Dennis Peacocke comments on political ideologies and the Kingdom of God

Dennis Peacocke

Throughout history, there have been many liberation movements, but only one has the power to deliver: Christianity. Simply caring about people and nations that are imprisoned doesn't guarantee that you will see what is the cause of their imprisonment. Sincerity won't unlock men's chains-only truth will. "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."1

Humanist Liberation

To the humanist, social justice has the highest priority, and he is willing to kill men and destroy societies in order to make them just. He believes that justice is a function of human power, and that man can muscle his way to righteousness through the power of a centralized state. The state can legislate the conditions that will save man. This is the old heresy of salvation by law. But more than this, he believes that just societies and righteous men are the product of their environment.

The humanist assumes environmental determinism. That is, when you are caught in your sin, your inability to deal with your personal guilt forces you to blame outside circumstances for your failure.

Adam did it. "And the man said, 'The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.'"2 What a classic line! Here is the humanist man in all his splendor and glory, blaming God for the environment that He has created for him in Eden and blaming Eve for leading her poor husband down the path of exploitation. To the humanist, the environment is the sin, and man is the victim.

The humanist assumes the failure of the environment. He believes that God is responsible for sin (if He exists), and that the environment must be reordered and saved in order for sin to be reduced or eliminated. He believes that, out of that saved environment, righteous man will eventually evolve.

Will The State Set Men Free?

To the humanist, salvation is by the power of the State. The State is the world's priest: it teaches, it heals, and it distributes justice. The State saves through the power of its own law. If the individual, the family, the Church, and the commercial realm would only bow their knees to the all-seeing and all-powerful bureaucrats with doctoral degrees and philosopher/king insight, the new order would emerge.

The humanist believes in salvation by legislation. The institution of the civil government will be god walking upon the Earth. From his courts, new bureaucratic commands will roll down and sweep away man-the-exploiter and man-the-superstitious-religionist.

All hail Caesar! How splendid he is with his legions, his bureaucrats, and his army of state planners. We would worship him, but it is hard to see him over the mountains of human corpses he has created between us and himself.

All hail "Seizer"! How splendid he is with his tax-collectors, tax forms, applications in triplicate, endless delays, responsibility shirking, and ever-growing budget deficits. We would worship him, but it is hard to see him over the mountain of red tape he has created between us and himself.

Will Stealing From The Wealth-Producers Set Men Free?

The politics of Christ and His Kingdom is at war with the politics of covetousness: "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor."3

But no matter; for the humanist government planner, salvation is by appropriation. Today we live in a political world that is built on "the politics of guilt and envy," as one wise man has described it. Men and even nations operate from the premise that somebody has ripped us off, and that when anybody has more than we have, they must have stolen it from us! For those of you who are familiar with the writings of Freud and Marx, you can easily see that they gave an incredible crutch to the undeveloped people and nations of the world. They made covetousness legitimate. All hail the humanist Robin Hood!