Part Four: The Real Question Is Not Political
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that everything I have documented in the previous sections is substantially correct.
Suppose the Democratic Socialists of America is increasingly influenced by revolutionary Marxist caucuses.
Suppose significant portions of its leadership openly admire the Bolshevik tradition, speak of building a mass socialist party, seek to merge class struggle with anti-oppression movements, and envision replacing rather than reforming many of America’s foundational institutions.
So what?
Why should Christians care?
Surely this is simply another disagreement over political philosophy.
Actually, I don’t think it is.
In my judgment, we misunderstand today’s political moment if we think the deepest conflict is between Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and progressives, capitalism and socialism, or even democracy and communism.
Those are real disagreements.
But they are not the deepest disagreement.
The deeper conflict concerns something much older.
It concerns creation itself.
Two Stories About Reality
Every civilization eventually answers one fundamental question:
Do we receive reality as a gift?
Or
Do we reconstruct reality according to our own desires?
That question lies beneath nearly every cultural controversy we face today.
It lies beneath debates…
- About marriage.
- About family.
- About abortion.
- About biotechnology.
- About education.
- About economics.
- About political authority.
- About gender.
- About nationhood.
- About religion.
- It even lies beneath debates over socialism.
The Christian story begins with a God who creates.
Before there is politics…
Before there is economics…
Before there are nations…
There is creation.
Genesis does not begin with oppression. [Of course, oppression—and the dark powers behind oppression, did follow in short order.]
But Genesis begins with gift.
“In the beginning, God created…”. And a few sentences later, God called it “very good!”
That opening sentence tells us something profoundly important.
Reality is not our invention.
Reality precedes us.
Although we are called to be good stewards, the world does not belong to us.
- Neither do our bodies.
- Neither does human nature.
- Neither does marriage.
- Neither does the family.
These are not social constructions waiting to be reinvented by each generation.
They are gifts entrusted to us by their Creator.
That conviction has enormous political consequences.
Because if reality is given…
Politics must learn humility.
If reality is constructed…
Politics inevitably becomes revolutionary.
But when you revolt against the created order, something wicked that way comes.
The Crisis of Our Time
For several years I have argued on this blog that our culture is experiencing something far deeper than political polarization.
We are witnessing an increasingly widespread rejection of what earlier generations simply called nature and nature’s God.
Consider just a few examples.
For thousands of years every civilization recognized that humanity exists as male and female.
Today, many of our cultural elites insist that no objective definition of either word exists.
One need not look far for examples. We have watched nominees for high office decline to define the word “woman,” explaining that they were “not a biologist.” Universities increasingly teach that biological sex and gender identity are distinct realities and that personal identity, rather than embodied sex, should determine whether someone is understood as a man or a woman.
From a biblical perspective, this is not a minor disagreement over terminology.
It is a rejection of one of the first truths revealed in Scripture.
“Male and female He created them.”
That sentence is not merely descriptive.
It is theological.
It tells us that our bodies are not accidental containers for an autonomous self.
They are part of God’s good creation.
To reject that reality is not simply to reject biology.
It is to reject the Creator who made us.
The same pattern appears elsewhere.
Marriage becomes infinitely malleable. [Throuples]
Children become products of adult desire. [Surrogacy, Cloning]
Families become endlessly reconfigurable. [Link Throuple’s Adopt]
Mother and father become “gestational parent” and “non-gestational parent.” [Link]
Technology promises to liberate us from every natural limit.
Politics increasingly promises liberation from every inherited institution.
What unites these movements?
They all begin with the same assumption.
Human freedom is achieved not by receiving reality but by reconstructing it.
That assumption is profoundly unchristian.
Revolution or Reformation?
This, I believe, is where Christianity parts company with every revolutionary ideology.
Christians are not conservatives because we believe every institution deserves preservation.
Far from it.
The Bible is filled with prophetic denunciations of corrupt kings, unjust judges, greedy merchants, false prophets, and hypocritical priests.
God is no defender of injustice. Just read the words of the Greatest Prophet—Jesus of Nazareth (who was much more than a prophet.)
But neither is God a revolutionary in the modern ideological sense.
The biblical pattern is remarkably consistent.
- God reforms.
- He restores.
- He redeems.
- He reconciles.
- He judges.
- He renews.
- He calls people—and institutions—to repentance.
The revolutionary imagination follows a different path.
It assumes that liberation requires dismantling the existing order so that an entirely new order can be constructed.
That instinct increasingly appears throughout the literature we have examined.
- Abolish.
- Replace.
- Overthrow.
- Reconstruct.
- Begin again.
Notice how often those verbs appear.
They are not merely political.
They are theological.
Because they answer the question:
What is wrong with the world?
Christianity answers:
Sin.
Revolutionary politics answers:
Structures.
Christianity says the human heart must be transformed.
Revolutionary politics says institutions must be transformed.
Christianity certainly calls for just institutions.
But it refuses to believe that changing institutions can redeem fallen image bearers.
That is why Christians should always be cautious whenever politics begins promising salvation.
Politics is a good servant.
It is a terrible savior.
“You Shall Be Like God”
The Bible’s first temptation was not sexual.
Nor economic.
Nor political.
It was theological.
“You shall be like God,” said the lying serpent in the Garden (who was much more than a serpent).
Those words continue to echo through every age.
The temptation is always the same.
To cease living as creatures.
To become creators.
To exchange gratitude for autonomy.
To reject what God has given in favor of what we can construct for ourselves.
That temptation appears in countless forms.
Sometimes it appears in the denial of the created distinction between male and female.
Sometimes in the attempt to redefine marriage.
Sometimes in the commodification of children through reproductive technologies.
Sometimes in the belief that history itself can be remade through political revolution.
The particulars change.
The temptation does not.
It is the ancient temptation of Eden dressed in modern clothes.
Why I Wrote This Essay
Some readers will undoubtedly conclude that I have been too critical of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Others will think I have not been critical enough.
Neither concern motivated this essay.
I wrote it because I increasingly believe that many Christians are evaluating political movements with categories borrowed from cable news rather than from Scripture.
We ask whether a movement is liberal or conservative.
Progressive or traditional.
Capitalist or socialist.
Those questions have their place.
But Christians should ask a prior question.
What doctrine of creation lies beneath this movement?
Does it begin with gratitude for a world received from God?
Or with the conviction that humanity must reconstruct reality according to its own vision?
That is the question that finally matters.
Because long before there were Democrats or Republicans…
Long before there were socialists or capitalists…
There was a garden.
And there was a voice asking whether God’s ordering of reality could really be trusted.
Every generation answers that question anew.
Ours will be no exception.
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