Tim Keller and John Piper have had long, fruitful ministries. No doubt both are under a great deal of pressure to declare decisively on this election. Moreover, Keller is battling pancreatic cancer and deserves our prayers and well wishes. That said, I believe both are egregiously wrong in this instance. Matthew 24:24 tells us the time will come when even the elect will be led astray. Such is the power of the “social justice” lie. Like Satan masquerading as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14), social justice—in this case, the thin end of a socialist wedge—holds out the hope of heaven on earth. But it cannot deliver on such promises.

When editors at The American Spectator asked me to write a column for their exceptional magazine about the liberalization of the American church in the age of Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and what parades as social justice, I liked the idea. My mind had been ranging over that ground for some months prior and their call was confirmation that the idea was worth pursuing. But rather than an article addressing that topic in merely impersonal, philosophical terms, I suggested giving it a face: Pastor Timothy Keller.

An obvious question followed: who is that?

For the uninitiated, Tim Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, a successful confessional church in what many Christians regard as the heart of darkness. Keller is also a bestselling author who does not shrink from dipping his toes into political waters as so many ministers do. He is something of an unofficial pope to a large segment of the evangelical Christian population. His influence on this demographic is vast, and he leverages it in books, interviews, and in a robust social media presence. For our purposes, the question is this: is it a good influence?

In a series of articles and tweets this year on social justice and Christian involvement in the political process, Keller has cobbled together questionable biblical arguments on the following issues:

• Capitalism and socialism: they are, in his view, equally flawed systems. Yet curiously, he seems to endorse a socialist model of taxation to help the poor.
• Private property: Keller says, “others have a claim on [your] wealth.”
• Racism: white Americans share a “corporate guilt” for “systemic racism”—thus, he opens the door to reparations for an institutional slavery that ended more than 150 years ago.
• and, finally, the inevitable conclusion of such a thesis:

… when it comes to taking political positions, voting, determining alliances and political involvement, the Christian has liberty of conscience. Christians cannot say to other Christians ‘no Christian can vote for…’ or ‘every Christian must vote for…’ unless you can find a biblical command to that effect.

I can think of several biblical commands that informed how I voted in this presidential election. But before I address the validity of Keller’s claims, let me say that until quite recently my respect for Keller’s work was immense. He has had a highly successful ministry in what is arguably the least fertile ground for any Christian endeavor. Typically orthodox and conventional in his biblical interpretation, he is neither a huckster like Al Sharpton nor is he a heretic like Joel Osteen. Were he so, he could be easily dismissed as a charlatan. Indeed, that is what makes the above so jarring to many who are baffled by what can only be characterized as Keller’s full embrace of the so-called “social justice” movement and a kind of soft socialism.

Keller’s Biblical Methodology

When my eldest son, Michael, was a student at Yale Law School a few years ago, he says that Yale inculcated a specific progressive strategy for the deconstruction of otherwise simple moral issues like, say, abortion or the oxymoronic notion of “gay marriage.” They even had a term for it: “complexify.” In other words, obscure the issue at hand with data, highly selective science, and emotion to such a degree that your opponent no longer feels competent to adjudicate the issue.

Keller made his name as a man who preached the Christian message with simplicity and clarity to people who were often hostile to that message or had little framework for understanding it. But these days, to read Keller on issues of politics and social justice is to enter a world of smoke and mirrors where everything is “complexified”:

When someone uses biblical justice to critique the ideologies of both the political Right and Left, they are often assumed to be centrist or a moderate who is looking for the “middle way” that is neutral or just “above it all.” But Christopher Watkin argues that Christianity “diagonalizes” its alternatives. “To diagonalize a choice … is to refuse the two (or more) alternatives it offers and elaborate a position that is neither reducible nor utterly unrelated to them.” To diagonalize is not to find a mid-point in the spectrum. It is a position off the spectrum, yet one that addresses the concerns of those on the spectrum. In Romans, Paul pointed to both legalists who sought to save themselves by their righteousness (Rom 9:31) and antinomians who lived ‘freely’ as they saw fit (Rom 1:18.) Is the gospel a middle way between two alternatives? Not at all—it “diagonalizes” them. [sic]

This is an unnecessarily complicated way of saying that the Christian’s allegiance isn’t to either political party. Presumably he believes it belongs to God, though he does not say so here. That is true, but it is out of context. The Apostle Paul wasn’t addressing affiliation with political parties; he was addressing the question of eternal salvation. And no Republican I know sees the Republican platform as a substitute for the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. But many do see it—and rightly, I think—as a means of preserving the lives of the unborn; their way of life; and their personal, economic, and religious freedom and that of their posterity.

Capitalism vs. Socialism

Elsewhere, Keller displays an extraordinary naivete about socialism and a willingness to bend the biblical text to his a priori assumptions. In an article titled, “A Biblical Critique of Secular Justice and Critical Theory,” Keller writes: “Biblical justice provides a unique understanding of the character of wealth and ownership that does not fit into either modern categories of capitalism or socialism.”

This is not so. Or, more accurately, it is only half correct: socialism finds no support in scripture while capitalism does. In a single statement—“Thou shalt not steal”—the Bible simultaneously affirms private property and demolishes any notions of socialism.

Was the Proverbs 31 woman a socialist? By no means. She was an unrepentant capitalist: “She perceives that her merchandise is profitable.” (Proverbs 31:18) Scripture holds her up as a model for a godly woman: industrious, thrifty, and faithful.

Advocates of socialism have often cited the story of Ananias and Sapphira found in Acts 5:1-11. They were stricken dead, they argue, for their failure to share their wealth. But that is untrue. The Apostle Peter, as if anticipating our modern debate, is at pains to acknowledge the community has no claim on their property or the proceeds gained from its sale: “Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal?”

Nowhere does the Bible assert the community has a claim on your property. Instead, it asserts that all of your property belongs to God. In Malachi 3:8 the Lord says: “Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions.” Keller reformulates verses of this kind to say that we are robbing from the poor. The Lord may, in fact, designate such tithes and contributions for the poor or the priesthood, but he never asserts they have any ownership of it. The distinction is subtle, but important. To say that we have a claim on someone else’s property is Marxist and dangerous. Such a philosophy has fueled class warfare all over the world.

Is capitalism a perfect system? Certainly not. But the flaws of capitalism are the flaws of human nature. And contrary to popular belief, socialism, much more than capitalism, feeds our greedy natures because it says that what is yours should be mine, and I have a right to take it—by force, if necessary.

Higher Taxation to Help the Poor?

The Bible is clear that we are to “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Jesus is here drawing a distinction between our taxes and our tithes. But in seeing taxation as a kind of tithe, Keller confuses the roles of church and state.

Furthermore, scripture doesn’t amputate Christian charity—the word the Bible uses for benevolence, not “justice”—from the Gospel as government sponsored welfare surely does. In that paradigm, monies are given for no Christian purpose and to meet only a physical need. Many a man has given his life to Christ when, through Christian charity, he is made to see that God is his savior. The welfare state only makes Democrats.

Keller’s heart for the poor is commendable and Christian. But he goes too far in treating the rich and poor as absolute categories: powerful vs. powerless, oppressors vs. oppressed, guilty vs. innocent.

“Proverbs 31:8-9 says ‘speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves … Defend the rights of the poor and needy.’ The Bible doesn’t say ‘speak up for the rich and powerful,’ not because they are less important as persons before God, but because they don’t need you to do this. The playing field is not level and if we don’t advocate for the poor there will not be equality.”

In assuming the “playing field” is always tilted in favor of the rich and the poor are always the oppressed, Keller’s take on these verses has much more in common with Marxism than Christianity. By contrast, the Bible does say to speak up for the rich if the situation demands it.

Exodus 23:2-3: “Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and do not show favoritism to a poor person in a lawsuit.”

Leviticus 19:15: “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.”

To this I will add that it is historically inaccurate to say that the rich don’t ever need you to speak up on their behalf. Socialist regimes have always victimized the rich. They pillage their wealth and often send them into exile, prison, or to the guillotine.

The Godlessness of Socialism

Over the course of his career, Tim Keller has been a light for the Christian faith in the pulpit. He has also written several helpful books. But like so many who experience extraordinary success in one field, it often breeds an overweening confidence that such expertise extends to other fields. In Keller’s case, this includes science and now modern history. To suggest, as he did in an Op-Ed for the New York Times, that socialism is a benign system, is to display a startling naivete.

Recently, we released this short video explaining socialism, Marxism, and their connection with the social justice movement as expressed in Black Lives Matter and the Democrat Party. To summarize, socialism has brought nothing but economic ruin, material deprivation, and spiritual desolation wherever it has been implemented. This is because socialism is, by definition, godless.

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