Jesus and the Call to Justice
How the Gospels Portray a Faith That Acts in the World
1 John 3:18
Let us love, not in word or speech, but in deed and truth.
Activists work for social or political change. While the Gospels tell us that Jesus was peace-loving, they also tell us that he spoke for change. Born to bring a new era, Jesus worked to champion justice for the marginalized and downtrodden, the maligned and condemned, the disabused, disempowered, and dispossessed. He disavowed oppression and worked toward justice for “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40). Jesus spoke against hypocrisy, iniquity, and economic corruption, including anymal enterprises: In all four Gospels, Jesus drives anymal enterprises out of the temple; in three of the Gospels, in righteous anger at anymal enterprises in the temple, he also overturns chairs and/or tables. Jesus defied social norms and the expectations of those in power. On behalf of God, Jesus worked on Earth to bring change: Jesus was an activist.
John 2: 14-15
In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of money changers and overturned their tables.
Matthew 21: 12-13
Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a den of robbers.”
Jesus drove profiteers and their exploited anymals out of the temple. (“Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple,” Dirck van Baburen, Netherlands, 17th century, Wikimedia Commons)
Scripture reminds the faithful that the Earth is God’s and that anymals are God’s. All life and all of creation is God’s alone. As humble creatures of God, and as God’s servants, all that has been made is worthy of our respect and protection. It is unpleasant to face cruelty, but it is our responsibility to know what we finance with our purchases: Anymal enterprises (fishing, laboratories, agriculture, clothing, leather, and entertainment) trade life for profit, exploiting anymals from forced impregnation and tight confinement to premature death.
In the Summa Theologica, theologian Thomas Aquinas quotes early church leader John Chrysostom (4th century): “He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins.” He speaks to the faithful: Where injustice is concerned, a “lack of anger is a sin.” Core ethics call Christian activists to righteous anger against the desecration of God’s creatures for profit. If there was ever a cry for mercy and righteous rebellion, it comes from the dark corners of anymal exploitation.
James 1:22
But be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.
An activist rescues a lamb from dairy, meat, and hide industries. (We Animals Media)