Written by: Glenn Tungay
Ed Herbst’s article on hate crime findings is an excellent analysis of the current failure of equitable and fair justice in South Africa. It highlights how, when social (communal) justice triumphs over individual justice, a nation is doomed to slide into abusive, segregatory and unjust totalitarianism.
Marxist communal justice has so infiltrated the West’s thinking that even Christian leaders are willing to abandon the clear teachings of individual justice presented in scripture.
Western justice, which arose out of biblical teachings on justice, holds that no individual is complicit for any other person’s crime (sin).
Father, brother, close friend or another person of the same class or race — guilt is not imputed by association, but by individual action.
Even if one benefits from another’s crime, so long as one is not knowingly complicit, they are innocent. Likewise, a citizen is not held legally accountable for a state’s actions, even if they voted for it. And in the face of any accusation, one has the right to representation, to call witnesses, and to face ones accusers. One is considered innocent until proven guilty.
The social(ist) communal version is the antithesis of Western, biblical justice. One only has to think of North Korea, where whole families are thrown into labour camps because one member is a Christian, to understand this.
Think of the USSR, when whole families were thrown in labour camps because a family member was accused of being a spy or having a counterrevolutionary ideology. Or the genocide of the million odd kulaks in the USSR that happened in the 1920s, simply because they were a successful farming class of peasants.
Social justice is built on the ideology of class or race warfare, and thus guilt is imputed by association to anyone of a class or race deemed guilty of an anti-party or anti-narrative ideological crime. Here individuals are considered guilty until proven innocent — and innocence is impossible to prove if they are already guilty by association.
The Christian church has to wake up. Guilt is not imputed by association to a race or class. We stand or fall on our own actions alone.
If we as the Church do not stand up for biblical justice, in the end we will simply be counted as one of the enemies of the ruling ideology — worthy of imprisonment, torture and death, simply because of our association with Christ.
This happened in the USSR and China. It can and will happen again if we, out of timidity or ignorance, go along with the socialist narrative of social justice.
Remember that Western law teaches that the individual carries no guilt for others’ actions, or for any association to others of our class or race, or even the actions of a political party.
And further, “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Even if we are guilty by individual action, we stand uncondemned in Christ if we have confessed and received His forgiveness. And fellow saints, if they are in Christ — even those who have suffered by our direct actions – should forgive their brother or sister of their condemnation, just as Christ has forgiven them.
The Church must move beyond socialist concepts of communal justice, and be justice bringers to individuals — loving and helping one soul at a time.
Author: Glenn Tungay is a pastor and businessman living in Amanzimtoti, South Africa. He is passionate about individual justice, liberty and politics in general.
In this article
