Check Your Lens

Seeing the world through a single theory is tempting, but will ultimately lead us astray

Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash

The last few months have been a revealing time as major cities are filled with thousands of people protesting, not the single greatest attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust, but against Israel. Can you imagine this, in any other scenario, where an explicitly racial attack against a people group by an organization that doesn’t hide their intention to kill every Jewish person in the world? You cannot imagine it. So how is it that so many who claim to work for justice (a good idea) are so brazenly and loudly anti-semitic?

Hatred of Jewish people is the world’s oldest acceptable prejudice, but at this moment it’s often espoused by folks who claim to stand for the vulnerable. I believe one reason we see this is because these people chanting a genocidal slogan “From the River to the Sea”, a slogan that champions the wiping out of Israel, have subscribed to a theory that looks at the world through a single lens called critical race theory or successor ideology. I’m not an expert, but some friends have done some good work on this. I recommend Critical Dilemma by Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer. Tim Keller has also done great work. Essentially, CRT or successor ideology views the world only through the lens of the oppressed/oppressor framework. Everyone who lives is in one of these categories. Many social justice folks see Israel and Jewish people as oppressors and the Palestinians as the oppressed. To be sure, the plight of the Palestinian people is deplorable, due largely to leadership by Hamas. And the state of Israel, like any government, is not above criticism. But if you have the monocausal lens of CRT, Jewish people are the bad guys and Hamas are freedom fighters, history and facts notwithstanding. If a people group fits in the category of “the oppressor” they can do no right and no evil done to them is unjust. If they are in the category of “the oppressed” they essentially have a blank check to do whatever they want.

The truth is that Scripture does have categories for oppressed and oppressors. The people of God in Egypt were oppressed, marginalized, and enslaved. Pharoah was an oppressor. God saw the distress of his people and delivered them. The prophets, both minor and major, often judged the nations for their predation of the vulnerable.

Yet, even those suffering under oppression in Scripture were not treated as if they had no agency as if they possessed no accountability for their actions. Nor are those doing the oppressing in a fixed state where they can’t experience genuine repentance for their sins (Zacheus, Paul, Nineveh). One of the distinctive of the gospel is that both the powerful and the powerless are sinners in need of a Savior (Galatians 3:28). What’s more, oppressor and oppressed, in Scripture, are not assigned based on ethnicity, but on actual actions at the moment.

There are oppressors in the world. And there are oppressed people. But this is not the only thing that is true about people, about the world, about history, about injustice. The folks in the street chanting “From the river to the sea” unironically, while claiming to be on the side of the vulnerable do so because they only see the world through the single lens of this successor ideology. They believe they are standing for justice, but are championing injustice.

This is not merely a problem for those who have accepted ideas like critical race theory or successor ideology. It can also be a problem for those who oppose it—if we too make the same mistake of seeing the world only through a monocausal lens of “anti-woke.” Much of what the anti-woke movement espouses is true. It opposes these fixed categories of racial essentialism. It opposes the ridiculousness of trigger warnings, safe spaces, etc. It opposes assigning fixed categories of oppressed and oppressor to people groups. But at times the term “woke” serves as an ever-expanding term that can describe good things. I’ve heard some describe racial reconciliation—the work for genuine unity and harmony between people of differing ethnic backgrounds as envisioned by Ephesians 4 and Revelation 5—as woke. I’ve heard the desire to speak truth in love—a Christian value—described as woke. I’ve heard the concept of systemic sin—a concept Scripture teaches consistently—as woke. I’ve heard support for Ukraine’s right to defend itself against Russia as woke. This makes the same mistake as those who preach successor ideology. I’m not saying this is a symmetrical comparison, but only that we should be wise about our worldview and precise with our polemics.

Christians should reject seeing the world only through a single lens. For some, a bad experience in a church leads to a permanent anti-evangelical posture and reflexive opposition to everything evangelicals believe. Some see the world through the lens of a bad experience with a boss, a teacher, or a particular institution and they allow it to color everything they see.

This brings us, then, to the only single lens by which we can accurately see the world: the Christian story that both diagnoses who God is, why he made human beings, why humans and the world are broken, and how God’s sending of Jesus restores human hearts, reverses sin’s curse, and is renewing the world. This lens helps us see both sin as deeply personal and for which God holds us accountable and it helps us see sin as affecting, at times, governments and systems. It helps us understand two realities at the same time: there are social factors that create fertile soil for evil and evil begins in the human heart. It helps us understand how people can be both oppressed and oppressors and how our categories and classifications are often helpful but inevitably unable to fully diagnose the human condition. The full, robust, holistic Christian story helps us resist tribalism and seek to find our identity first as image-bearers of the Almighty and first as redeemed sons or daughters of the king. It allows us to both lament evil and sin and death and “be of good cheer” because Christ has overcome the world. It allows us to work for true, biblical. justice, while also seeing ourselves as sinners and not saviors. It allows us to work for good in the world, but understand genuine renewal will only come when Christ finally and fully makes all things new. It allows us to see an opportunity for redemption, for grace, for forgiveness, for new life.

Ultimately, seeing the world through the lens of the story the Bible tells about the world helps us act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8). And even when we work to see the world through a Christian lens, our vision is obscured by our sinfulness and finitude. We see, as Paul says, through a glass darkly ( 1 Corinthians 13:12). So we need wisdom (Proverbs 9:10).

Reminder, my book, The Characters of Creation is a great way to start the New Year. It’s an in-depth study of the first eleven chapters of Genesis.