There is a real divide in America today. A much bigger divide than their used to be. I miss the conversations I used to have with friends who saw the world in a different way and were willing to let me hear from their experiences and engage in constructive dialogue. I genuinely believe that those conversations helped me see a side of things I had never seen before and pray that my side of the conversation helped my friends as well. I hope to have those sort of conversations again and maybe this book can be a starting point for some construtive dialogue.

The church has always stood for justice. Obviously, not perfectly at every place and every time. But she has always stood for justice. Perhaps that is why so many of my friends in the Christian/ protestant/ evangelical camp (pick your descriptor) have so easily embraced social justice. We care about these issues! Yet, the approach that has been termed social justice is not rooted in a theology of biblical justice. It’s rooted in a humanistic worldview and it is pushing towards a cultural confrontation in which there doesn’t seem to be a peaceful resolution.

That’s why, Why Social Justice is Not Biblical Justice is a much needed book for our moment. Author Scott David Allen does an excellent job of demonstrating the differenced between social justice and biblical justice. He writes not just to critique what is often called social justice, but to compare it to a biblical worldview. He does a thorough job of bringing voices of individuals on all sides of the issue to the fore front to let them speak for themselves, often quoting at length. He exposes the essential worldview at work in social justice and critiques it from a biblical worldview. He is not afraid to call out the names of individuals who he believes have compromised their biblical integrity by either forsaking justice all together, or trying to hold in tension social justice and biblical justice (which he argues can’t be done).

If you are looking for a book to help put everything in a biblical perspective, this book is helpful. It was extremely helpful for me and it is a book that I plan on passing along to friends and others who have wrestled through the challenges of social justice. I’m currently reading books from a Christian perspective on all sides of the justice issue. I’ve ordered several from different backgrounds and perspectives. If you have a book that you think would be a good read or recommend on the topic of Justice from a Christian perspective, feel free to comment and let me know. (Our culture is shifting and that might not be a completely bad thing in a lot of ways, but we need to have real and honest conversations not just complaints we offer up on social media.