Review: Generous Justice - Naomi Hastings

If I had to use one adjective to describe Tim Keller’s Generous Justice, I’d pick ‘helpful’. For a long time, I’ve cared deeply about living justly, but had been hesitant about joining a society like Just Love for several reasons. This book was such a helpful guide to convincing me why I should.

Why and how?

Keller breaks his book into 8 chapters, not including the introduction. Although he does spend a chapter or two discussing how Christians should be actively seeking to do justice, he takes several chapters to detail the numerous reasons why. (A wise move, I’d say, since most readers approaching the topic will probably already have various ideas about how.) I’d also argue that the whole book is peppered with specific examples of how Christians can practically pursue justice.

Old Testament

Firstly, Keller directs us to the Old Testament, where God lays out his plans for his chosen people to be a just society, so that his glory and good character would be revealed to the world (p 9). The release from debt every 7 years, gleaning, tithing, and the year of Jubilee are some principles that the Israelites are charged with, which show God’s concern for justice for the weak and vulnerable. The text is clear that we shouldn’t be dismissive of such Old Testament laws, since the Mosaic laws of social justice are grounded in God’s character, and that never changes (p 20). I found it so interesting that Keller described gleaning as such a beautiful concept. Instead of giving the poor random handouts, gleaning ‘enabled the poor to provide for themselves without relying on benevolence’ (p 27). We’re also reminded that all people are made in the image of God, and so, as CS Lewis puts it, ‘there are no ordinary people’. ‘The image of God,’ says Keller, ‘comes with it the right not to be mistreated or harmed’ (p 84).

New Testament

Through his illustration of the parable of the good Samaritan, Keller shows us that social justice should often be costly to us. Particularly for us as students, we may object to helping others because we feel we have nothing to spare. In the parable however, the Samaritan however cared for the Jew’s material and economic needs at his own expense and risk. To summarise his point here, Keller quotes Jonathan Edwards, who says ‘If we are never obliged to relieve others’ burdens but only when we can do it without burdening ourselves, then how do we bear our neighbour’s burdens, when we bear no burden at all?’.

Keller also points us to Jesus - shocker - and the way he not only taught us to care for the poor and vulnerable in society, but led by example. The Son of God associated with those that no self-respecting Jew would go near. In fact, Keller shows us that although it’s not bad for us to be hospitable to our friends and peers, Jesus wants us to give preference to the poor and needy (Luke 14, p 46). Keller’s final, most striking, point is that Jesus himself was the victim of the biggest injustice (p 186-187). He was poor, homeless, hated, rejected, and killed. Jesus came and bore the burden of sin on himself. God doesn’t distance himself from injustice. And nor should we.

Serving with non-Christians?

Perhaps the most helpful part of the book was the way Keller addressed some of my reservations, particularly about joining non-Christian groups seeking different aspects of justice - e.g. groups tackling climate change, animal cruelty, fast fashion etc. Because secular groups like these aren’t built upon a Christian understanding of the world, I feared joining one would automatically mean I was aligning myself with unbiblical values. Keller’s argument against this is grounded in ‘common grace’ - the fact that, regardless of people’s beliefs, God scatters gifts of wisdom, goodness, justice and beauty across all of humanity. So we shouldn’t think that it’s only Bible-believing Christians who will care about justice and be willing to sacrifice in order to bring it about (p 161). When serving alongside other non-Christians, we should embrace our common cultural values, which we have because of common grace. We don’t confuse this with promoting pluralism or seeking to be inoffensive. Instead, we should be proactively vocal about how the gospel is motivating us, and pray for opportunities to talk about the beautiful, generous God who desires beautiful, generous justice in the world.