Christians who agree that injustice is real still disagree about how hard to fight it. Some push as hard as they can. Some step back from the fight altogether. Others, like attorney and AND Campaign co-founder Justin Giboney, argue for fighting hard while refusing to hate. This guide asks you to locate your own posture among these three and then examine what that posture is doing to you. The main practice is restating a view you reject so fairly that someone who holds it would accept your wording. You can use the guide alone or with a group. It draws on a Jude 3 Project conversation between Lisa Fields and Justin Giboney. Keep a Bible open to Romans 12.
Three postures, at full strength
Only one of these postures comes from the conversation itself. Giboney speaks for the third way in his own words. The first two are composites of arguments Christians commonly make. No single person is quoted for them. They are written as their best advocates would put them, so treat them as a starting point and test them against people you know who hold them.
Maximum resistance
The harm is real, and real people suffer it. Families lose health coverage. Neighbors are treated as though they have no dignity. People who see this ask why Christians should hold back. They point to the prophets who confronted kings to their faces, and to Jesus overturning tables in the temple. They notice that calls for “civility” usually come from people who are not paying the cost. On this view, restraint in the face of injustice is not neutral. It is a choice that leaves people exposed.
Withdrawal
On this view, the fight itself corrupts. Christians who throw themselves into it start to sound like the commentators on their side, then to think like them, and eventually to trust them more than Scripture. The church becomes tied to a party, and outsiders can no longer hear the gospel. Jesus told Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). The faithful response, then, is to step back and build up the church. Many who hold this view are not indifferent. They are worn out, or they have watched the fight hollow out someone they love.
The third way Giboney argues for
Giboney grants a great deal to resistance. “I need to be able to fight against injustice and the people who are being unjust with all the strength that I have, and I need to take it seriously,” he says, adding, “I should not be naive about how harmful wickedness can be.” Then he draws a line: “That doesn’t mean that I have to reciprocate the hate.” He calls the contempt many people treat as proof of passion “actually corrupting to the spirit.”
He also grants something to withdrawal. He agrees that a fight can corrupt the people fighting it: “you can be fighting against something evil and become evil. Not every resistance to evil is good.” He even makes room for stepping back: “sometimes when you’ve gone through it so much, you do have to step back and you do have to heal. And I think that’s fine too.” What he refuses is permanent, wholesale retreat. “I don’t see anywhere in the Bible where we can just give up on a whole group of people,” he says.
Where the three agree, and where they split
All three postures take injustice seriously. None of them is the view that Christians should not care.
The first split is over the question where does the corruption come from? Withdrawal answers that it comes from the fight itself, so the safest course is to leave. Resistance answers that it comes from complicity. Staying quiet while neighbors suffer trains Christians to be comfortable and to defer to whoever holds power, and that slowly deforms the soul. Giboney answers that it comes from the spirit in which you fight. The same protest, post or vote can come from love or from contempt, and he holds that the difference shapes both the person acting and the outcome.
The second split is over sides. Resistance says pick one. Giboney rejects fence-sitting, “I’m not saying play the fence and it doesn’t matter,” and his alternative is “Choose the right position.” He means you weigh each issue on its own terms, even when the right answer puts you alongside people you usually oppose. His example is Fred Shuttlesworth, who worked on a bus boycott and also pushed pastors to close a juke joint that was draining money from a neighborhood. Jude 3 teaches that our ultimate allegiance belongs to Christ and his kingdom, not to any party or politician. That teaching rules out being captured by a party, whichever posture you hold. It does not settle how hard to push. Faithful believers come down in different places on that question.
Evidence could narrow the disagreement. If anger at injustice reliably made people bitter no matter how they used it, withdrawal would have the stronger case. If restraint reliably got exploited and lost, resistance would. Giboney rests his case on history, a generation that fought hard without hating and won. “Loving your enemy and seeing even your opponent as redeemable doesn’t stop you from fighting hard,” he says. A critic could respond that the movement also succeeded because of court rulings, federal legislation and pressure from more militant voices, and that its own rhetoric was sometimes harsher than people remember. A group can test both accounts by reading Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches and sermons directly and asking where contempt does or does not appear.
Reading Romans 12:9-21 slowly
All three postures quote this passage, so read it in full before you use any single verse. Paul is writing to believers in Rome about how they treat one another and the people who mistreat them. He is describing a way of life, not laying out a political strategy.
Start with Romans 12:9: “Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.” Dissimulation is an old word for pretense. Notice that the same verse commands love and also hatred of evil. Then read verses 17-21. Verse 17 says, “Recompense to no man evil for evil.” Verse 18 adds, “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.” The phrase “as much as lieth in you” means as far as it depends on you. Paul admits that peace is not always possible. Verse 19 leaves vengeance to God. Verse 21 closes the section: “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.”
- Which posture is most uncomfortable with the command in verse 9 to abhor evil?
- Which is most uncomfortable with the ban in verse 17 on repaying evil for evil?
- Does verse 21 tell you to stop resisting evil, or does it tell you what to resist evil with?
One reading of verse 21 is that a person can be overcome by evil while still fighting it. That reading fits Giboney’s warning, but it is an interpretation. Test it against the whole passage.
Practice: restate before you respond
Choose the posture you find least convincing. Write a paragraph defending it as if you held it. Use its strongest reasons, its best Scripture and its most sympathetic motives. Then ask whether someone who holds that view would recognize what you wrote. If you know such a person and are willing, ask them to read it. Write your response only after that.
For groups: pair people who lean toward different postures. Each person reads the other’s restatement of their own view and corrects anything that misrepresents it. Hold off on debate until the corrections are done, so the culture war does not simply move into the room. Giboney’s point applies here: “It’s good to have some ideological diversity to make sure that it’s keeping us honest.”
What is your posture doing to you?
Your posture shows up in your habits as well as your views. Giboney offers three tests that apply to every position.
The rage test. “Any influencer or leader that keeps you enraged, you cannot trust,” he says, because “You’re easily manipulated when you’re enraged.” Think about the voices you listen to most on public questions. After time with them, are you clearer, or only angrier? This test does not condemn anger at real wrong. It asks whether anger has started steering you.
The neighbor test. “We can never allow our neighbors just to be political abstracts,” Giboney warns. Think of one specific person in your life who votes differently than you do. Can you describe what they care about without using a label?
The self-critique test. Giboney notes that Jesus lived among a people under Roman occupation and still corrected them, not only Rome. If an oppressed people still needed correction from within, then having been wronged does not exempt your own side from scrutiny. So ask yourself: can you name what your side gets wrong as easily as you name what the other side gets wrong? If one comes easily and the other does not, that gap tells you something about your posture.
Lisa Fields adds a test for withdrawal. For Black Christians, she says, “we don’t have the privilege of separating ourselves.” Daily life means working beside people who think differently. If your withdrawal depends on keeping a distance that many believers cannot keep, ask whether it is a calling or a refuge. If you stepped back because you were hurt, Giboney’s word about healing applies to you. The question is whether you are resting or have given up.
For resistance, Giboney warns that “we almost feel as if saying it online is doing something,” and then says, “You haven’t actually accomplished something just by saying that.” His alternative is local and specific: “go teach a kid how to read.”
Questions for discussion
- Which posture did you recognize as your own before you read the descriptions? Did writing the strongest case for another posture change how you see yours?
- Giboney locates the corruption in the spirit of the fight. Resistance locates it in complicity. What would count as evidence for one over the other?
- Romans 12:9 commands both love and hatred of evil. Under pressure, which half does your posture tend to drop?
- Where is the line between stepping back to heal and giving up on a group of people? How would you know which one you were doing?
- Name one issue where choosing the right position would put you at odds with people you usually agree with. What would it cost you?
- Read Matthew 5:44: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.” Which posture finds this verse easiest to quote, and which finds it hardest to practice?
One step this week
Pick the test that exposed you most and act on it. If it was the rage test, mute one voice for a week. If it was the neighbor test, have one unhurried conversation with the person you named. If it was the self-critique test, write down what your own side gets wrong, decide whether love requires you to say it to someone, and if it does, say it.