podcast carriers and at this link:

https://the-social-jesus-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/labelling-social-justice-as-dangerous

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Now Available on Audible!

 

Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.

by Herb Montgomery, Narrated by Jeff Moon

Available now on Audible!

After two successful decades of preaching a gospel of love within the Christian faith tradition Herb felt like something was missing. He went back to the gospels and began reading them through the interpretive lenses of various marginalized communities and what he found radically changed his life forever. The teachings of the Jesus in the gospel stories express a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of those in marginalized communities. This book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, and presents a compelling argument for a more socially compassionate and just expression of Christianity. Herb’s findings in his latest book are shared in the hopes that it will dramatically impact how you practice your Christianity, too.

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