From my class reading in Stassen and Gushee’s Kingdom Ethics:
A holistic character ethics needs to develop a self-critical understanding of how we perceive authority, change, threat and truthfulness in our society. Without that, Christians will not understand how to act effectively to “seek the shalom of the city where you dwell” (Jer. 29:7). They will emigrate inwardly into small enclaves of self-fulfillment. Their ethics will ignore powerful influences in the society that shape people’s character and will lack the antidotes with which to correct secular ideologies. They will not know how to share in God’s compassion for he mistreated. They will naively support an unjust status quo. They will have an ethics that focuses only on philosophical or theological generalities, or only on individualistic virtues, and act as if God is Lord only of theological doctrines, or of the private, individual life and not of the power structures and struggles for justice. Those who do not understand the causative forces in society are condemned to repeat yesterday’s injustices tomorrow. (75-76)
Incandescent Ink 