The Mark Dever/Jim Wallis Interview on Justice

Skye Jethani: Mark, if a young person from your congregation told you she felt the church should do something to combat the racial injustices evident in Washington D.C., how would you respond to her?

Mark Dever: I would start with theology. And I would want to see two clear guardrails in place. First, I’d want to know she understands that we’re all made in the image of God. So she must understand everybody is valuable. There’s no dismissing people because they’re not deemed to be productive members of society.

On the other side is the guardrail of depravity. I want her to understand that people are broken, they’re sinful, they’ve rebelled against God. If Christians don’t see that, their expectations of what people can do will be too high.

Assuming she has this biblical anthropology, then I ask this question: Is this something that is uniquely the role of the church, or is this something that all humans made in the image of God are to be concerned about? Is this something an agnostic, a Muslim, or a Jew cares about? Racism, for example, is not merely a Christian concern. It is a human concern. I’m a little reluctant to think that a local church is the right instrument to be devoting itself to solving that kind of problem in society as a whole. That’s a community-wide issue, not a church issue.

Now, I would be delighted for an individual Christian to be involved in addressing racism in the community. It is especially appropriate for Christians to be involved because of what God has done in Christ. And we would certainly be supportive, as a local church, of individuals doing that. But I would not want to narrow the issue of racism to be something the church itself is called to do, because it’s not just Christians who are supposed to be involved in fighting racism. It’s a human concern. That would also be true of health, education, economic, environmental, or governmental issues.

So you’d encourage individual Christians to engage, but you’d be reluctant for the church itself to get involved. What about passages in the New Testament speaking of the church caring for the poor, the orphans, and the widows in the community? Wasn’t that a church-wide effort and not just individual service?

Dever: I don’t think I see that in the Bible. I certainly see the local church caring for the poor among its own number. We’re worse than infidels if we don’t do that. We have a special responsibility to make sure our brothers and sisters in Christ don’t starve and are cared for. Beyond that it is appropriate to care for the poor outside the church, but that is something for all humans made in the image of God to do, and Christians can certainly help. But the church isn’t called to solve societal ills.