Social Justice & Marxism for Everyday People
If you’ve interacted with social media at all this past year, you’ve more than likely seen the back-and-forth debates about social justice. In the midst of Twitter manifestos and keyboard wars, terms like “Marxism,” “Socialism,” and “Woke” are thrown around, and threads fill with $10 words that so few people actually understand. Many are forced to pick a side or run from the battlefield, while others say this is just another social media debate over non-essentials.
Don’t let the complicated terms and hot-headed debates intimidate you. Make no mistake about it, this is a gospel issue.
Your freedom to share Christ hangs in the balance.
Imagine taking a test: You’re given five social constructs and asked to identify which people group they represent in world history. The five constructs are:
Religious gatherings shut down.
Gangs of youth are allowed to defy authority.
Schools rewrite their social studies and history curriculum.
Free speech is removed as a threat to national security or health.
State science and data become the tool for edicts.
How would you answer? To whom is the test referring?
Most respond, “America, 2020!” or “America, 2021!” Yet, technically, they would be wrong. These were constructs developed in the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, implemented in the Bolshevik revolution under Lenin in 1917, in Nazi Germany in 1934, and again during Mao’s 1949 Cultural Revolution in China.
The theological and philosophical views of Karl Marx are driving like a freight train through our government, media, and schools. Most social justice, seeker sensitivity, liberalism, critical race theory, gay agenda, political correctness, and government overreach flow out of this Marxist worldview. The battle for your freedom is not only political but spiritual.
Hating The Gospel
In school, we were taught that Marxist-Socialism is an economic system opposed to Capitalism. On the surface, this is true. But, there is much more lurking under the ideological waters. Marxist-socialism is not merely anti-capitalistic but also aggressively anti-Christian.[1]
Marxist-socialism is a worldview that hates Christianity. In his Communist Manifesto, Marx writes, “Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion and all morality.” Marx got these ideas from Charles Darwin and Ludwig Feuerbach, who denied the supernatural and taught that only what is seen actually exists. A poem Marx penned as a teen says it all:
“Thus heaven I have forfeited, I know it full well. My soul once true to God, is now chosen for hell.”
Marx hated religion so much he called it a drug for the masses, a way to keep people calm as they dealt with human existence’s violent realities. Subsequently, he taught that the only thing that could ever fill the “void” in someone’s heart was money.[2] Marxism is the enemy of The Gospel.
Opposing The Gospel
Marx taught that the universe runs via “dialectical materialism” (fate). Everything in nature is controlled by molecular action. To the Marxist-Socialist, everything is based on this twist of fate; some are born with better molecules, others weaker molecules, and eventually, these waves of nature result in one working class’s global utopia.
With a fascinating (even devilish!) irony, Marx explained that the path to his utopia included the end of religious gatherings, rewriting of history, brainwashing of the “uninformed,” and shutting down of free speech. He once called this “the forcible overthrow of social conditions…” Sound familiar?[3]
This explains why Marxist-Socialists despise Christianity.
Christianity teaches that our hope isn’t on Earth but in Heaven. Hence, Marx knew Christians wouldn’t buy into schemes of worldly power.[4] Christianity stood antithetical to his fate-based utopia. Marx wanted man to be defined in the image of man. Christianity declared man as made in the image of God. Marx taught the working proletariat would neutralize evils. Christianity promised Christ will return to judge all evils. Hence, God was (is!) the stumbling block to the Marxist agenda.[5]
Persecuting The Gospel
Followers of Marxist philosophy killed over 100-million people in the 20th century.[6] Nikolai Bukharin, the founding editor of the Russian Communist Newspaper, wrote, “We must take on religion at the tip of the bayonet.” The famed Gulag Archipelago said, “Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin…hatred of God is the principle driving force.” Under Stalin’s “Five Year Plan” (1929-1953), Russia was entirely cleansed of Christian churches.
A gut-wrenching example is Richard Wurmbrand, who was held in Romania for 14-years. In 1967 he testified before the US Congress of being carved with a knife in a dozen different parts of his body and eighteen holes burned on his body. He was also tied to a cross laid on the ground, and for four days and nights, his persecutors relieved themselves on his body. They jeered, “Look at your Christ! How beautiful he is! What fragrance he brings from heaven!”[7]
Under Mao’s regime in communist China, 5-billion aluminum Mao badges were produced so every citizen could show allegiance. So much aluminum was used on badges, the military had to pause making airplanes. Mao’s leadership motto was, “Keep people stupid” when he launched the 1966 Socialist Education Campaign demanding every citizen sing his “loyalty” song:
“Father is dear,
Mother is dear,
But not as dear,
As Chairman Mao.”
By 1967 Mao had initiated the new “religion” for all Chinese. Anyone who did not worship Mao was considered an “active counter-revolutionary.” Mao demanded daily worship of himself, his teaching, and the revolutionary party. Upon rising in the morning, every Chinese man or woman had to face toward their Mao shrine and “ask for instructions.” Mao was portrayed as the sun god, and over 60-million “counter-revolutionaries” were killed under his reign of terror.
Manipulation of The Gospel
Antonio Gramsci, leader of the Communist Party in Italy, pulled no punches when he declared socialism the enemy of Christians. Gramsci wrote, “Socialism is the religion that will overwhelm Christianity… In the new order, socialism will triumph, capturing the culture via schools, colleges, then churches, then media, transforming the consciousness of our society.”
Sadly, America has succumbed to Gramsci’s plan.
Early in the 20th century, Marxism invaded America. By the 1930s, Marxist teachers held notable posts in America’s most prestigious universities. Liberal professors from the German Frankfurt School, known for its critical theories of “idealist philosophy” based on Freudian, Marxist, and Hegelian ideologies soon ruled academia’s elite circles.[8]
Almost immediately, these institutions founded on Judeo-Christian doctrine began fading from their biblical roots. By the 1940s, liberal modernism swept across the nation. Schools and churches that once taught a high view of God and Scripture began teaching that the Bible contains errors, that Jesus is not God in the flesh, that the supernatural does not exist, and that Darwinian evolution explains the origin of man.[9]
Today, we see the culmination of this apostasy as America reaps the consequences for her sin. Tragically, thousands of pastors are infected by Marxist moorings, ignoring the Scripture, soft-pedaling the Gospel, marching in BLM parades, feigning on homosexuality, ignoring abortion, and taking no stand on marriage, divorce, gender, and social justice. The idea of right and left, conservative and liberal, even right and wrong has disappeared… America is a tangle of politically-correct-pluralistic-relativism.
We must not be so naïve to think that what happened to the church in Russia, Germany, Italy, or China can’t happen here. America is but an idea, The Constitution — a parchment paper, a philosophy that can be changed by a whim if the truth is not taught and Christians silenced. Marxism and Christianity do not mix. They are opposing worldviews.
Conclusion
Our ongoing cultural revolution hasn’t reached the boil of Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China, but our “Wokeness” has the water rumbling. Don’t be surprised when more churches get burned, statues desecrated, or school name’s changed.
The Marxist mobs are allowed to rape, riot, pillage, and destroy. Soon, if you don’t join them, you’ll be against them. Without law and order, they’ll rule the streets.
If history is any predictor, pastors will disappear first, quietly rushed off to “reeducation centers. Next, you’ll be asked to join a state-sanctioned church or school. Christian videos and classic books will be banned, especially those authored by “decolonized,” “fanatic,” and “binary” writers. Finally, if you refuse, you’ll lose everything. You’ll lose your career over church choice, job over a social media post, or even your children over suggesting peaceful protest as the American Way. At some point, you’ll be threatened or jailed for resisting – or failing to praise appropriately – the next BLM rally cry.
History proves this time and again. Our Marxist-Socialist revolution is beginning, just like the others. It’s top-down—aristocrats over the common man. Secular “elitists” stirring themselves into an uproar against the “un-woke” lower classes holding to their non-evolutionary-medieval-faith and ancient Gospel. Persecution comes next.
[1] For clarification on how Marxism and Socialism merge, see Paul Kengor, The Devil, and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration (Gastonia: TAN Press, 2020)
[2] Augustine’s “Hole in the heart” analogy best illustrates the battle between Communism and Christianity. Marx held money fills the void, whereas Christians know only God can fill the void.
[3] We read of similar humanistic movements throughout history Cf. Genesis 11
[4] Although not a Christian, Jordan Peterson (U of T) is correct when he suggests the central selling point of socialism for those 20-40 is the promise of a utopian vision without class distinction.
[5] It remains humorous how people supposedly “atheist” fear a “God” they claim does not exist. Cf. Rom. 1:20-22
[6] See WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/100-years-of-communismand-100-million-dead
[7] See Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ (East Sussex: David C. Cook, 2017)
[8] James Gordon Finlayson, Habermas a Very Short Introduction. Oxford Univ. Press, 2016.
[9] Including illustrious Ivy League schools such as Yale and Harvard
