Is Christianity singularly responsible for injustice?

Tim Keller's book The Reason for God has a chapter that deals with one more complaint aimed at Christians -- the church is responsible for so much injustice. People question why so many non--Christians live better lives than Christians, why the institutional church supported war, injustice, and violence over the years, and why Christian churches have so many smug, self-righteous, dangerous fanatics. The author looks at all three of these criticisms.

Keller tackles first the problem of character flaws in Christians. He says every good act of wisdom, justice, and beauty is given by God to all humanity, regardless of religious conviction, race, gender, or any other attribute. He does this to make the world a better place. So, non-Christians can live decent lives. Secondly, Christian theology teaches that even Christians are seriously flawed people. Our moral efforts are too feeble and false to ever deserve salvation. It's not surprising to find broken individuals in church.

Growth in character and changes in behavior occur gradually after a person becomes a Christian. We don't come to God after we clean up our lives. So, as a result, "the church will be filled with immature and broken people who still have a long way to go emotionally, morally, spiritually."

Keller then takes on the complaint that historically the church has supported violence. Critics note how Christian nations institutionalized imperialism, violence, and oppression. But, Keller notes, governments which rejected organized religion and belief in God (France in the 18th century, Communist countries in particular) each produced massive violence against its own people without the influence of religion. The author says violence in the 20th century was inspired as much by secularism as by moral absolutism. His conclusion is that there is some violent impulse that is so deep in our hearts that it expresses itself regardless of what the beliefs are in a particular society.

Keller's third point is in reaction to the complaint that Christians are self-righteous fanatics. But the Christian message is that we are accepted by God by sheer grace, not because of what we do but because of what Christ did for us. Keller says this is profoundly humbling. So, the people who are fanatics and smug "are not so because they are too committed to the gospel but because they're not committed to it enough." He thinks the solution is not to tone down and moderate Christianity, but to understand more fully what it means to be a Christian. Jesus himself criticized religious people, notably the Pharisees. He ripped into their legalism, self-righteousness, bigotry, and love of wealth and power. Self-righteous religion is always marked by insensitivity to issues of social justice because these people feel superior to others. Instead, true faith is marked by profound concern for the underprivileged. The Bible, according to Keller, "teaches us that our treatment of them equals our treatment of God."

Keller looks at one historical stain on Christian history -- the African slave trade. He notes that even though slavery existed around the world in every human culture over the years, it was the Christians who first came to the conclusion that it was wrong. When Europeans set up slavery in the New World, they did so in opposition to papal pleading. Keller brings this up because he says Christianity has a self-correcting apparatus--we get our list of virtues with which we can criticize sins of the church from within the Christian faith itself.

Another example of this is the civil rights movement in the United States. It was not a political or primarily a religious and spiritual movement -- the Christian faith of African-Americans empowered them to insist on justice despite strong opposition to their demands. Martin Luther King, Jr. often invoked God's moral law and Scripture to call white Christians to be more true to their own beliefs and to finally understand what the Bible really teaches.

I think Keller has it right. There's no doubt that the church has done terrible things, but look at the alternative. Many more lives were lost in the 20th century because of secularism, not Christianity. Today the smug, self-righteous people often occupy the highest positions in intellectual, atheistic circles; they think the human race is perfectible and that they have all the answers. Christians, on the other hand, know their own failings and cry out, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me."