Pedro Arrupe was an amazingly dedicated and compassionate representative of Jesus Christ in the world. As a Jesuit in Japan before, during, and after World War II, he offered help and comfort to believers and unbelievers alike. He was imprisoned at the start of the war but his behavior was so admirable that the Japanese released him after only six months (perhaps there's a miracle to be found in that somewhere).
He was within the blast radius of the atomic bomb that dropped on Hiroshima and he and his fellow Jesuits converted their novitiate into a makeshift hospital. There they treated many of the survivors through great agony and grief.
I will not question his commitment to Christ, but as with Pope Francis last week I have an example of the false concept that is "social justice" clouding his perception and potentially distorting the message he presented.
Here is the quote from Pedro Arrupe I have chosen to address in my series about how "social justice" can separate us from our mission.
”To be just, is not enough to refrain from injustice. One must go further and refuse to play its game, substituting love for self interest as the driving force of society.” – Pedro Arrupe, S.J.
I cannot disagree with the idea that we must "refuse to play" the game of injustice. Cooperating with a system that mistreats individuals in any way that enables the system to continue doing so is wrong.
Arrupe encountered many dictatorships in Latin America that intentionally persecuted some of the people in their nations without just cause. He also encountered wealthy classes that as matter of policy prevented upward economic mobility.
He saw how his own Church seemed to encourage the imposition of a permanent underclass. The abuse of such scriptures out of context such as "blessed are the poor" and "it will be as difficult for the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle" come to mind.
Rich and poor alike are thus encouraged to believe that to lift anyone out of poverty is to make them less blessed. And as for the rich, they have a curse they must endure by being rich as they are, and if they should do anything that may make a poor person no longer poor, then they have only made things worse for themselves. Their only penance for their wealthy condition is to give generously to the Church which then in turn mainly only comforts the poor rather than doing anything that may improve their economics.
One example of the problem can be seen in Mexico today. Decades after Arrupe's death things are little if any better. The North American Free Trade Agreement was supposed to improve economic opportunity in Mexico, a democratic nation, but the oppressive attitudes of rich and poor alike have worked to prevent the social change the also late Jack Kemp envisioned when he championed NAFTA. The poor remain poor and any thought of allowing them an opportunity to become middle class seems to be seen as anathema, by both the rich and the poor. So Mexico's social problems as regards economic mobility remain intact thanks to an over-use and misuse of "blessed are the poor". It's a perverse irony.
In light of this it's easy to see why Arrupe might have become involved in liberation theology, but there's a problem with liberation theology and its doctrine of "social justice". It's right there in the quote. I'll emphasize the part for you.
”To be just, is not enough to refrain from injustice. One must go further and refuse to play its game, substituting love for self interest as the driving force of society.”
Like a good bridge player with the ace, king, queen in trump, I'll start with the high card, "the driving force of society". What is the driving force of society? When Jesus walked the Earth did He address any "driving force of society?" He no doubt saw Himself as a driving force, but of what, society? Like so many of these "social justice" distortions it all falls apart when considered in the light of the greatest commandment where it says "love your neighbor as yourself". Especially in the larger context of the part of loving God with all of our being, our individual beings.
He didn't come to save The United States of America or the United Mexican States or any other political entity or society. He came to save individuals. He commanded us to spread the message to all nations, but by that he didn't mean the Roman Empire, he meant the people of Rome, the people of Italy, the people of Greece, etc. I know for some this may seem like a fine distinction but it isn't.
Who wants to be loved as a tiny subset of a larger set defined by politics? Who wants to hear someone say, "I love you because you're a citizen of the United States"? That wouldn't be very personal, would it? We want to be loved by people who actually know us as individuals, know our faults, and still love us.
The biggest problem with what Arrupe said in this quote is that we as Christians take our "eyes off the prize" when we start to see our ministry in terms of being a driving force for society, rather than a transforming influence on individuals. We're simply not here for society beyond the most temporal requirements to participate in it. We should be a source of conscience and guidance to society but not a driving force of it. The individuals we encounter, no matter what arbitrary set they are grouped into, they are our calling.
To reinforce my point I will quote a very renowned non-Christian.
“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.” – Mahatma Gandhi
The distorted ministry of "social justice" makes too much of money and too little of power, when power is the true root temptation. When Timothy 6:10 says, "the love of money is the root of all evil" it spoke in a historical context where what we call money today didn't exist. Money in Timothy's time was a store of value that a very few had and it could not be devalued. To possess it was to possess power in whatever form it could buy for you. It was power in its purest form. Today's money is common and little more than a means of exchange, and is devalued almost every single day. This devaluing is done along with many other things in part to prevent it from becoming power. A paraphrase of Timothy 6:10 replacing "money" with "power" could very arguably be a translation much closer to the author's intent.
But even if we stick to the literal here, logic still directs us inevitably to the love of power being at least part of the problem. Why would someone love money, if not to use it to obtain things including favors over others. Why would they love money and not in turn love what it gets them? Perhaps the reason it doesn't literally say "the love of power" is because money is potential power and not just actualized power. So thus the love of potential power and not just power achieved is the root of all evil.
And that lands squarely on one of the major pitfalls of "social justice". It leads to a pursuit of power over individuals instead of actually reaching individuals as individuals. This pursuit of power not only tempts us away from the message but directly into the evils of political oppression. We need to make sure in our hearts that "the power of love overrules the love of power". To do that we need to abandon the false doctrine called "social justice".
And now I'll end on the part that says, "substituting love for self-interest". If what Jesus said about loving others as ourselves is true then we shouldn't separate love and self-interest in any way that would make substitution of one for the other possible. It is only out of an understanding of how we love ourselves that we even know what love for others looks like.
Perhaps he meant to sub out self-interest as in being self-sacrificing, which is noble if done for the right reasons (love would be a right reason, but lack of self-worth would be a wrong one). If so, then I offer up no argument, but if by that he meant to attack the philosophical underpinnings of pro-free-market policies, then of course I must object. But I suspect he didn't entirely mean either, or at least many of those fond of this quote don't interpret it so. I suspect many of them actually believe Jesus Christ died on the cross so that we would work to bridge the economic gap between the "the rich" and "the poor" and do so through the pursuit of political power.
In other words, thanks to this monstrosity called "social justice" many Christians believe they can justify entertaining the love of power and allow the power of love to become an after-thought. And an after-thought is something love must become within "social justice" because you cannot love others as yourself and treat them as subsets of politically defined groups.
I'd say it seems like I'm beating a dead horse, but unfortunately this evil pony isn't dead yet (There's an ancient Greek pun in there somewhere).
He was within the blast radius of the atomic bomb that dropped on Hiroshima and he and his fellow Jesuits converted their novitiate into a makeshift hospital. There they treated many of the survivors through great agony and grief.
I will not question his commitment to Christ, but as with Pope Francis last week I have an example of the false concept that is "social justice" clouding his perception and potentially distorting the message he presented.
Here is the quote from Pedro Arrupe I have chosen to address in my series about how "social justice" can separate us from our mission.
”To be just, is not enough to refrain from injustice. One must go further and refuse to play its game, substituting love for self interest as the driving force of society.” – Pedro Arrupe, S.J.
I cannot disagree with the idea that we must "refuse to play" the game of injustice. Cooperating with a system that mistreats individuals in any way that enables the system to continue doing so is wrong.
Arrupe encountered many dictatorships in Latin America that intentionally persecuted some of the people in their nations without just cause. He also encountered wealthy classes that as matter of policy prevented upward economic mobility.
He saw how his own Church seemed to encourage the imposition of a permanent underclass. The abuse of such scriptures out of context such as "blessed are the poor" and "it will be as difficult for the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle" come to mind.
Rich and poor alike are thus encouraged to believe that to lift anyone out of poverty is to make them less blessed. And as for the rich, they have a curse they must endure by being rich as they are, and if they should do anything that may make a poor person no longer poor, then they have only made things worse for themselves. Their only penance for their wealthy condition is to give generously to the Church which then in turn mainly only comforts the poor rather than doing anything that may improve their economics.
One example of the problem can be seen in Mexico today. Decades after Arrupe's death things are little if any better. The North American Free Trade Agreement was supposed to improve economic opportunity in Mexico, a democratic nation, but the oppressive attitudes of rich and poor alike have worked to prevent the social change the also late Jack Kemp envisioned when he championed NAFTA. The poor remain poor and any thought of allowing them an opportunity to become middle class seems to be seen as anathema, by both the rich and the poor. So Mexico's social problems as regards economic mobility remain intact thanks to an over-use and misuse of "blessed are the poor". It's a perverse irony.
In light of this it's easy to see why Arrupe might have become involved in liberation theology, but there's a problem with liberation theology and its doctrine of "social justice". It's right there in the quote. I'll emphasize the part for you.
”To be just, is not enough to refrain from injustice. One must go further and refuse to play its game, substituting love for self interest as the driving force of society.”
Like a good bridge player with the ace, king, queen in trump, I'll start with the high card, "the driving force of society". What is the driving force of society? When Jesus walked the Earth did He address any "driving force of society?" He no doubt saw Himself as a driving force, but of what, society? Like so many of these "social justice" distortions it all falls apart when considered in the light of the greatest commandment where it says "love your neighbor as yourself". Especially in the larger context of the part of loving God with all of our being, our individual beings.
He didn't come to save The United States of America or the United Mexican States or any other political entity or society. He came to save individuals. He commanded us to spread the message to all nations, but by that he didn't mean the Roman Empire, he meant the people of Rome, the people of Italy, the people of Greece, etc. I know for some this may seem like a fine distinction but it isn't.
Who wants to be loved as a tiny subset of a larger set defined by politics? Who wants to hear someone say, "I love you because you're a citizen of the United States"? That wouldn't be very personal, would it? We want to be loved by people who actually know us as individuals, know our faults, and still love us.
The biggest problem with what Arrupe said in this quote is that we as Christians take our "eyes off the prize" when we start to see our ministry in terms of being a driving force for society, rather than a transforming influence on individuals. We're simply not here for society beyond the most temporal requirements to participate in it. We should be a source of conscience and guidance to society but not a driving force of it. The individuals we encounter, no matter what arbitrary set they are grouped into, they are our calling.
To reinforce my point I will quote a very renowned non-Christian.
“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.” – Mahatma Gandhi
The distorted ministry of "social justice" makes too much of money and too little of power, when power is the true root temptation. When Timothy 6:10 says, "the love of money is the root of all evil" it spoke in a historical context where what we call money today didn't exist. Money in Timothy's time was a store of value that a very few had and it could not be devalued. To possess it was to possess power in whatever form it could buy for you. It was power in its purest form. Today's money is common and little more than a means of exchange, and is devalued almost every single day. This devaluing is done along with many other things in part to prevent it from becoming power. A paraphrase of Timothy 6:10 replacing "money" with "power" could very arguably be a translation much closer to the author's intent.
But even if we stick to the literal here, logic still directs us inevitably to the love of power being at least part of the problem. Why would someone love money, if not to use it to obtain things including favors over others. Why would they love money and not in turn love what it gets them? Perhaps the reason it doesn't literally say "the love of power" is because money is potential power and not just actualized power. So thus the love of potential power and not just power achieved is the root of all evil.
And that lands squarely on one of the major pitfalls of "social justice". It leads to a pursuit of power over individuals instead of actually reaching individuals as individuals. This pursuit of power not only tempts us away from the message but directly into the evils of political oppression. We need to make sure in our hearts that "the power of love overrules the love of power". To do that we need to abandon the false doctrine called "social justice".
And now I'll end on the part that says, "substituting love for self-interest". If what Jesus said about loving others as ourselves is true then we shouldn't separate love and self-interest in any way that would make substitution of one for the other possible. It is only out of an understanding of how we love ourselves that we even know what love for others looks like.
Perhaps he meant to sub out self-interest as in being self-sacrificing, which is noble if done for the right reasons (love would be a right reason, but lack of self-worth would be a wrong one). If so, then I offer up no argument, but if by that he meant to attack the philosophical underpinnings of pro-free-market policies, then of course I must object. But I suspect he didn't entirely mean either, or at least many of those fond of this quote don't interpret it so. I suspect many of them actually believe Jesus Christ died on the cross so that we would work to bridge the economic gap between the "the rich" and "the poor" and do so through the pursuit of political power.
In other words, thanks to this monstrosity called "social justice" many Christians believe they can justify entertaining the love of power and allow the power of love to become an after-thought. And an after-thought is something love must become within "social justice" because you cannot love others as yourself and treat them as subsets of politically defined groups.
I'd say it seems like I'm beating a dead horse, but unfortunately this evil pony isn't dead yet (There's an ancient Greek pun in there somewhere).
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