Christian readers who enjoy Bible exegeses should find a lot to think about in SOCIAL JUSTICE JESUS. The book deals solely with the Sermon on the Mount, with author Edward S. Georgeson doing a line-by-line analysis across 35 chapters to argue that Jesus’s core message is about helping others. He writes. “I am focusing on the kingdom of heaven that Jesus is revealing to his disciples.” This is the narrow and literal meaning of “social justice” as used by Georgeson, who doesn’t seem aware that the term as commonly used refers to specific issues, from systemic racism to transgender rights to climate change. His obliviousness is reinforced by his use of the term “social justice warriors” to describe Christians who follow Jesus’s message, when this phrase is typically used to sarcastically describe “woke” people.
Nonetheless, SOCIAL JUSTICE JESUS is a well-written and closely argued exegesis of the Sermon, with Georgeson employing interpretation of Greek and Aramaic words to explain what Jesus really meant in the Sermon. Despite this seemingly scholarly approach, Georgeson is a literalist Christian who believes the Bible is historically accurate and theologically true. “I have a rather simple philosophy,” he writes. “I am focusing on the kingdom of heaven that Jesus is revealing to his disciples, and I believe that Jesus is the king of that kingdom.” Thus, he does not mention that the fourth-century Codex Sinaiticus shows that the opening clause of the famous “Consider the lilies of the field” verse was different in the original text. Indeed, in Chapter 13, “Salt of the Earth”, Georgeson goes into much detail about the value and symbolism of salt in Biblical times, explaining why Jesus would have used the phrase. So he is clearly unaware that the Beatitudes were in fact written by William Tyndale whose Bible, as noted by writer William Bragg in The Adventure of English, “influenced between sixty and eighty percent of the King James Bible of 1611.”
Georgeson argues that most Christians do not understand the significance of the Sermon as a covenant, which he describes as a “guide to how the followers of Christ are to live their lives.” Failing to take action according to Jesus’s instructions, he writes, is “a form of taking God’s name in vain” and a “misrepresentation of Jesus’s mission on Earth.” Georgeson’s literalism extends even to the Old Testament, since he argues in Chapter 17, “Adultery and Marriage,” that anyone who even lusts in their heart over a married woman or man should be put to death. This, in fact, is the core message of the book: that only by following the Sermon’s message, as explained by Georgeson, can human beings get into Heaven.
Christian readers who enjoy Bible exegeses should enjoy SOCIAL JUSTICE JESUS, a well-written and closely argued exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount. Author Edward S. Georgeson is a literalist Christian who believes the Bible is historically accurate and theologically true, thus there is little reference to scholarly analysis of Biblical documents or any attempt at philosophical argumentation.
~Kevin Baldeosingh for IndieReader