People are always asking me how to discern whether a news story is biased, fake news or deceptive.

An excellent example is an AP story by Andrew Selsky headlined, “Oregon Police Chief Orders Review of Use of Force at Protest.” It is a story about how Portland Police Chief Danielle Outlaw is launching an investigation of Portland police. The police tried to prevent violence at a protest rally where Antifa, labor unions and democratic socialist groups mixed it up with free-speech advocates Patriot Prayer and Proud Boys. The Antifa crowd was ordered to disperse, but instead became aggressive, prompting a police riot response. The police are being accused of using excessive force. Now for the twist.

The story makes out Patriot Prayer and Proud Boys as the “alt-right,” Nazi, Trump-supporting extremists who were holding a protest, and the reasonable left-wing Antifa and democratic socialist groups showed up as the heroes to counter-protest these conservative threats to society. Selsky writes:

“Saturday’s incidents started with demonstrators aligned with Patriot Prayer and an affiliated group, the Proud Boys, gathering in a riverfront park. The Proud Boys has been characterized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is “dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society.””

But the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is itself extreme. The SPLC consistently has made news and raised money from anti-American leftists for its hate designations, even against mainstream Christian organizations.

Remember SPLC was named the provocateur behind the 2012 shooting at the Washington, DC, office of the Family Research Council (FRC). Floyd Corkins confessed to the FBI that he intended to commit mass murder and was motivated by the so-called “Hate Map” on the SPLC website that listed FRC as a “hate group.”

The D.C. shooter, who in 2017 gunned down Congressman Steve Scalise (R-LA) and four others, was a Facebook fan of the SPLC.

SPLC has equated numerous Christian ministries with the Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazis as hate groups because the ministries are pro-life and also support the Biblical definition of marriage between one man and one woman.

Patriot Prayer’s Facebook page appears to support free speech and religious freedom. The Proud Boys website is a bit edgy in its rhetoric against the neo-Marxist left-wing agenda. Both are pro-Trump.

SPLC maintains on its website that these groups instigate violence against Antifa and others. Antifa and the democratic socialists, however, often start the violence under the pretense that they are standing against Nazism.

The slant of the AP story is decidedly pro-Antifa, painting these Marxist anarchists as American patriots, disguising its bias by quoting SPLC, ACLU, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and Democratic Socialists of America. With whom do these groups align? That is one way of discerning the bias.

As Jesus said in Matthew 24:4, “Take heed that no man deceive you.”

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Social Justice and Christianity
In Acts 5, Peter and the apostles were forbidden by the High Priest of the Sadducees to preach the gospel in the streets and the temple. They were thrown in prison, and an angel of the Lord freed them. They were again brought before the priest, who said, “Did we not straightly command you that ye should not teach in this name?…Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.”

In essence, this is the Christian commission to obey God rather than humanism. God’s laws are supreme and just; man’s laws are flawed – sometimes just, sometimes unjust. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “An unjust law is no law at all.”

The Communist Manifesto says, “…Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”

From a humanistic point of view—a communist or socialist believes that a just law is unjust unless it follows the Manifesto. And the manifesto denies Christianity. What we see today, therefore, is a dichotomy regarding social justice. One form is Biblical social justice rooted in God’s law as fulfilled by Jesus Christ and His righteousness. And another form is political social justice, rooted in humanist principles but disguised as Christian by those claiming to be men of God supporting it.

Political social justice as defined by man in contemporary society is against the word of God. And because we are a nation whose laws are derived from the Laws of God wrapped in the garment of Liberty, we have not only a say in them, but a responsibility to the God we serve to uphold the laws of God over the laws of man.

Law is only just if it is in harmony with God’s law…And since we are justified by faith, taking on the righteousness of Christ, justice emanates from “we” as a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation hungering and thirsting for righteousness; that in this act we shall be filled and salvation of souls be at hand.

Christians, as the ones who know the truth, are responsible to act on it through the righteousness of Christ. We must put aside traditions of men and hyper-Biblical doctrines, and act on the Word.

The Beatitudes, found in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, is a call to action by Jesus Christ. If we are hungering and thirsting for righteousness, we shall be filled—our faith shall find action as a just people. And we shall, as James 1:25 says, “…look into the perfect law of liberty, and continue therein…, being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.”

Let us hunger and seek after righteousness by not being deceived, and by being hearers and doers of the word as we continue in the perfect law of liberty. This is the true social justice of Christianity—not the false imitation of humanist social justice.

Have a Blessed and Powerful Day!

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