President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize for giving speeches? Former Sen. John Danforth of Missouri seemed rightly exasperated: “What has he done? It’s a joke.” I hope Jon Stewart and Saturday Night Live don’t chicken out on this one. Lech Walesa, the brave leader of Solidarity in Poland, who won the prize in 1983, said it well: Obama “has no contribution so far.”

Theodore Roosevelt won the prize in 1906 for some action: mediating talks that ended the 1905 Russo-Japanese War. Woodrow Wilson’s post-World War I efforts contributed to the advent of World War II, but at least he won the prize in 1919 for some action, starting the League of Nations. One joke I heard: Obama will win the Heisman Trophy because he’s talked about setting up a college football playoff system.

The awards to Jimmy Carter in 2002, Al Gore in 2007, and Obama now have cheapened the Prize and exposed it for what it represents: the views of several left-wing Norwegian politicians. In any event, it will be interesting to see what Obama does with the $1 million award: With the hyperinflation his spending policies may bring, the award could be $1 trillion in 10 years.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Last Saturday, WORLD editor in chief Marvin Olasky spoke at the Desiring God 2009 National Conference: With Calvin in the Theater of God. If you were unable to be in Minneapolis last weekend, you can view Marvin’s message, “Calvin on the Christian Meaning of Public Life,” below.

Marvin also participated in a panel discussion that day, and it also can be viewed below.

To view or listen to the other speakers at last weekend’s Desiring God conference, click here.

As part of the Distinguished Visitors Series at The King’s College in New York, Mark Whitacre, whose life story is told in the new Matt Damon movie The Informant!, participated in a Q&A session hosted by WORLD editor in chief Marvin Olasky:

Editor’s Note: For more, read Marvin’s interview with Whitacre in the current issue of WORLD and a review of the movie The Informant! by Megan Basham.

One of the favorite words of President Obama and his supporters is “justice,” often combined with the adjective “social.” We hear calls for government-imposed economic redistribution through taxes and various kinds of welfare, and advocates of same-sex marriage also talk about “social justice.”

Education for “social justice” is now very big in public schools. At least three recent books push for teaching “social justice” even in math classes, which means spending less time learning the multiplication table and more time learning about the uneven distribution of wealth in the United States. (But isn’t one of the greatest injustices leaving kids without enough math knowledge to get a decent job and begin redistributing some money to themselves through hard work?)

Do Christians have an alternative? We should begin by asking, “What is justice?”—and that question should drive us first neither to Aristotle nor to Bill Ayers, but to the Bible. One observation: Over 50 times God’s inspired writers link the Hebrew word mishpat, “justice,” with the Hebrew word tzedek, “righteous.” They regularly declare that a central purpose of justice is to increase righteousness, as Isaiah 26:9 states: “When your justice is present, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.”

The Bible also emphasizes justice between individuals. Psalm 112:5 praises the person who “deals generously and lends, who conducts his affairs with justice.” Jeremiah 22:13 pronounces: “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing and does not give him his wages.” Justice isn’t charity—recipients pay back loans and work—but it is generally interpersonal rather than collective: We might call it “relational justice” rather than “social justice.”

Kings have an influence—they can walk in God’s way and tear down the high places of paganism—but righteousness still builds from the bottom up. Children who receive just treatment from their parents usually don’t grow up hating them. When husbands and wives act righteously toward each other, bitterness (of the sort that fueled the feminist movement) rarely takes root. Employers and employees who act righteously toward each other are less likely to feel the need to lobby or bribe officials to win by governmental force.

Deuteronomy 24:13 emphasizes person-to-person justice: A well-off person loaning money to a poor person is to “restore to him the pledge as the sun sets, that he may sleep in his cloak and bless you. And it shall be righteousness for you before the Lord your God.” We should rejoice over justice because it points to God, as in Proverbs 21:15, “When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.”

The justice-righteousness connection shows why entitlements that go equally to the reliable and to the profligate, whether rich or poor, are wrong. Isaiah 26:10 states, “If favor is shown to the wicked, he does not learn righteousness; in the land of uprightness he deals corruptly and does not see the majesty of the Lord.” Ezekiel 13:22 shows that injustice works against faith in God: “You have disheartened the righteous falsely, although I have not grieved him, and you have encouraged the wicked, that he should not turn from his evil way to save his life.”

I’ve also examined the New Testament linkage of justice and righteousness: It’s similar, and there’s a telling emphasis on relationship. “Religion” comes from the Old French religare, to bind (same root as ligament), and most religions emphasize binding to a set of rules, but Christianity emphasizes bonding into a relationship with Jesus. Most religions are exchange religions: “I do this for Shiva, he will give me a son.” The apostle Paul, though, emphasized love for Christ—”We make it our aim to please Him” (2 Corinthians 5:9)—that leads to loving our neighbors.

Many other aspects of justice need consideration, and I’ll deal another time with what role modern government should and should not play. I’ll leave you for now with C.S. Lewis’ advice: “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.” Today, “social justice” aims at earth and produces just ice. Relational justice aims at heaven, and the just acts that occur along the way can melt many frozen hearts.

“Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.” That’s what the Democratic leaders of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, say in a USA Today column that attacks critics of their healthcare plan for supposedly not letting others speak.

Vladimir Lenin said that all politics comes down to “kto kvo”—Russian for “who whom,” who’s doing the attacking, who’s being attacked?  That cynical materialist view asserts that people act out of class interests, not principles, but in this debate the assertion may hold true. Government centralizers depict themselves as altruists, but they have a special interest in gaining more power. Some opponents of centralized healthcare are also defending special interests.

It’s true that drowning out opposing views is un-American, but when this jibe is directed against one side or the other, the use of “un-American” seems an attempt to demonize the opposition. Liberals for years protested the existence of the House Un-American Activities Committee. They should be careful about resurrecting the term.

For the non-Calvinists or anti-Calvinists among us who may have worried that the July 4 issue of WORLD had several articles about John Calvin or that this blog featured a number of posts about the Reformer this week, be not afraid: It happens only once every 500 years. Today brings the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth—and the great theologian, even with his warts, deserves a better press than he has typically received in recent decades.

Calvin was a fallen sinner, as all of us are, but was he especially mean-spirited? He taught that God created the world out of love and loved the world so much that Christ came down from the glorious kingdom of heaven and plunged into this world’s muck. Calvin saw God as a generous giver and His mercy as an abundant resource. Jehovah’s Witnesses would later insist that heaven has room for only 144,000, but Calvin understood that God’s grace is infinite.

Did Calvin emphasize in-group harshness toward the poor and the alien? No: He wrote, “We cannot but behold our own face as it were in a glass in the person that is poor and despised . . . though he were the furthest stranger in the world. Let a Moor or a barbarian come among us, and yet inasmuch as he is a man, he brings with him a looking glass wherein we may see that he is our brother and neighbor.” Everyone is created in God’s image and worthy of respect.

Did Calvin want us to abstain from all material pleasures? He wrote that God “meant not only to provide for necessity but also for delight and good cheer. . . . Has the Lord clothed the flowers with the great beauty that greets our eyes, the sweetness of smell that is wafted upon our nostrils, and yet will it be unlawful for our eyes to be affected by that beauty, or our sense of smell by the sweetness of that odor?” He opposed any doctrine that “deprives us of the lawful fruit of God’s beneficence.”

Calvin also opposed doctrines that deprive us of political liberty. His understandings—that God-given laws are superior to those of the state, the king, and any other institution, and that individuals have direct access to the Bible, without dependence on pope or priest—are common now, but compare them to the political and theological theories fashionable before his time. In ancient times, pagan states revered leaders as semi-divine. Those who argued with such bosses were seen as deserving death. In medieval times, the interpretations of church officials often trumped the words of the Bible itself (which few people could read). They identified God’s kingdom on earth with a church monopoly, and hanged, burned, or decapitated some with other ideas.

Calvin and other Reformation leaders, though, separated church and state while emphasizing the importance of believers working to lead the state. Calvin contended that, since God reigns everywhere, His followers should be entrepreneurs in every strategic institution, including government, civil society, commerce, media, law, education, the church, and the arts. This emphasis led directly to what has become known as the “Protestant ethic,” with its unleashing of individual initiative and its emphasis on hard work in purportedly secular areas. Many kinds of labor are equally worthy, Calvin argued, and those in charge of one activity should not dictate to others.

Calvin’s writings also had an implicit anti-statism. Since fundamental law comes from God, obeying the law means obeying God, not necessarily the state. Rebellion against an unlawful state act, led by “lesser magistrates” such as local leaders, is really a justifiable maintenance of true law. One Calvin disciple in 1579 wrote Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (”Vindication Against Tyrants”), which emphasized the limits of power.

Would freedom ring? The English jurist Blackstone called “the power and jurisdiction of Parliament transcendent and absolute . . . sovereign and uncontrollable.” English lawyers joked that “Parliament can do everything except make a woman a man, or a man a woman.” (Some of our jurists and legislators are more ambitious.) But generation after generation of Calvinists read Vindiciae and emphasized that government must be under God. According to John Adams, its doctrines greatly influenced Americans of the 1760s and 1770s.

Calvin’s birthday comes six days after the Independence Day that owes much to his teaching. Bake a cake and know that Calvin was not against enjoying it.

RELATED ARTICLES AND VIDEO COMMENTARIES:
“America’s debt to John Calvin: The personal pervasiveness of God’s sovereignty,” by John Piper (WORLD, July 4, 2009)
“Sticking by the Bible: A 500th birthday biography of Calvin shows complex man with singular belief,” by Marvin Olasky (WORLD, July 4, 2009)
“Holiday reading: Two views of America and some worthwhile investigations of John Calvin,” by Marvin Olasky (WORLD, July 4, 2009)
Video: “Why Marvin Olasky?” by John Piper and Marvin Olasky
Video: “What Calvin teaches us about writing,” by Marvin Olasky
Video: “Calvin and Servetus,” by Marvin Olasky
Video: “Calvin and politics,” by Marvin Olasky
Video: “How Calvin influenced WORLD Magazine,” by Marvin Olasky
Video: “How The King’s College expresses the Reformed worldview,” by Marvin Olasky
Video: “Christians as salt in the world,” by Marvin Olasky

A video commentary by WORLD Editor in Chief Marvin Olasky, courtesy of Desiring God and its upcoming National Conference, “With Calvin in the Theater of God”:

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the July 4 issue of WORLD Marvin wrote a feature on how a 500th birthday biography of Calvin shows a complex man with a singular belief who delivered the church from medievalism and a review of some worthwhile books investigating the life of Calvin.

RELATED VIDEOS:
Why Marvin Olasky?
What Calvin teaches us about writing
Calvin and Servetus
Calvin and politics
How Calvin influenced WORLD Magazine
How The King’s College expresses the Reformed worldview

A video commentary by The King’s College Provost and WORLD Editor in Chief Marvin Olasky, courtesy of Desiring God and its upcoming National Conference, “With Calvin in the Theater of God”:

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the July 4 issue of WORLD Marvin wrote a feature on how a 500th birthday biography of Calvin shows a complex man with a singular belief who delivered the church from medievalism, a review of some worthwhile books investigating the life of Calvin, and a column on how Calvin was a champion of liberty.

RELATED VIDEOS:
Why Marvin Olasky?
What Calvin teaches us about writing
Calvin and Servetus
Calvin and politics
How Calvin influenced WORLD Magazine

A video commentary by WORLD Editor in Chief Marvin Olasky, courtesy of Desiring God and its upcoming National Conference, “With Calvin in the Theater of God”:

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the July 4 issue of WORLD Marvin wrote a feature on how a 500th birthday biography of Calvin shows a complex man with a singular belief who delivered the church from medievalism, a review of some worthwhile books investigating the life of Calvin, and a column on how Calvin was a champion of liberty.

RELATED VIDEOS:
Why Marvin Olasky?
What Calvin teaches us about writing
Calvin and Servetus
Calvin and politics

A video commentary by WORLD Editor in Chief Marvin Olasky, courtesy of Desiring God and its upcoming National Conference, “With Calvin in the Theater of God”:

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the July 4 issue of WORLD Marvin wrote a feature on how a 500th birthday biography of Calvin shows a complex man with a singular belief who delivered the church from medievalism, a review of some worthwhile books investigating the life of Calvin, and a column on how Calvin was a champion of liberty.

RELATED VIDEOS:
Why Marvin Olasky?
What Calvin teaches us about writing
Calvin and Servetus