Social Justice Is A Sin. Racial Justice Is A Sin.

 Matthew 18:1-7:

At that time the disciples approached Jesus and said, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me." 

"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of things that cause sin! Such things must come, but woe to the one through whom they come!"

After my foam-at-the-mouth rant yesterday, I pondered the situation further.

Until I read that sentence, I loved Barbara. After I read it, she became a representative for all women and responsible for every ounce of pain women have inflicted on me. That's a lot of pain and the dark side of me would like nothing more than to get down to the viscerally gratifying business of ruthless vengeance.

When you yap in public about oppressors and oppressed, you don't really know your audience. You don't know their histories well enough, you can't know them well enough, to be sure that you've got the oppressor-oppressed classifications right for their experiences.

"Women have it so hard" sets me off. To a lesser extent, but for similar reasons, "blacks have it so hard" does as well. When we group people and then assign moral values to the groups, we turn each individual into an avatar for that group. Barbara is a woman. I love Barbara until you turn her into an avatar for all women by telling me that women have been historically oppressed by men. I don't hate Barbara, I love her. When you blather on about social justice or racial justice, I naturally associate Barbara with all women and reflexively hate her as the symbol of whiny privilege and backstabbing, life-ruining duplicity.

I didn't hate until you catalyzed my hate.

We do that every time we group people into bins and especially when we give those bins relative moral standings.

Social Justice is a sin. Racial Justice is a sin.

"(W)oe to the one through whom they come" indeed.

It always takes me a while to calm down when this happens, but eventually I do and love Barbara and all other women again.