God Thoughts
God Thoughts
April 6, 2015
“[Communism] is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: ‘Ye shall be as gods.’ It is the great alternative faith of mankind. . . . its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man’s relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God. It is the vision of man’s mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world.”
Witness, by Whittaker Chambers (page 9)
Whittaker Chambers was a former Communist who, in the forties and fifties, exposed the Communists lacing our government, mainly in the State Department, culminating in his accusation of Alger Hiss as a Communist spy, and the trial of Alger Hiss, in which Whittaker Chambers was the government’s foremost witness. (Interesting side note: this trial is the source of the Progressive Left’s undying hatred of Richard Nixon; he was the one who prosecuted and convicted Alger Hiss of treason.) Chambers’s book, Witness, is the recounting of his life as a Communist during his young manhood, his eventual escape, and the collision between the “two irreconcilable faiths of our time: Communism and Freedom”.
I don’t remember the context in which I first came across a reference to the book and decided to read it, but I do remember the gut reaction I had upon reading the paragraph quoted above. I felt instinctively that it was one of the truest statements of human condition that I had ever read.
I’ve long been fascinated by Biblical prophecy, and have read and studied various versions and views since my teens. And I believe the Bible is exactly as Chambers puts it; the story of the struggle between belief in God and man’s relationship to God, and belief in Man without God. As we look at the events of the world around us today, particularly the increasing war on religion, doesn’t the underlying controversy become plainer and simpler?
All of the social, economic, cultural, militarial, politically correct issues we are facing today fall under the umbrella of the Communist movement, although in our PC unwillingness to offend anyone, it is now labeled “Progressivism”. As I read Witness I was struck by how many of the issues that I thought were introduced by my generation (sexual freedom, contempt of materialism, marriage and other societal mores, situational ethics, etc.) were actually introduced into the culture beginning in the early teens and twenties, when the Progressives were really gaining steam. Even the rampant Muslim fundamentalism today, such as ISIS, is merely Communism hiding under the skirts of religion.
Gay rights activism, with its attempts to deny Christians the equal right to freedom of their beliefs, is just another example of the vision of Man without God. If that’s the vision you choose for your life, fine. It’s not the vision I choose for mine. And that should be the end of any conflict.
But it’s not. The attempts to remove God from humanity’s present, the attacks on Judeo-Christian culture are much bolder than even six months ago. Is it the lack of response to the rising anti-Semitism, the destruction and outright slaughter of Christians across the Middle East and the developing world that creates the sophistry that the vision of Man without God is the solution to the world’s problems? Is it the denunciation of these acts in word only (if even that) by the mainstream Christian religions? Is that why the prophet John predicted in the book of Revelation that Christ would say to the Laodicean church, the church in existence at the end of days, “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot: I would you were cold or hot. So then because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.” (Rev. 3:15-16)
Faith is given as a gift to all mankind, to sustain us in times of despair, allowing us hope, and providing us the ability to be charitable to those around us even when we ourselves are in need. Our vision of faith, that of man and his relationship to God, admonishes us to live not by word alone, but by deed. It’s a sad fact that this vision of faith is eroded by material ease and complacency. Nature abhors a vacuum, and as one faith wanes, the other will wax.
Chambers, again: “The Communist vision [faith] has a mighty agitator and a mighty propagandist. They are the crisis.. . . The vision inspires. The crisis impels. The workingman is chiefly moved by the crisis. The educated man is chiefly moved by the vision. The workingman, living upon a mean margin of life, can afford few visions – even practical visions. An educated man, peering from the Harvard Yard, or any college campus, upon a world in chaos, finds in the vision the two certainties for which the mind of man tirelessly seeks: a reason to live and a reason to die. No other faith of our time (emphasis mine) presents them with the same practical intensity. That is why Communism is the central experience of the first half of the 20th century, and may be its final experience – will be, unless the free world, in the agony of its struggle with Communism, overcomes its crisis by discovering, in suffering and pain, a power of faith which will provide man’s mind, at the same intensity, with the same two certainties: a reason to live and a reason to die. If it fails, this will be the century of the great social wars. If it succeeds, this will be the century of the great wars of faith.” (Witness, pages 11-12)
We are witnessing and living the great social wars right now. Will we rediscover our power in time to embark on the great wars of faith?
“My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.” (1 John 3:18)
I choose the vision of God and man’s relationship to God because I’ve witnessed His love, for me and for ALL His creation. Because He loves you, He’s given you the freedom to choose your vision.