Tony Deik: Pursuing Justice as an Act of Worship

In this final episode of season six, Nikki talks with Tony Deik. Tony is a Palestinian Christian from Bethlehem, Palestine. He is on faculty at Bethlehem Bible College, and currently resides in Bolivia with his family. Tony talks about the centrality of justice in the Christian scriptures, and how Christians might begin to understand justice as an act of worship and witness. They also discuss Christian Zionism, and how theologies have the potential to actualize either oppressive or just realities.

Catch us in early 2025 for our upcoming season.

You can learn more about Tony and his work here.

20 Minute Takes is a production of Christians for Social Action
Host: Nikki Toyama-Szeto 
Edited & Produced by: David de Leon
Music: Andre Henry

Transcript

[00:00:00] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Hello, this is Nikki Toyama-Szeto, and I'm the executive director of Christians for Social Action and your host for today's episode of 20 Minute Takes. Today, we speak with Tony Deik. He's a professor at Bethlehem Bible College and is on the board of INFEMIT (International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation). Tony unpacks for us a scriptural understanding of justice and the fullness of what that means for Christian faithfulness. He also takes us into his journey as a Palestinian Christian, living in exile in Bolivia and how it is that we can understand the activism that comes with Christian faith in ways that pursue peace and peace building. Join us for this conversation.

Tony, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of 20 Minute Takes.

[00:01:03] Tony Deik: Thank you Nikki, thank you for having me.

[00:01:05] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: First of all, how is the weather in Bolivia these days? It's snowing here.

[00:01:09] Tony Deik: It is summer, sunny, lovely weather. It is summer now in the global south, in Bolivia.

[00:01:17] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: And do you have something that is your new favorite thing? I know that you and your family have ties to Bolivia, but are recently there for a longer period of time. Do you have something that is new and lovely that either speaks home to you or gives you great joy?

[00:01:34] Tony Deik: I mean always in a new culture, you always learn new things. So, so I was telling you that I was in, in the process of issuing a new driving license and that was a bit fun.

[00:01:44] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Watch out, drivers in Bolivia! Fantastic. Well, I'm so grateful to have your voice here on 20 Minute Takes, because I know one of the areas that you focus on and that you study is this area of justice. What is it that Christians need to know or understand about justice, about God's invitation to participate in the work of justice?

[00:02:10] Tony Deik: Yeah, thank you. Well, my, my work is in the scriptures, really, and this is my area. I'm a biblical researcher doing my PhD on the topic of wealth and poverty in particular, but through the lens of justice. To my surprise, when I started the looking at texts in the New Testament, particularly in Luke and Acts, as you might expect, on wealth and poverty, I discovered that biblical scholars do not understand them as an expression of justice.

Very, very surprising. I sometimes wonder to myself, "Wow, I am, I am getting a PhD for saying that this stuff is about justice." So my, my, the title actually of my PhD thesis is "On Justice, A Study of the Wealth Ethics of the Acts of Apostles" in particular, in a conversation with the Old Testament, the Book of Deuteronomy in particular, and Greco Roman philosophical conceptions of justice.

Because what I've realized in my research, what I'm arguing, sort of my fresh contribution is that the language that Luke, in particular, used to describe how earliest Christians lived —how they shared possessions, how they distributed wealth, and so forth—that language is found in Greco Roman philosophical discussions of justice, and also found in the Mosaic conception of justice, in the Mosaic law, in the Book of Deuteronomy, in particular.

 And I think what I've realized in my research is that I was struck in my study by the centrality of justice in the scripture. We are people of justice and here I think people don't realize that a word that we often use in our Christian life and doctrine —the word of righteousness, right?

We often don't link it with justice even in scholarly discussions, I mean just In my last supervision meeting with my supervisors my second supervisor told me, "But you know, like most people won't understand you when you say righteousness is justice," you know, because for us righteousness is something that is related to piety as something of the heart or something that is forensic, you know that we are justified, you know the doctrine of justification, you know, we are in there's this court imagery that Paul sort of uses to help us understand what Jesus did for us, that we are guilty, we are in a court, God is the judge, and the punishment that should have been on us is on Jesus, so we are justified, right?

So we, and when, when, when we talk about all of this, we don't link it with social justice, Right? And I think it's, it's something very related to what I am doing, but more theological, and I would love to explore it more and to write about it in depth is the notion of justification.

I think this is where the problem lies, to be honest. Because we have this image of justification that is very forensic and very pietistic. So justice is, especially as Protestants, right? We are justified. It's done. Justice is finished. We have another name for the rest. We call it sanctification. It's another thing.

It's not justice. Where we are, we are justified, we are made righteous. And this is maybe the image that we get from Paul. But then, when we turn to Luke, to Luke-Acts, I argue that Luke has a different view on justice that starts from the very beginning of his gospel with Zechariah's song. Luke portrays the the advent of Jesus as enabling worship.

And, so, the advent of Jesus, Zechariah says that a horn of salvation is given to us so that we are able to worship God in justice and holiness. So, justification linked with worship as empowerment to do justice. Now to, to, to cut the long story short —Zechariah's song, you know, the Benedictus is a prophecy, and Luke located at the very head of his double volume work, Luke-Acts, for a purpose, right? He, he could have placed it anywhere. This song for tells, you know, it's, it's a prophecy about the future that is fulfilled within the narrative. What this prophecy says is that through this horn of salvation —we understand it through the narrative of Jesus Christ, we understand the horn of salvation as Jesus Christ—through Jesus, we'll be empowered, we'll be enabled to worship God in justice. Now, the question that the, that, that this triggers in the mind of the reader is where, since this is a prophecy, in the future tense, and the word says that, and Zechariah prophesied.

So the reader should ask, where is this prophecy fulfilled in the narrative? And I argue that it is fulfilled, it is seen, like the clearest fulfillment of this prophecy is seen in the book of Acts, in the life of the earliest Christians, how they lived and embodied social justice, how they distributed wealth according to need, for example, as opposed to distributed wealth according to merit, as it was practiced in the wider Greco Roman world.

So this is their worship, how they distributed wealth and mixed that with prayer and with fellowship and with breaking bread. So this is justification as empowerment and enablement to worship God. in social justice. This is justification from the lens of Luke. So Luke gives us, you don't find this forensic image in Luke, right?

And, and, and, and, and this is not, this is fully compatible with Paul. Now, these are different ways to try to understand what Jesus did for us. But sometimes if we just cling to the forensic image of justification, we feel that, okay, justice is something done, and we have nothing to do with it, and we are justified, we are just now, we're dikaios, we are just, and that's it, and we have nothing to, to, to, to do, whereas when we You know, paint the fuller picture, just as, okay, we are justified through Christ.

It's not by our works. But, but this means that we are empowered to do justice. So if we're really justified, we need to show it. We need to demonstrate it. In our worship, in our life, we need to demonstrate this justice.

[00:08:48] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: That's powerful. And I think it really reframes, cause you talked about Advent and the anticipation of the birth of Jesus, in a different, in a different kind of a way. I think it really also engages with this question that I hear in some circles about is justice sort of optional or only those for whom they are gifted with that it is, you know, a fruit, a fruit of the Holy Spirit kind of expression, but what I hear you saying is it's actually, we, we have been empowered and released in order to worship God through social justice.

[00:09:25] Tony Deik: Exactly. This is why Jesus came to justify us, to empower us, to do justice. Without him, we are not able to do justice. We are not able to love our neighbor as, as, as ourself. And now here, if I want to enter into a bit of a technical discussion, and I think maybe this, this, this would interest people, is that in the original language, in Greek and in Hebrew, we have two words for justice.

Right? That get translated. One of them is dikaiosune in Greek, or it's tzedakah in Hebrew, gets translated as righteousness. And the other one is krisis or mishpat that gets translated as justice, right? Now, even scholars, some scholars, when they hear justice, krisis, they, they think about court justice.

Justice in the court rather than social justice. And righteousness, as we said, is something in our imagination that's given to us, and that's it, right? But if you look at the Old Testament, for example, the book of Deuteronomy, where you get the best conception of justice, you know, that, that affects our lives and affects our, our doctrine.

If you want to understand justice, really, it's in the Mosaic Law, in the book of Deuteronomy. And there's this passage A couple of chapters, you know, the book of Deuteronomy is composed of sermons. And there is one sermon that starts in Deuteronomy 9 to 11. And this is central. This is a central sermon that comes before the Deuteronomic law, before all of the detailed laws, to summarize the essence of the law.

What is the essence of the law? How to live in righteousness and holiness. Okay, so you have this word, you know, or in the Greek translation, to live in righteousness, how do we live in righteousness according to the Book of Deuteronomy? By loving God. So, all righteousness in Deuteronomy is summed up in one commandment, "Love God with all of your heart, soul, and strength."

But then what does it mean? The Book of Deuteronomy, this sermon, explains what it means. It means imitating God. So, and the Book of Deuteronomy uses many words to describe this relationship of love, that we should love God, cling to God, fear God, you know, all of this. Why cling to God, fear God, love God, you know cling to all of his ways? So that you imitate God.

This is Deuteronomy 10, verses 17, 18, 19, that you imitate God who do justice to the world. To the sojourner, to the orphan, and the widow, and he loves the sojourner to give him food and clothing. This is social justice, to give him food and clothing. This is not just court justice, not only defending the oppressed in the court, but also giving the oppressed food and clothing, right?

You also should love the sojourner. for you were also sojourners in Egypt. So this is the summation of all righteousness. All righteousness is summed up in the commandment to love God so that we can imitate God in doing justice and love to the oppressed and the needy and the marginalized.

[00:12:37] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: That's, that's powerful. And that's, it really helps it really helps to illustrate the centrality of justice and the outpouring that that is of kind of a, a Christian faithfulness. Now for you, you are a Palestinian Christian living in exile in Bolivia. What does this mean for you, this understanding of justice?

How does that get lived out? What are the things that you notice and pay attention to?

[00:13:10] Tony Deik: I mean as an Evangelical Palestinian, I still describe myself maybe as an evangelical— it saddens me that we neglect the work of justice... we relegate it, and I think it does come from our piety and our, and our, and our understanding of piety of...

[00:13:29] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: ...kind of Christian faith is only between me and God and it's very private, very personal. Yeah.

[00:13:37] Tony Deik: ...personal, private, there's no social dimension there. Our understanding of justification is very linked to the court imagery, to the forensic imagery.

[00:13:46] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Okay. So kind of a courtroom justice. And law. Mm

[00:13:51] Tony Deik: I think it comes from there, our neglect of justice and relegated. And it's, it is striking that we emphasize in evangelical circles, the Great Commission, for instance, and we neglect the great commandment, you know, and the word great does not occur in Matthew 28.

It occurs in Luke 10 you know, and other scriptures, you know, the Great Commandment, right? So we have, we emphasize, and we saw this in the big conference that happened in Korea, the Lausanne conference. On evangelism and mission and our, and our understanding of mission. This, this is a big conference that brought together more than 10,000 people online and in person, very global. And it shows you it's an indicative of where we are. as evangelicals in understanding our task. Why we, why God left us in the world, why we exist in the world. And still many evangelicals believe that we are only here to convert people, right? Rather than, and in that huge conference, the topic of justice was given 15 minutes.

So this is also indicative, right? You know and, and incidentally, like, I mean, we were talking a lot about scriptures, but like the book of Deuteronomy, what is the mission of, of God's people in the book of Deuteronomy? To do justice. You know, this is how, this is how people are attracted to God. I don't go out just to convert people, but I, I live out the commandment of loving God, clinging to God so that I can ...

[00:15:30] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: ...testifies to God, right?

[00:15:32] Tony Deik: ...I witness to God by living God's righteousness, God's conception of justice. I embody God's conception of justice.

I show another way of living and being...

[00:15:43] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: mm hmm.

[00:15:44] Tony Deik: ...that, that, that contradicts, you know, the ways of the world and the empires of the world, when I live in a different way, a way that embodies God's conception of justice, people will be attracted to God. So as evangelicals, we neglected this as part of our task, you know, and we emphasize a lot our, you know, evangelism and converting people, you know, and and This was clearly demonstrated in this big gathering of Lausanne 4.

So this is something that strikes me and saddens me as an idea and I struggle with as a Palestinian and the other thing that I struggle with as a Palestinian is that how can we witness to God's justice? How can we embody God's justice when we defend injustice? When we legitimize injustice, as you might know, what is happening in Palestine, Palestinian people are oppressed people.

For almost 80 years now, we've been living under oppression. My family at a personal level, my grandfather was kicked out from his village, Shefa-Amr, near Nazareth in 1948. My wife and I were forced to leave Bethlehem in 2017; we live under apartheid, under occupation.

Israel, I mean, read human rights reports, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch. You know, Israel maintains an apartheid discriminatory system against the Palestinians. You know, Israel has been holding us with an iron fist for decades. And the question is, how do Christians react to this? There are many Christians among evangelicals, especially they justify this; they legitimize this. You know, Pew Research a couple of years ago shows that 70 percent of white evangelicals in the U. S. believe that God gave the land to Israel. So a premise that portrays God as a real estate agent, as a racist God, frankly, who discriminates against people, you know, one people against another, gives the land of some people to another tribe, you know, and like a very distorted concept of God and conception of God, such statements carry...

[00:17:53] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: ...I will say, that's what I, that's what I grew up believing and understanding in our church. Oh, God has given the land to Israel. Unpack for us, where, where is that misunderstanding coming from or what props up or holds that?

[00:18:10] Tony Deik: I think, in all honesty, and let me say something strong here: I think this is a form of idolatry that we have in evangelical churches, that we, that we emphasize, we, we replace Jesus with Israel. We put, we center Israel. Now, Jesus came, fulfilled all of the promises. He is the Alpha and Omega. In him whatever, like Paul says, whatever God's promises are, they are yes and amen in Jesus. that's Christian faith.

[00:18:39] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: in Jesus. Mm-Hmm. . 

[00:18:42] Tony Deik: If you remove Jesus from the center of your theology, this is where we get, you know, false teachings. And, you know...

[00:18:52] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: yes. Yeah.

[00:18:53] Tony Deik: ...heresies are measured by the distance between our theological center and Jesus, to be honest.

[00:18:58] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Wow.

[00:19:00] Tony Deik: So, when people say God gave the land to Israel, to unpack it a little bit, normally such premises are based on a misinterpretation of the Old Testament, of particularly the Abrahamic Covenant.

You know that God came to Abraham and told him "To your offspring. I give this land." Right? Now the book of Deuteronomy says that all of God's ways are justice and righteousness. So God is just. So if God does this, he did not do it because he's a racist God. There is a purpose. What is the purpose? This is the aABC of our faith.

The purpose is God's salvation, God's salvific act, God's plan to rescue the world from the mess that we are in. Right? It starts in particular with Genesis 12, you know? God turns to a person of faith called Abraham, you know, as if God was looking for someone that can partner with him in this plan to rescue this messed up world.

He found Abraham, and he told Abraham, look, from your seed will come the salvation for all the world. And I give you this land, you know, from the Nile to the Euphrates, okay? Now, the land, you know, a very quick response to this theology that, you know, says that God gave our land now to Israel, to a nation-state, a quick response would be "just look at the borders of the land."

So God gave Abraham the land from the Nile to the Euphrates. So there are two ways to, to understand this. You understand them as Ben Kfir and as the Israeli government now are trying to misappropriate this text and weaponize this text to, to say "We need to expand." And one a minister in the Israeli cabinet, in the Israeli government, this is not some periphery or marginal voice, said that "This is our land and we want to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates." Okay, this is one way of understanding it. Or, you go to the Biblical scholars, and we, and the, the, the question that as Biblical scholars we ask is, okay, what did this mean to its original audience, in its original context? And from the Nile to the Euphrates is a reference to the whole world at that time.

This is the world that they knew at that time. Or, from the Nile to the Euphrates, that was the world, The whole world that they knew, right? So God was giving Abraham the whole world, right? And this is what Paul says in Romans 4, you know, God gave Abraham, he uses the Greek word Kosmos, the whole Kosmos. Why?

Because God wants Abraham and his seed to be a blessing for the whole world. So it makes sense. So God gave the land, not for, not because he's racist, not because he's a real estate agent, not because he favors a tribe against the other. God did not give Abraham a slice of land, a small piece of land. God gave him the whole world to be a blessing for the whole world.

So, such texts that are so beautiful, so core to our gospel, to the good news of Jesus, they are weaponized for political agendas for a settler colonial project. And the result is, you know, and we're talking about justice. I mean, like our, you know, what we're supposed as Christians to embody God's justice, and yet we hold doctrines and interpretations, misinterpretations, bad interpretations that portray God as a racist God, as a God of injustice.

[00:22:35] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm.

[00:22:36] Tony Deik: This is, this is for me as a Palestinian Christian I mean, something that we deeply struggle with, deeply fight against, because it should not be in our churches.

We should remove Christian Zionism, you know, this theology that legitimizes Israel's wars against us should be removed from the church. The church is the salt and light in the world, called to embody God's justice and be a force of light in the world. Not to stand against an oppressed people, not to stand with the oppressor against the oppressed.

We are called to do the opposite, to stand with the oppressed against the oppressor.

[00:23:09] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Tony, that's really helpful to understand some of the places where people are misunderstanding what God is saying in the scriptures. Can you tell us a little bit of what is some of the real world impact or what is it that you are seeing that is sort of the, the impact or the implication from some of these ideas?

[00:23:33] Tony Deik: I mean for for us this kind of theology as my friend from Gaza Yousef Khoury He's a wonderful Palestinian theologian and thinker he says that for us theology and biblical interpretation is a matter of life and death. So we are not talking here about, of course, you know, as Christians, you know, central to our being is the Gospel, and any harm or distortion to the gospel should be, should shake us. And this theology that pushes Jesus aside, that marginalizes Jesus, is a distortion of the Gospel and distortion of God's name, and that should shake us. Add to that, that this theology justifies death and killing and war and ethnic cleansing. So Christian Zionism, yes, is a theology. You know, there are doctrinal bases. I mean people believe that Israel are still God's chosen people. That's why they're there. They should be there. God gave them the land. They have a divine right to my house, to my city, to my village, right?

[00:24:36] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Right...

[00:24:37] Tony Deik: So there is this theological presupposition or underpinning, but it has implications. It has political implications and here we need to remember that as evangelicals We are people of action, right?

Remember 

[00:24:51] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: That's right.

[00:24:51] Tony Deik: The Bebbington Quadrilateral, right? What one of them is what is activism. So if if evangelicals believe in something They would act upon it.

[00:25:01] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Uhhuh. Yes.

[00:25:03] Tony Deik: So, if serious evangelicals, serious about their faith, believe that God gave the land to Israel, they will, you know, actualize that. They will act upon it.

And when it comes to Christian Zionism, I mean, you have, first, the Christian Zionists lobby. So, Christians who support Israel, they lobby in Washington. And they are a much stronger force, even stronger than, the Jewish lobby in the US like organizations like AIPAC, for example, that are very strong.

Christian Zionist lobby is stronger. For example, you have in the US a coalition by the name of Christians United for Israel. They claim to have 10 million in membership. 80, 000 churches. You know, like it is, and these people, they send money to the Israeli military, they support Israeli settlements, they oppose Palestinian human rights, they push the sending of more and more and more weapons, you know, that the US send more weapons to Israel. So all of that, you know, under the premise that this is God's people, and they have the divine right to the land...

[00:26:22] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: ...so that application, this is, this is that application of...

[00:26:26] Tony Deik: ...this is the application. So imagine, as Christians, God called us to embody His righteousness and justice, and some in our midst are holding to this distorted theology that pushes them to send weapons that kill people to support wars.

This is God's justice? This is God's righteousness? This is our witness? To lobby in Washington, D. C.? I mean, from their actions, you know who they are. And that's, that's, you know, they can claim to be justified from now until next year. You know? Their actions, you know, are they empowered to do justice? This, I mean, For us, this has nothing to do with the gospel, frankly.

This has nothing to do with our Christianity. We don't recognize this religion, in honesty, because our religion has a constitution, the constitution is the Sermon on the Mount. You know, our religion has, you know, a very clear conception of righteousness summarized in two commandments: love God and your neighbor.

You know, this is our Christianity. So, such actions, you know, That like people opposing human rights and you have the most respectable human rights organizations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, saying these people are crushed. There is injustice there. There is apartheid. There is discrimination there and as Christians what do we do?

What do we do my question for Christians? What do we do with human rights with serious, respectable human rights organizations that that publish thick reports about what's happening around the world what do we do vis-a-vis that?

[00:28:09] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: One of the things I appreciate is you calling out how Christians, their faith compels them to action, right? And I think that's a distinctive to us. And, and I appreciate, even as you've called out the things that distorted theologies empower certain kinds of actions, but you're part of a community of people whose actions are being expressed in peace-building summit, a gathering that's going to be happening next year, which I think is such a prophetic response to the violence that's happening on the ground in Gaza among the Palestinian people.

And it's, this peace-building summit is really focused. On what is happening in that place and calling Christians for this response of peace-building. Can you say more about what brought you all to that place and a little bit of what is it that you're hoping will be true about that summit?

[00:29:04] Tony Deik: Yes. This Peacebuilding Summit is our response, is one of our responses to what is happening in Gaza and the genocidal war against us. You know, we, we are called to be peacemakers... 

[00:29:16] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: wow. 

[00:29:17] Tony Deik: ...right? Even now, the question is, how do you build peace in the midst of apartheid and discrimination and injustice and genocidal war?

And this is the main question that we want to address in this Peacebuilding Summit. How do we go about living out our calling to be peacemakers in this particular context? So what we are doing is we're not only bringing, it's not just for us Palestinian Christians, but we're bringing other Christians, other disciples of Jesus, followers of Jesus from across the world, especially from the global South —people have experienced, who share our experience of injustice and apartheid and settler colonialism for example, communities in North America, indigenous communities African American we, we have a strong group from South America, Memoria Indígena with us. We have a group from South Africa. We have some some people also from India and hopefully Dalits.

So people, you know, faithful followers of Jesus. Living in the midst, living faithfully, you know, faithful witness. How, how do they witness faithfully in the midst of the oppression and the injustice that historically their communities have been going through and still are going through now? So it is, so Peacebuilding Summit is our title, "Palestine in Comparative Perspective". So we want to dialogue. We need each other as a global church. We can't do it alone.

[00:30:49] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I, I really appreciate that. And I do hope you'll come back after the summit to share some of the learnings with us here on 20 Minute Takes. Just because I feel like, you know, sometimes people say that the call for peace and peace building is an appeasement that doesn't make space for justice. And I feel like you all are compelled by justice to pursue peace building, right?

This is not abandoning the space for a cheapened peace,

but this is a hard fought peace, this is, you know, and, and I, and that to me feels like the way of Jesus. So Tony, thank you so much for your faithfulness, for sharing a bit of your journey with us.

[00:31:40] Tony Deik: Thank you so much. Thank you.

[00:31:48] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: 20 Minute Takes is a production of Christians for Social Action. We're produced and edited by David de Leon. I'm your host, Nikki Toyama-Szeto, and the music is done by Andre Henry. You can find us on the web at christiansforsocialaction. org. Give us five stars, write a review, and share about the podcast with your friends.