An Ideology Which Extols the Virtues of Ideologies?
An Ideology Which Extols the Virtues of Ideologies?
Christianity has been discredited as intolerant and anti-science. In this post I hope to contrast secular morality with a biblical ethical system which hasn’t been talked about a whole lot – not that I’m aware of anyway.
In Genesis 1 we get a description of God bringing order to chaos. And perhaps in imitation of the Creator, there have been human beings who stand in that gap between chaos and order. Suppose we jump ahead a few billion years. Steve Jobs said, “Let there be smart phones!” And then… there were smart phones. And the smart phone brought order to the chaos of having to use different devices to manage our schedules, communicate with others, and waste time playing Angry Birds. The complexity of these devices is still amazing to me, yet what they did was bring simplicity to our daily lives.
But even after we have created smart phones, social media, and Angry Birds, we find chaos rearing its ugly head. We’re now learning that social media can have debilitating effects such as depression and anxiety, cyber-bullying, unhealthy sleep patterns, addictions, fear of missing out, and others.
It seems as if every technological advance leads to new moral questions in which chaos makes yet another appearance.
It took us over a century to get here, but Nietzsche, who wrote about nihilism and a post-Christian society in the late 1800s, used the phrase “Will to Power” to describe what would be left once society freed itself from Christian values. Nietzsche never talked about postmodernism, but I find this to be another of Nietzsche’s prophetic descriptions: the nihilistic mindset resulting in a never-ending struggle for power which claims the right to co-opt truth whenever it suits one’s purpose. This is an extreme form of pragmatism which is willing to sacrifice truth for personal gain, and which some have described as an ideology. Could postmodernism be described as an ideology extolling the virtues of ideologies? I think it can, but back to Nietzsche.
One agnostic writer, Santi Tafarella summarized Nietzsche’s influence like this:
“This is why, I believe, secular thinkers after Nietzsche have found it impossible to ignore him. Just as biology only makes sense in the light of Darwin, so atheism only makes sense in the light of Nietzsche.
Why is this so? Because Nietzsche drives us into a direct confrontation with an uncomfortable and difficult question:
- What does it mean to make Darwinian contingency the supreme fact of our existence, and to clear Platonism, God, telos [an end or a purpose], and Christian ethics completely from the field?”[1]
Nietzsche’s views anticipated the emergence of totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century (which led to the deaths of tens if not hundreds of millions), but which took place after his death in 1900. He warned that if the moral vacuum created by abandoning traditional Christian values wasn’t filled by some secular system of morality, a complete breakdown of moral norms would take place. It was only a few decades later when his predictions were realized in Soviet Gulags and Nazi Concentration Camps. Tens (and by some accounts, hundreds) of millions of people died at the hands of their own governments. Golomb and Wistrich questioned whether it might even have been fair to describe Nietzsche as the “Godfather of Fascism”. They write:
The totalitarianism of the twentieth century (of both the Right and Left) presupposed a breakdown of all authority and moral norms, of which Nietzsche was indeed a clear-sighted prophet, precisely because he had diagnosed nihilism as the central problem of his society—that of fin de siecle [end of the 19th Century] Europe. . . . Nietzsche believed that only by honestly facing the stark truth that there is no truth, no goal, no value or meaning in itself, could one pave the way for a real intellectual liberation and a revaluation of all values.[2]
So as mentioned, the Twentieth Century didn’t have to wait long for totalitarian regimes such as the old Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Chairman Mao’s People’s Republic of China, and Fidel Castro’s Cuba to step into the spotlight. In each instance of Communism and Fascism – political opponents were eliminated with extreme prejudice. There were no instances of Communism or Fascism which were not totalitarian in nature and just like North Korea today, walls were erected to keep people in rather than keep people out. But how did these evil regimes gain power in the first place?
The Bolshevik revolution took place in part because Lenin was able to leverage class warfare. In his book The Antichrist, Nietzsche argued that it is nature which creates social divisions (aka ‘castes’), and not human institutions, which are simply an extension of nature’s hierarchies. It’s kind of like arguing that there is no free will because we are all just a collection of cells and neurons in a purely materialistic existence. From a purely materialist perspective, free will is an illusion and just as biology determines human actions and beliefs, nature ultimately determines our political structures. Nietzsche writes,
The order of castes, the order of rank, simply formulates the supreme law of life itself; the separation of the three types is necessary to the maintenance of society, and to the evolution of higher types, and the highest types-the inequality of rights is essential to the existence of any rights at all.–A right is a privilege. Every one enjoys the privileges that accord with his state of existence. – Friedrich Nietzsche. The Anti-Christ (Kindle Locations 1010-1013). Kindle Edition.
This is a form of fatalism which denies human free moral agency and attempts to lock human beings into a particular slot in the evolutionary ladder. There are “higher types” in terms of their evolutionary rank and so, for the sake of humanity, people who are higher on the ladder should be granted more rights than their counterparts beneath them. In other words, nature, through evolutionary processes, creates “the order of rank” or castes and there’s nothing you or I can do about it. Your life and station in society are predetermined by your genes and by the genes of your ancestors.
And so “the inequality of rights is essential to the existence of any rights at all.” In other words, in order for the “higher types” to succeed in their evolutionary struggle, according to Nietzsche, they must be allowed to stand on the necks of the lower types. We must support the political and economic elites in a collective effort to help humanity climb that next rung on the evolutionary ladder.
BTW, did you know that there are more billionaires in the People’s Republic of China than anywhere else on earth? But those guys reap the rewards of crony capitalism – they are given more economic rights than others by political elites. Imagine that? Crony capitalism in a Communist regime.
Parenthetically, I find it interesting that about the same time as Nietzsche, Lord Acton, writing from a Christian world view, wrote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
In the 1920s in Germany, a certain political leader took the fatalistic ideas about the necessity of caste systems to heart and began to see the State as an extension of nature which could facilitate evolutionary processes. At the risk of undermining my credibility, I’m going to violate Godwin’s Law: (he who quotes Hitler in any thread must always lose and be discredited). But my purpose is not to make a political point as much as to give an example of a breakdown of all moral norms – in this case an apologetic for genocide. In a campaign speech in 1920s Germany, prior to his ascension to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler had this to say:
There are only two possibilities in Germany; do not imagine that the people will forever go with the middle party, the party of compromises; one day it will turn to those who have most consistently foretold the coming ruin and have sought to dissociate themselves from it. And that party is either the Left: and then God help us! for it will lead us to complete destruction – to Bolshevism, or else it is a party of the Right which at the last, when the people is in utter despair, when it has lost all its spirit and has no longer any faith in anything, is determined for its part ruthlessly to seize the reins of power – … Here, too, there can be no compromise – there are only two possibilities: either victory of the Aryan, or annihilation of the Aryan and the victory of the Jew.[3]
No, there are not “only two possibilities”: this is an argument for genocide based on an ideology which refuses to include the notion that both Aryans and Jews could coexist. I find it ironic that Hitler was an opponent of both the Right and the Left. Perhaps claiming to be politically moderate was part of his persuasive genius. But his own words betray him: ideologically, he was a racist first and a socialist second. Here’s more from another speech in the 1920’s:
Socialism as the final concept of duty, the ethical duty of work, not just for oneself but also for one’s fellow man’s sake, and above all the principle: Common good before own good, a struggle against all parasitism and especially against easy and unearned income. And we were aware that in this fight we can rely on no one but our own people. We are convinced that socialism in the right sense will only be possible in nations and races that are Aryan, and there in the first place we hope for our own people and are convinced that socialism is inseparable from nationalism.
Since we are socialists, we must necessarily also be antisemites because we want to fight against the very opposite: materialism and mammonism… How can you not be an antisemite, being a socialist![4]
So the Nazi blames the Jews for materialism and mammonism and then makes the case that Aryans and Jews cannot coexist.
But does that have anything to do with postmodernism in the Twenty First Century? I would suggest that the moral failures of totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century have driven us deeper into nihilism. Ideology is defined as “a collection of normative beliefs and values that an individual or group holds for other than purely epistemic reasons.”[5] Postmodernism is an ideology which leverages extreme pragmatism and co-opts truth in a never-ending struggle for personal power. My novel, Alfedora and the Drakebureau, is an allegory spun around dragons and blue apes and, in my mind, a criticism of exactly that.
Two obvious ideologies can be identified in today’s society: racism is typically associated with the Right, while promoting equality of outcome is typically associated with the Left. Hitler tried to do both while Lenin and Stalin were focused on the latter.
We all understand the potential for genocide in racism, but the potential for annihilating what it means to be human in a push for an equality of outcome may not be so obvious. You cannot get to equality of outcome without doing away with equality of opportunity. We’re seeing that today: many Asian students aren’t getting admitted to schools like Harvard even though their academic scores are better than students of other ethnic backgrounds who do get admitted.
And the people who decide how to implement the programs which determine other peoples’ outcomes are certainly not equal. They must be, by definition, “more equal than others” as George Orwell put it in his book Animal Farm.
There will always be those in society who are narcissistic enough to consider themselves to be political and intellectual elites. And sometimes they ascend to power. But power becomes addictive. Recent studies have shown that political power releases dopamine in the brain and is as addictive as heroine or cocaine.[6] In the extreme, political ideologies will make a case for abdication of moral norms and typically claim their necessity in order to ‘take care of the little guy and/or the marginalized of society’.
And while the Christian world view believes there is a system of morality which transcends nihilism, by all accounts we live in a post-Christian society. Nietzsche famously said, “God is dead”, and as mentioned, Christianity has been discredited among nearly all cultural, political, and intellectual influencers in the West as being intolerant and anti-science.
But the Christian world view is neither intolerant nor anti-science. If you will bear with me, I’d like to make a cursory argument at defending that statement. I have studied Christianity at length and find that the Christian world view has a moral foundation which is typically misunderstood.
Some of us see the suffering and malevolence in the world and wonder how there could possibly be a God. The protagonist in my book, Alfedora and the Drakebureau, struggles with that question. Especially a God who claims to be good. Noted atheist Sam Harris argues that in the face of the malevolence and suffering of innocent children in this world, there absolutely can never be such a thing as God. So that is both a moral and a religious question.
And I would suggest that the political divisions we see today have deepened to the point of being almost religious in nature. Conservatives, Libertarians, and Constitutionalists (like myself) understand that there is no point in debating anyone on the Left. There can be no real dialog when either party is no longer interested in the truth. But why is that the case?
Noted YouTube philosopher and atheist Stefan Molyneux has mentioned a few times in his videos that 97% of atheists, when they kick God out of their lives, replace Him with the State. Some have called it the religion of Statheism. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, just before Congress voted on the Affordable Care Act, famously said, “you’ve got to pass this bill to see what’s in it.” They took a “leap of faith” and voted on a bill which contained at least a thousand pages and which no one in Congress had time to read.
I imagine it was almost a religious experience for those who promoted it. We must trust in the State. “Give us this day our daily health”. Once it was passed into law, additional regulations were added until it grew to nearly twenty-thousand pages. But once they found out what was in it, Congress exempted itself from its own law. This was “do as I say, not as I do” on steroids and reeks of political privilege. It may not be disgusting to those who have grown up in postmodernism, which operates under the ethic that ‘might makes right’, but it is beyond disgusting to those of us who still remember a time when everyone was treated equally under the law.
Closer to home, I have a close relative who claims to be irreligious, and yet is the most religious person I know. It feels like it’s a religious thing when that person gets in your face because you disagree with their political or economic views, because the arguments are emotional and dogmatic in nature.
I find it disturbing that religious and political ideologies divide family members, but I’ve experienced it throughout my life – in both a religious context and in a political context. And I would suggest that this does not need to be how we live our lives. It is the Christian world view and biblical morality which inform me that relationships should be more important than ideologies or political or religious views.
So to understand this Christian view, I’d like to start at the beginning. The title of the first book of the OT, Genesis, comes from the Latin Vulgate, in which the Greek word is “γένεσις” and means “origin”. If we go back before the Vulgate, the Hebrew word was “Bərēšīṯ” (I probably butchered that pronunciation) but it literally means “in beginning”. So, we call it “the book of beginnings” and the title literally means, “origin” or “in [the] beginning”.
And as I get into the text, I want to keep in mind the question, ‘can we rise above religious and/or political differences, or is society doomed to remain stratified into biologically-determined castes as was suggested by Nietzsche over a hundred years ago?’
Here’s Clint Eastwood, in the Dirty Harry sequel, Magnum Force, released in 1973. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4lvLBe6fsE
So let’s get into it. Genesis 1:1-2.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”
Famed psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson has spoken at length about how human beings can best serve society by standing in the gap between chaos and order. The concept borrows from the Yin and Yang of ancient Chinese philosophy. Chaos in verse two is an earth without form and void… but, “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”
I get it that this sounds like mythological nonsense to those who hold a materialist world view: a view that believes there is nothing beyond nature. But science can never prove there is nothing beyond nature, and I think I can talk about science because I hold two degrees in geophysics. The classic scientific method draws inferences and conclusions from measurements of nature. So to conclude that there is nothing beyond nature by taking measurements of nature is like concluding that there are no four-footed beasts because I don’t see any in my goldfish bowl. Science can never prove there is nothing (or something) beyond nature.
My point is there could be something beyond nature. Science oversteps its methodology when it attempts to make metaphysical assertions. This is called scientism – when people make philosophical assertions and attempt to claim scientific authority. It is part of their struggle for power – if they can claim scientific authority for their political or metaphysical views, they are more likely to be able to impose their views on others.
But let’s keep going.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. (Genesis 1:3, NKJV)
So the first step of bringing order to the universe was to divide light from darkness. “And God saw the light, that it was good.” This phrase gets repeated throughout the chapter. Yet later in the book, we read about things that are not so good: Cain kills Abel. Wars erupt, genocide happens, and human experience becomes tainted by death and destruction as chaos reasserts itself. The chapter continues with separating the land from the oceans, night from day, and creation of plants. Pick it up in verse 24:
24 Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. 25 God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:24-25, NASB)
Which includes dogs, cats, cows, horses and the animals we love such as deer and elk and octopuses. But it also includes creepy crawlers. What was He thinking when He created cockroaches? Or scorpions? Really – scorpions? I prefer to think that mosquitos and cockroaches were part of the curse and didn’t happen until after God kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden in chapter 3. But that’s probably just wishful thinking on my part.
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26-28, NKJV)
Ok, so now we’re getting down to the nitty gritty. Notice the plural in verses 26 & 27, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness … male and female He created them.” God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit created man and woman in His (Their) image. This shoots a hole in the Judeo-Christian patriarchy narrative because females are created in the image of God just as much as males. And in fact, the Hebrew word for Holy Spirit is ruach which is a feminine noun. In the NT it is pnuema which is gender neutral, but we have the concept of being born of the Spirit in John 3 – from the words of Christ Himself. And that suggests that the Holy Spirit is the female aspect of the Godhead. So what does it mean to be created in the image of God?
“Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it…” In other words, to be created in the image of God is to be in significant relationships with other human beings who are slightly different than you are, and to come together to wield the power of procreation.
And I would suggest that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, i.e., the Godhead, set the Gold Standard for what it means to be in significant relationships with other beings. Some who are theological academics would call this a “social trinitarian” view. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love one another perfectly. They trust one another. Perfectly. They respect one another. Perfectly. When Jesus said in Matthew 5:48, “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect,” I believe he was speaking in the context of relational integrity.
Ravi Zacharias makes the case that there is an ethic of love in the Bible, and notes that you cannot have real love without free will. You cannot be free to love someone if you are not also free to not love that person. And this is the moral foundation that was set for us in the Book of Beginnings and can be seen from Genesis to Revelation and everywhere in between: that God values free-moral agency. The New Testament writer Paul wrote, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
And here’s something I learned in my own failed relationships. We all want to feel cared-for, trusted, and respected in any significant relationship. It’s like a three-legged stool. If I don’t feel like you trust me, boom, the relationship starts to fall over. If I don’t feel like I can trust you, boom, the relationship starts to fall over. Same goes for respect and caring. But while caring for one another is a commandment (“love your neighbor as yourself”), trust and respect have to be earned. And they are fragile and easily damaged. I cannot force you to respect or trust me. I have to earn your respect and your trust. Likewise, you must earn my respect and trust.
When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, after saying, “You must pass this law to find out what’s in it”, and then exempted themselves from their own law – I can’t respect that. They were in such a hurry to pass it that they didn’t make time to read it and millions of people have suffered increasing health insurance costs because of it (including co-pays which are so high they render the insurance useless other than for catastrophic issues). I don’t respect that because I believe all citizens are created equal and should be treated equally under the law – including members of Congress.
This relational integrity which evokes feelings of caring, trust, and respect in one another, is what makes life worth living and how I would describe holiness. I believe it is exemplified by the interactions between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – of which we get glimpses in the New Testament. Christians sing hymns about holiness, but do we really understand what we’re singing about? Paul writes, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.” (1 Cor. 13:12, NKJV).
So when Jesus said in John 10:10, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly,” I believe he was talking about restoring a sense of relational integrity in an existentially broken sea of humanity living in dysfunctional relationships. He walked among us with our unwillingness or inability to trust one another or our Creator. And he was eventually crucified by the rich and powerful as they attempted to protect their privileged positions in Roman and Jewish society. His narrative, much as it still is today, was a threat to their power structures.
Think about it. They crucified the most trust-worthy human being – God in a bod – who ever lived. They crucified the One most worthy of our respect – sent to redeem us with his own blood. They crucified the One who loved us enough to sacrifice himself for humanity – who chose love over power even when it meant his own death. But then God raised him from the dead, offered us redemption and forgiveness, and all he asks is for us to trust him. God the Father wants to feel like his created beings trust him. Any earthly father worth his salt understands that: you want your kids to trust you. And God has done everything possible to earn our trust. But we’d rather put our trust in our technology or the society of our friends and family members. Perhaps life is too easy: many of us will never turn to Christ unless we find ourselves in a fox hole staring death in the face.
Jesus said, in Mark 1:15, “Change the way you think and believe the Good News: the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Today we think in terms of nations rather than kingdoms, but you get the idea. The nations of this world are ruled by people who love power and are often addicted to it. But in the kingdom of heaven, the conquest ethic is replaced by an ethic of love which values real, authentic relationships above the postmodernist’s “will to power”.
The biblical ethic of love understands that authenticity and integrity in relationships cannot happen unless free will is valued – and the moral system of the Bible is built on that one simple concept. The NT writer Paul wrote, “Now abide faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.”
So what does God want from me? I don’t want to believe in a God who wants to burn people for their sins. Yeah, I get that. C.S. Lewis wrote a book called The Great Divorce in which he describes his views of hell as a place where people are simply given what they’ve chosen: a life apart from God and the relational integrity he’s talked about from Genesis to Revelation. In Lewis’ book, their lives are pathetically dysfunctional as they hold on to silly values which are meaningless and yet they refuse to let them go.
Do I believe in hell? I think we’ve seen hell on earth in the Soviet Gulags, in the Nazi Concentration Camps, and in the public executions of North Korea which are still going on today. If there is a realm beyond nature, and I believe there is, why is it so hard to believe there are places where malevolence and suffering have replaced freedom and relational integrity in that realm as well?
I would suggest that the path to freedom and relational integrity starts with choosing to trust in the one who died for us. The NT writer Paul wrote, “9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10, NKJV)
In John’s Apocalypse we read,
“14 These will make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and those who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful.” (Revelation 17:14, NKJV).
Today we might say He is the President of all presidents, the Chairman of all chairmen, the Senator of all senators, the Governor of all governors, the Leader of all leaders, and the Community Organizer of all community organizers. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, and the One with whom we have to do. And what he wants to do is help us find significance, meaning, and integrity in our significant relationships with God and with other human beings.
God the Father, who sent his son to die for us, wants to feel like we trust him. He wants to feel like his kids trust him. That’s really all he’s asking. Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, he offers you forgiveness and welcomes you into his presence. “If you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness.” (I John 1:9) This is because the Omnipotent One values relationships more than power. God is love before he is all-powerful, and he demonstrated that in Jesus Christ.
[1] https://santitafarella.wordpress.com/2010/05/30/nietzsches-checkmate-does-atheism-lead-to-totalitarianism/ , downloaded 3/3/2019
[2] Jacob Golomb and Robert Wistrich, Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? (Princeton 2002, pg. 4)
[3] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler, downloaded 3/3/2019
[4] Ibid.
[5] https://www.google.com/search?ei=vx19XM7kFKuCjwTWo5SQBA&q=ideology&oq=ideology&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0l2j0i131j0l7.544021.548367..548787…0.0..3.282.3693.4j9j8……0….1..gws-wiz…..0..0i131i67j0i67._kfpbG6FfpU , downloaded 3/4/2019
[6] http://theconversation.com/the-neurochemistry-of-power-has-implications-for-political-change-23844, downloaded 3/7/2019