Labelling Social Justice as Dangerous

Posted on June 8, 2024 by Herb Montgomery

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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.

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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.

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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.

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:

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

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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Refuting the Beelzebul Accusation and the Finger of God

Posted on October 14, 2016 by Herb Montgomery

by Herb Montgomery

“And he cast out a demon which made a person mute. And once the demon was cast out, the mute person spoke. And the crowds were amazed. But some said: By Beelzebul, the ruler of demons, he casts out demons! But, knowing their thoughts, he said to them: Every kingdom divided against itself is left barren, and every household divided against itself will not stand. And if Satan is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? And if I by Beelzebul cast out demons, your sons, by whom do they cast them out? This is why they will be your judges. But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then there has come upon you God’s reign.” (Q 11:14-15, 17-20)

Matthew 9:32-34: “While they were going out, a man who was demon-possessed and could not talk was brought to Jesus. And when the demon was driven out, the man who had been mute spoke. The crowd was amazed and said, ‘Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.’ But the Pharisees said, ‘It is by the prince of demons that he drives out demons.’”

Matthew 12:25-38: “Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.’”

Luke 11:14-15, 17-20: “Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute. When the demon left, the man who had been mute spoke, and the crowd was amazed. But some of them said, ‘By Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he is driving out demons.’ Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: ‘Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? I say this because you claim that I drive out demons by Beelzebul. Now if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your followers drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.’”

If we are going to get our heads around this week’s saying, we first must to step back into the worldview of the writers. As we have covered before, a Jewish apocalyptic worldview holds a dualistic view of this world and the cosmos. There are earthy powers for good and evil and there are also parallel cosmic forces for good and evil that the earthly powers are simply a conduit for. First Century Jewish apocalypticism added to this a belief that they were the earthly expression of the cosmic good. They would have also viewed their foreign oppressors (Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Greece, and finally Rome) as earthly expressions of evil. They and their oppressors would have been connected in some way to cosmic forces of good and evil: the Jewish people to YHWH and their oppressors to evil (the satan, Beelzebul, demons, etc.)

Ever since the days of Jeremiah, the Jews had interpreted their exile and foreign occupation as punishment from YHWH for Judah’s sins. They longed for liberation, which they referred to as YHWH’s forgiveness of those sins, and they viewed this liberation as YHWH taking on the cosmic powers of evil and evil’s earthly conduits and working out a victory that would be expressed or reflected in their political, social, and economic freedom.

In the minds of the early gospel writers, Jesus represents the earthly hope of YHWH’s cosmic deliverance. I want to be very careful here. Jesus did not fulfill all of the Jewish hopes for a coming Messiah. Rosemary Reuther rightly states, “he announced this Messianic hope, and . . . gave signs of its presence, but . . . also died in that hope, crucified on the cross of unredeemed human history” (To Change the World: Christology and Cultural Criticism, p. 42). In this light, the cross interrupts Jesus’ saving work and is overcome by the resurrection. The early Jewish community of Jesus followers continued to proclaim that hope, and also to begin to experience its presence. Yet they also, like Jesus, did so under “the cross of unresolved human contradictions.” (Ibid.)

In this week’s saying, Jesus represents liberation. Yet he is being accused, instead, of being an earthly conduit of cosmic forces of oppression, even while engaged in activity that his own community would have normally seen as liberating.

The Satan & Beelzubul

I want to say a few words this week about the satan and Beelzubul. “Satan” in Jewish apocalypticism is not a name but a title or a label. It’s more accurately “the satan,” the adversary. So Jesus’ question in this saying could be more appropriately understood as “If the adversary is divided against himself then how will his kingdom stand?” Here, Jesus objects to the logic of claiming that he is an adversary of the people and yet against their adversary. A house divided against itself will fail.

Finger of God

Luke’s use of the “finger of God” in his version of the saying has an interesting history behind it. In Jewish history, this is the phrase used by Pharaoh’s magicians when they recognized the cosmic power of good behind the earthly conduit of the liberation of the oppressed in the figure of Moses:

“And the magicians said to Pharaoh, ‘This is the finger of God!’ But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, just as the LORD had said.” (Exodus 8:19)

The author of Luke would have wanted to connect Jesus in the minds and hearts of the readers not only with the liberation symbol of Moses, but also with a slur. The Egyptian magicians could recognize YHWH’s liberation work when they saw it, yet the people in Jesus’ society could not. Their understanding of earthly events and their ability to perceive the cosmic forces behind those events was lower than even their Egyptian oppressors. The Jewish portion of Luke’s audience would have been highly offended by this.

Today

In the HeartGroup Application two weeks ago, I asked you to discuss why positive social changes for the church such as the end of slavery, racial integration, the end of patriarchy and egalitarianism, and justice for the marginalized (including the LGBT community), historically have not come from within the church from our intrinsic process but rather have been imposed on the church from outside forces.

If the church is meant to be such a power of good in our society, why is it that, like Martin Luther King, Jr. used to ask, the church too often is not the headlights of our society but its taillights? Both the church and the world still haven’t rejected classism, but in the areas I have just mentioned, our secular society is far ahead of the church.

I recently had the privilege of sitting in the audience of a congregation thought to be special because it was the first in its own faith tradition to ordain women to ministry. Then they mentioned the date: 1995. Let that sink in for a minute. 1995. 1995! That’s 76 years after the United States Congress passed the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women a right to vote in American society. Seventy-six years!

For this congregation to be celebrating its work is two-edged. Yes, it’s good to finally celebrate that things have come around. (I should also mention that right now within that same tradition, administrators have agreed that churches that ordain women and their respective territories should be censured for a year and required to cease, desist, and reverse the ordinations of women that they’ve conducted since 1995. (See General Conference Proposes Year of Grace for Unions.)

The other side of this double edge is that 76 years is nothing to celebrate when many other denominations crossed this Rubicon over half a century ago.

So why do churches only embrace positive, liberative changes within our society when forced to? Many of these changes can be traced back to the very Jesus that many Christians would say is at the center of their tradition. I think it’s anachronistic to say Jesus was a feminist, but he did challenge some of the societal assumptions about women in his day. He did regard women as made in the image of God as equally as men. Yet churches that desire to follow Jesus are not pioneering on these issues. They aren’t even bringing up the rear: many are digging their heels and refusing to change.

If history teaches us anything about the struggle between sectors of our society who practice faith and the larger secular sectors of our society in matters of justice, violence and oppression (see Susan Jacoby’s Freethinkers: A History of Secularism in America), it’s that many faith groups are only going to shift the dynamics within their structures when forced to. I can’t help but think of the myriads of Christians in my own region who, as I write this, are making excuses for the extremely sexist, misogynistic, and violent language which recently surfaced in the U.S.’s presidential race, rather than pioneering the path to systemic sex, race and class justice. Which part of Jesus, I wonder, does any of this even look like?

Too often, we mean well, yet aren’t well informed by or even exposed to the experiences of those not like us. Instead of seeing the parallels between liberation movements in the time of Jesus and those in our world today, movements about survival, liberation, resistance, restoration, and transformation; and instead of seeing the parallels between these movements, these brave people, and their Jesus, some of us see these movements as somehow threatening, evil, and something to be minimized and even removed.

The saying this week is striking for me. Whether the “demons” we’re casting out from our societies are racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, or other kinds of evil, this week reminds us that those privileged in this society frequently view liberation movements as the work of “Beelzubul” rather than of “YHWH.” They fail to perceive the finger of God when it works for the liberation of those under our thumbs, liberation that would change the entire world for everyone. (Recently I sat in a lecture by a dear friend of mine who recounted the history of Black Lives Matter and the civil rights movement and explained that at the core of the movement is the belief that when Black lives are free from oppression, everyone’s lives will be free as well.)

It is one thing to be deceived and mistake something evil for something good. It is an entirely different matter to be threatened by a change for good, accuse it of being evil and of the devil, and fight against it to keep it from influencing your world in spite of how much suffering it would end for so many. Too often, those who claim the name of Jesus have labeled Black liberation, women’s liberation, poor people’s liberation, LGBTQ liberation movements, and a myriad of other liberation movements as evil. It would be well to contemplate this week’s saying, lest we find ourselves repeating this same history from a desire to preserve the status quo today.

But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then there has come upon you God’s reign. (Q 11:14-15, 17-20)

HeartGroup Application

1. This week I want you to take these five elements:

a. Survival

b. Resistance

c. Liberation

d. Restoration

e. Transformation

and locate a saying that expresses each one in the Jesus sayings and stories of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke).

2. Then I want you to locate movements in our world today where these same five elements of survival, resistance, liberation, restoration, and transformation are present. Look for where and from whom they get negative pushback in our society today.

3. Mark the parallels between what you found in step 1 and step 2, and then meet with your HeartGroup to discuss and share what the next step could be for you as a community.

Wherever this week’s saying finds you, follow the example of the Jesus in the stories. Keep at the work of survival, resistance, liberation, restoration, and transformation. You aren’t alone: many are standing with you, and I am too.

Keep living in love, till the only world that remains is a world where only love reigns.

I love each of you dearly.

I’ll see you next week.