Of course, those with power oppress those with less. That is an obvious conclusion from biblical teaching about how the fall corrupted human nature. But the radical fall of Adam’s race transmitted his sinful nature to all humans, not just the rich. Using the oppressor/oppressed lens of Marx to interpret all of history and explain the most basic human motivations is nowhere close to accurate.

The spiritual battle in which Christian men are called to engage is largely a battle of ideas. After Paul devotes eleven chapters of Romans to the glory of the gospel, and challenges Christians that the only proper response is to offer ourselves back to God as a living sacrifice, the very next command is a reference to this battle over ideas: Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. In Ephesians 6 the list of equipment for warfare begins with the belt of truth and ends with the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, indispensable tools for this battle of ideas.

This reality presents Christian men with an enormous challenge. We are created to be warriors (Gen 2:15). But few of us are philosophy majors. The world of ideas that we know best matches our vocation and avocation. Yet, as warriors in the spiritual battle of ideas and as protectors of our families, WE are the ones God expects to lead the way to destroy arguments, and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Cor 10:5). How can we possibly do this? The missing ingredient is EQUIPPING. The church must find ways to equip the saints (Eph 4:12). This podcast series, “Election 2024 and Biblical Worldview” is intended to equip men to understand the worldview issues that lie beneath the upcoming election.

As an economics major at Penn State, I got to take an economics class from an expert on Mao Zedong’s take over of China by his Red Guard in 1949, just twenty years earlier. I discovered with horror the Red Guard’s slaughter of millions of Chinese landowners to collectivize farming, and how this experiment led to the economic ruin of China and the starvation of twenty million people. I studied how Mao implemented his unique brand of Marxism and how he deceived the naïve into ceding more and more power to his regime. In his Little Red Book, I read his argument that class and class struggle justify violent revolution making it necessary for peasants and the Chinese people to murder business owners and seize their assets . I saw how Mao played on class envy, enflaming violent hatred in Chinese peasants towards the wealthy, justifying the brutal annihilation of factory owners. I saw how he brainwashed the young and naïve to accomplish his slaughter of farmers through the slogan, “From each according to his ability. To each according to his need.” History reveals that eventually 65 million Chinese lost their lives through Mao’s evil Marxist policies. 65 million! So, perhaps, I am more alarmed than most at the spread of a very similar ideology throughout the institutions of America over the last twenty years. It is called cultural Marxism and is also known as critical theory, a subset of which is critical race theory.  

Origin and Growth of Critical Theory

Critical theory is a comprehensive way of viewing society that is rooted in Karl Marx’s dichotomy of society into the oppressed proletariat laboring class and the oppressor bourgeoisie land and business owner class. Italian Marxist Antonia Gramsci extended this oppressor/oppressed lens into every aspect of culture. Thus, not only are laborers oppressed by business owners, but the poor are oppressed by the rich, blacks are oppressed by whites, women are oppressed by men, homosexuals and transgendered oppressed by cisgendered people. Poor nations are oppressed by wealthy nations, immigrants wanting to cross our borders are oppressed by Americans citizens who want closed borders. Palestinian Muslims are oppressed by Israel. Gramsci called the force that enables these oppressors to oppress “unjust, cultural hegemony.” You may remember this term from history class, which usually refers to the influence of stronger nations over weaker ones. Hegemony means the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group.

After the Marxist revolution failed to topple capitalism in the early twentieth century, Marxists, who had gone back to the drawing board, picked up Gramsci’s hegemony concept. One such group, the Frankfurt School, following Gramsci’s lead, expanded Marx’s oppressor/oppressed economic lens to every sphere of social injustice. All inequities are caused by the cultural power of the OPPRESSORS, which these OPPRESSORS cling to through their religious, political, social, and cultural structures. These structures, such as Christianity, the US Constitution, the free market, accurate history, and the structure of the family must be torn down to accomplish social justice. One’s membership in oppressed groups is called his intersectionality rating and determines the legitimacy of one’s truth claim. Thus, a black, female, gay immigrant has more credibility than just a black man. During the last 25 years among Christians in the West there has come a welcome return to a concern for social justice and especially opposition to racism. But tragically, many Christians who lack an awareness of the tenets of cultural Marxism are being seduced into its anti-biblical thinking, including their thinking about politics.

Four Characteristics of Cultural Marxism

1. Cultural Marxism Is Based on a Corrupt, Anti-Biblical View of Justice

Amplification: This view argues, “all inequalities are unjust.” Privilege is evil and the cause of oppression. Equal opportunity is replaced by the call for equity. Whereas equality means that each individual or group is given the same opportunity or resources, equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and, therefore allocates the exact resources needed to reach an equal outcome among all. This is pure Marxism—the redistribution of wealth, i.e. the state stealing from the rich and giving those funds to the poor. After all, why should some have so much and others so little? It is not fair! Mao fomented revolution through his slogan “from each according to his ability and to each according to his need.” This utopian ideal to force “equality” upon others led ultimately to the slaughter of 65 million Chinese by Mao, and 20 million in the USSR by Lenin and Stalin (cited from Money Greed and God, by Jay Richardson). That this Marxist view of justice is seen in critical theory is obvious. For example, Ibram Kendi, the author of How to Be an Antiracist, and leading spokesman for CRT writes, “As an anti-racist, when I see racial DISPARITIES, I see racism” (Cited by Ted Cruz, Unwoke). Think of it, ANY inequity PROVES racism.

Thinking Biblically:

• Inequality is not unjust. It is God who has ordained the exact circumstances of every creature. In Romans 9 Paul gives God’s response to the accusation of being unjust in treating humans differently, Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (vs 14).
• There is zero biblical case for the state redistributing wealth. The eighth commandment, which prohibits theft, underscores the ownership of private property while the tenth commandment warns against the covetousness that is at the core of critical theory’s oppressor/oppressed social binary.
• The chief obstacle to defining justice as equal outcomes is the Bible. It overwhelmingly teaches that outcomes are a result of numerous factors, including the blessing of God upon righteousness as well as potentially being unjustly oppressed.

The Biblical law requiring landowners to harvest only once leaving the leftovers for the poor needs to be recognized; but to act justly is not just defending the marginalized.

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