Social Justice Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: A Christian Response

One of my favorite graduate assistants, from a handful of years ago, grew up in Sweden, where she was raised in a Christian home by very loving parents. I met her parents upon her first graduation where they gave me a book entitled “Jerusalem” by Selma Lagerlöf, which presented a fictional account of a humble group of Swedes from the 19^th century who initiated a trek to Jerusalem to “walk in the way of the Lord.” My graduate assistant’s mother is a Christian priest.

Despite her bucolic upbringing, my graduate assistant encountered much evil following high school from relative strangers in Sweden. For her privacy, I won’t disclose the details here. Suffice it to say her experiences may have contributed to her present agnosticism.

Changes in the Swedish culture over the past few decades may have also contributed: in 2016, the Gallup poll found that 55 percent of Swedes considered themselves non-religious and 18 percent self-reported as atheists. Between 2010 and 2019, Statistica.com found the share of people who believe in God in Sweden decreased from 47 percent to 36 percent, making Sweden the least religious Western nation in the world.

In the years she and I spent together, we spent hours working through her trials, sharing so many of our stories while trying to make sense of it all. Her parents jokingly referred to me as her “doctor” in a way that suggested I was helping her comb through the psychological tangles that tried to bind her. I gave her a copy of “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis one day, thinking it could help her as it helped me. I don’t think she’s read it yet.

I didn’t expect the gift she presented to me one day, nor did I expect the tears to follow. The silver bracelet had the following words engraved:

“Everybody needs the light you have. Let your light so shine…Matt 5:16.”

As children of the light, we’re empowered by the source of our light to overcome the darkness of this world. Through our light we can further see through the manipulations and malevolence of the principalities and powers of the spiritual world.

As we watch Sweden and the rest of the West slide further and further away from God, we are compelled to identify root causes. Many were initiated in the 19^th century under the tutelage of atheists such as Nietzsche and Marx. Their disdain for Christianity and its core tenets of loving the Lord above all else, loving our neighbors as ourselves, valuing the individual over the collective, and respecting human life, liberties, property, and justice contributed to their rebellious writings. Today, we have abundant evidence of the ways their ideas have cracked and corrupted the Christian foundations of the West.

The Naked Communist

In 1958, former FBI agent Cleon Skousen outlined 45 communist goals in his book “The Naked Communist.” On January 10, 1963, Congressman Albert S. Herlong Jr. of Florida presented these goals into the U.S. congressional record. Here are some: “get control of the schools;” “gain control of all school newspapers;” “use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations that are under communist attack;” “gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures;” “infiltrate the press;” “continue discrediting American culture by degrading all form of artistic expression;” “promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art;” “eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them ‘censorship’ and a violation of free speech and free press;” “break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity;” “present homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity as ‘normal, natural, and healthy;’” “infiltrate the church and replace revealed religion with ‘social’ religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a ‘religious crutch;’” “eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the grounds that it violates the principle of ‘separation of church and state;’” “support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture – education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.,” “infiltrate and gain control of more unions;” “infiltrate and gain control of big business;” “discredit the family as an institution;” “emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents;” and “create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition.”

These ideas have been exacerbated through social media, which is largely run by liberal and/or communist tech giants such as Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Jack Dorsey of Twitter, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google and YouTube, and China’s Zhang Yiming of ByteDance (TikTok). Social media platforms are notorious time-wasters, which often serve as a means to unify and perpetuate chaos through movements that have been ironically mislabeled as “social justice.”

What is social justice? On its face value, the term implies the noble idea of just, fair, and equal behavior or treatment for society. Some who label themselves as “social justice warriors” believe they’re doing so in a very honest way to address the West’s remnant right-wingers, racists, and misogynists. However, we have some evidence to suggest that the social justice warrior movement has been hijacked by a very organized group of trained Marxists with a clearly defined agenda. They capitalize on good causes, such as standing up to police brutality against George Floyd, to foment discontent, riots, thefts, and chaos.

Furthermore, those who control social media and much internet traffic now control the way we define terms such as social justice. Google defines it as “justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.” This definition fits snugly within the Marxist plan to redistribute wealth “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Such ideas are contrary to basic human motivations, expectations, and Biblical teachings that hard work should be fairly compensated and idle hands are the devil’s workshop.[1]

Social justice warriors’ (SJW) goals include dismantling the patriarchy and any power structures in society. SJW movements often call for white men to take a back seat to anyone who can claim they’ve been oppressed. Victimhood status is revered, while heroism is often ignored. SJW goals often stand in opposition to the equality of opportunities for all, which is embedded in the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. SJWs advocate for pro-choice rather than pro-life ideas, identity politics, and the subjugation of anyone who doesn’t have a “lived experience” as a victim of society.

Is subordinating the right to life of the unborn to appease a mother’s desire for convenience “social justice?” Are movements to “defund the police,” which will inevitably lead to greater crime and chaos “social justice?” Are movements to discredit the traditional family unit in favor of single-parent homes within an impoverished village “social justice?” Are movements to discredit Biblical teachings, the churches, and Christian moral codes “social justice?” These bowel movements are just the tip of the communist iceberg that has been lurking beneath the surface of our Christian moral foundations over the past two centuries. Is it not enough that the ideas of the communistic atheist regimes of the USSR, China, and Cambodia led to the untimely deaths of over 120 million in the 20th century? Can we not flush this grisly excrement from our society once and for all?  

Does it even matter? Communists often endorse an atheistic worldview in which we’re just lucky beneficiaries of undirected evolution. But are we merely dancing to our DNA in a universe with no purpose, no meaning, and just blind indifference (as famous atheists such as Richard Dawkins claim)? As Christians, we know better than that. But we must stay alert to what’s happening in the world around us. As the apostle Paul said, our enemy is scouring the earth, looking for ways to devour us. Let’s let our light so shine to expose the reprobate minds of the dark spirits that surround us.   

Thank you for your time.

SJ Thomason is a professor of management at an accredited U.S. university who publishes frequent blogs on Christianity, politics, ethics, and morality. Her views are her own.

If you enjoy readings such as this one, please subscribe to Christian-apologist.com. If you would like to watch videos on these topics and more, please subscribe to the following YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ChristianApologist. Cheers!

---

[1] Compare with Proverbs 16:27-29; Matthew 25:14-30; and 2 Thessalonians 3:6-18.