Justice is getting what you deserve and giving others what they deserve. And the standard for what is just is God’s righteousness. This is what Francis Schaeffer argued forty years ago, and it is something we need to recover today. 

Where do human rights come from?

Are these five alleged “human rights” actually right?

1. LGBT justice
2. Reproductive justice
3. Distributive justice
4. Racial justice
5. Social justice

It depends on how you define them. But back to that in a moment. before we do this, consider three parallel contrasts:

First, It is wholesome for kids to play in a secure treehouse. But it is foolish to cut a tall tree branch that you are sitting on when the saw is between you and the tree’s trunk.

Second, It is responsible for a carpenter to pay for a truck so that he can better fulfill his vocation. But it is reckless and immoral for a thief to steal that carpenter’s truck to take it on a high-speed joy ride through a neighborhood.

Third and similarly, it is wholesome and responsible to defend human rights. But it is foolish to defend human rights without the foundation that human rights come from the Creator. Further, it is reckless and immoral to claim to defend human rights when you are actually defending injustice.

Now back to those five alleged human rights. If you define them as follows, then they are examples of folly, recklessness, and immorality:

1. LGBT justice. Everyone must affirm and celebrate the ideology of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people—and any sexual orientations or gender identities that do not correspond to heterosexual norms.
2. Reproductive justice. Pregnant people (that’s the new term—not women but pregnant people since “men” can get pregnant, too) have a human right to have personal bodily autonomy—to choose to keep or to kill the unborn baby in one’s womb.
3. Distributive justice. Society must distribute (or allocate) power and resources so that there are equal outcomes. (This is different from arguing that God-ordained authorities must impartially punish lawbreaking and right wrongs.)
4. Racial justice. Society must remove systemic racial disparities in areas such as wealth, income, education, and employment. Justice is equal outcomes, and a failure to have equal outcomes is racism. (This is different from arguing that society must treat all ethnicities impartially.)
5. Social justice. In order to understand what social justice typically means in our culture today, you have to understand what Critical Theory is. In a nutshell Critical Theory affirms four beliefs (I’m paraphrasing Neil Shenvi): (1) Society is divided into two groups: oppressors and oppressed. The oppressors have power, and they are evil bullies; the oppressed do not have power, and they are innocent victims. (2) Oppressors (the dominant group) maintain their power by imposing their ideology on everyone. (3) Lived experience gives oppressed people special access to truths about their oppression. (4) Society needs social justice—that is, society needs to pursue equal outcomes by deconstructing and eliminating all forms of social oppression. Social oppression includes not just disparities regarding race and ethnicity but also gender, sexual orientation, religion, physical ability, mental ability, and economic class. The term wokeness refers to the state of being consciously aware of and “awake” to this social injustice. (This is different from arguing that God-ordained authorities must oppose partiality in civic life by impartially punishing unjust perpetrators and righting wrongs.)

Read More