An Introduction to Strange Justice

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. (Col. 2:8, ESV)

Christians have a responsibility to resist the ideological captivity that can come from the philosophies, lies, and traditions of the world. Apart from Christ, all human philosophy and every man-made religion only has the power to enslave people. These ideologies operate with only basic observations about this world that are incomplete, misleading, and rooted in misinterpretation. The fact that the Bible commands Christians to avoid such ideologies assumes their existence and their danger, which is why the church must be vigilant. When one examines the culture today, the need for caution is clear.

The Cultural Shift

Western Civilization, particularly in the United States, has changed more since 2015 than it did in the entirety of the previous generations. In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Jim Obergefell in his civil rights case against the state of Ohio and codified the historically novel concept of same-sex marriage into U.S. law. In the years since this decision, the culture in which we live has continued to morph into a culture that would be unrecognizable to previous generations. Can you imagine trying to explain preferred pronouns to Gregory the Great, Erasmus, Luther, Bach, or Isaac Newton? Carl Trueman addresses this very issue in his excellent book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self:

“I am a woman trapped in a man’s body.” My grandfather died in 1994, less than thirty years ago, and yet, had he ever heard that sentence uttered in his presence he would have burst out laughing and considered it a piece of incoherent gibberish. And yet today it is a sentence that many in our society regard as not only meaningful but so significant that to deny it or question it in some way is to reveal oneself as stupid, immoral, or subject to yet another irrational phobia. Carl [Trueman, The Rise and Fall of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 19.]

The changes that have taken place in the area of human sexuality are just one example of the cultural shift that has occurred. As seismic as the shift seems, it has not been a sudden change. The philosophical and ideological foundations of the movements we see in our day have been percolating for quite some time.

A New Man

The shift we see going on around us is actually rooted in a modern view of self that has been around for quite some time. This modern view of man is characterized by an elevated view of mankind in general and specifically the individual. With man at the center of this philosophy, personal feelings are elevated as the ultimate authority of human behavior and psychological wellness is prioritized as the ultimate good for every person. In other words, how you feel, especially about yourself, is the most important reality in the world. Thus, authentically living out every inner desire that you have is the best way to navigate life, because your internal feelings are inherently good. Additionally, inhibiting someone else’s impulses—no matter how absurd they might seem—is the greatest evil you can perpetrate.

This is a not-so-subtle distortion of the Bible, which teaches that God’s moral law is the ultimate authority over mankind, and God’s glory is the highest good for man to pursue. The difference between these two ways of viewing the world—modern man worldview vs. biblical worldview—“is the reason why society now often feels like a cultural battle zone: it consists of groups of people who simply think about the moral structure of the world in utterly incompatible ways.” [Trueman, The Rise and Fall of the Modern Self, 80.] This explains, in part, the abandonment of sexual ethics in our generation; there is an entirely new way of defining right and wrong that is being applied to the issue of human sexuality. Thus, part of the explanation for what is going on in our culture can be traced back to a “modern” view of man, which views people as autonomous and able to determine right from wrong based on how they feel.

A Postmodern Totalitarianism

The tornadic winds of cultural change have decimated far more than what was the predominant view of human sexuality. From 2001 until the present time, the influence of the federal government has grown exponentially under every presidential administration of both parties. This growth can certainly be attributed to politicians who are greedy for power, however, self-serving leaders have always been greedy for power. So what has made it worse in our generation? The influence of the government in everyday life has grown exponentially because the expectations of the electorate have exploded. In other words, the average U.S. citizen has an inflated sense of what he deserves from society. The protection of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is nothing compared with the guarantee of a livable wage, free birth control, and constant affirmation of my preferred lifestyle. As a result, instead of protecting objectively delineated constitutional liberties, the culture expects the government to sustain their subjective standards of living. This is why so many individuals and voters seem willing to forfeit traditional civil liberties, like the freedom of speech, to protect their personal preferences, like not being triggered by offensive speech. Rod Dreher explains this correlation between the modern man’s desire for personal fulfillment and the growing danger of a new totalitarianism:

Soft totalitarianism exploits the decadent modern man’s preference for personal pleasure over principles, including political liberties. The public will support, or at least not oppose, the coming soft totalitarianism, not because it fears the imposition of cruel punishments but because it will be more or less satisfied with hedonistic comforts.[Rod Dreher, Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents (New York, NY: Sentinel, 2020), 10.]

At the heart of this threat is a post-modern epistemology that rejects objective reality. In order to elevate your feelings to the highest level of reality (a modern view of man), you must also diminish objectivity with a postmodern view of truth. It is only possible for feelings to reign supreme in a world were truth is relative. Thus, by denying objective truth and defining reality according to how you feel, you can create your own reality. In this way of viewing the world, every form of external authority is oppressive unless it is protecting the reality that I have created for myself. Additionally, every authority in my life is allowed to be oppressive as long as it is protecting the reality I have created for myself. Objective standards and codified laws are far less important than the way people feel, which is the best way to determine the value of an action and the need for authoritarian action.

To illustrate the presence of this sentiment in our culture we need only to observe the creation of “safe places” on university campuses and the category of “hate speech” in the U.S. legal system. In liberal societies, the freedom of speech has always been valued as a necessary ingredient in personal liberty. This means that fools are permitted to say foolish things, and the wise are just as free to ignore fools. However, when psychological wellness is the highest good, hurting someone’s feelings becomes an act of oppression. Further, when there are no objective standards by which to examine differing opinions and psychological wellness is the highest good, whoever is hurt the most by the argument has to be correct. “Once harm and oppression are regarded as being primarily psychological categories, freedom of speech then becomes part of the problem, not the solution, because words become potential weapons.” [Trueman, The Rise and Fall of the Modern Self, 55]

Woke Justice

The shift that is visible in the areas of sexual ethics and incremental authoritarianism can also been seen in the way people commonly speak about justice. There is a new and strange view of justice that has emerged from the modern view of man and the post-modern view of reality. This strange justice seems to predominate the way the culture thinks about morality, equity, and righteousness. Subjects that used to be a matter of personal opinion and public debate are now matters of social justice. For instance, the issue of abortion is now a matter of reproductive justice and conversations about global warming are really matters of environmental justice. In the ever growing list of “justice” issues, one of the most obvious examples of the strange justice ideology can be observed in the proliferation of Critical Race Theory (CRT). CRT proponents believe that racism permeates virtually every aspect of American life including the structures, systems, and institutions of society. This racism is supported by the white supremacy and white privilege of the dominant white culture. As a result, it is largely invisible to white people but is the ordinary experience of people of color. The assumption is that racism is ubiquitous and if you don’t see it, it is only because you are blind to it—you need to get “woke.” Of course we would all agree that racism does exist; it is a sin that Scripture condemns. However, the strange justice of CRT goes well beyond these common affirmations. CRT assumes that racism is a part of every single interaction between people with different skin colors.

[E]verything the marginalized individual interprets as racism is considered racism by default—an episteme that encourages confirmation bias and leaves wide open the door to the unscrupulous. In scholarship, this leads to theories built only upon theories… and no real means of testing or falsifying them. Meanwhile, adherents actively search for hidden and overt offenses until they find them, and they allow for no alternative or mitigating explanations—racism is not only permanently everywhere and latent in systems; it is also utterly unforgivable.[Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activists Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everyone. (Durham, NC: Pitchstone Publishing, 2020), 133-134.]

This is not helpful if for no other reason than it obscures genuine examples of ethnically motivated partiality. And yet, this is the kind of strange justice that arises from the modern view of self when it is joined to a post-modern epistemology.

You’re Guilty

In all of this, man has been elevated to the place of God and man-made subjectivity has replaced objective norms—particularly divine truth. Thus, according to strange justice, what determines if you are guilty is not whether you violated the truth with your words or actions; guilt is determined by the psychological harm inflicted on others (or potentially inflicted). Similarly, actions can be deemed sinful not based on the intentions of the individual who acted, but based on the perception of individuals who observed the action. In strange justice, the highest court of appeal is the internal feelings of the most hurt individual, and the inviolable law in the land is that each person has the right to create their own reality.

Note: This is a part of a larger statement on “Strange Justice” that was produces for Grace Community Church of Delaware. That statement can be accessed in its entirety (69 pages) using this link: Statement on Strange Justice. Additionally, you can access the sermon series delivered on this subject here: Strange Justice Sermon Series