Leftism is a great evil. Built on lies to serve an agenda; led by a lust for power over others. The Devil’s spawn perhaps. But if so, has it always lurked within human societies; since the dawn of time? A question to which I have no answer. I’m no historian of antiquity. Three of us were discussing this over coffee this morning. I guess not many people in our immediate vicinity were discussing similar topics. Neutral Bay; they probably voted for or preferenced Kylea Tink.
Rafe Champion, one of our number, suggested that the rot might have set in with the French Revolution. I mentioned Thomas More’s Utopia, written in 1516. Christianity came up. No one mentioned Marx by the way; a Johnny-come-lately.
As a Christian, I find the concession uncomfortable, but the sharing and caring emphasis in the Bible lends itself to a perverted recipe for an ideal civil society. Tellingly, William Temple (1881-1944), later Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote in 1908: “The alternative stands before us – socialism or heresy.” Then and now, it’s not hard to find socialists among Christian clergy; maybe, hard not to in my experience. The current Pope is a prime example, as to a large extent is Justin Welby. Welby’s a fan of so-called “inclusive capitalism”; for this term, without going too far wrong, read Klaus Schwab’s “stakeholder capitalism.”
I had a look at the question of Christianity and socialism a little while ago. You can read it here if you want to spare the time. Sufficient to say, you can’t find support for socialism in the New Testament. Sure, for voluntary sharing; cheerful giving. Not for socialism. But then that’s reading what the Bible actually says; not imputing a spin to suit an agenda.
To segue, the Bible is clear that marriage is between a man and a woman. That sex outside marriage is fornication and sinful. That homosexual acts are sinful. Then you have a majority of bishops at the recent Anglican church’s general synod preventing an affirmation that marriage is only between a man and a woman. Once again you see, an agenda trumps what the Bible actually says. So far as I know, no priest has yet said, “the alternative stands before us, support same sex marriage or be a heretic.” But the way things are going don’t rule it out.
I got a feelin’ that socialism sprang out of Christianity. Being of a religious persuasion I don’t find that surprising. Why wouldn’t the Devil use scripture for his purposes.
Okay, so Welby’s an apologist for Capitalism.
Why blame Socialism for Welby?
Welby’s a fan of so-called “inclusive capitalism”; for this term, without going too far wrong, read Klaus Schwab’s “stakeholder capitalism.”
Both being, in substance, a western “progressive”, slightly more subtle, version of humbugging.
Protestantism, The Enlightenment, Socialism, as day follows night.
Servant of God Takagai Nagai made a telling comment about this in ‘A Song For Nagasaki’ when admonished by a protestant for his devotion to Our Lady, to paraphrase; that the only idol being worshipped was the mind of his interrogator.
?
Is it “offspring” or simply a perversion of Christianity? And a very deliberate, devilish perversion at that.
Man becomes God, he is “fixable” through social tweaking, heaven can be established on earth through man’s own efforts.
I don’t see any vestiges of Christianity in that. There may be some similarities, such as sharing of plenty, except that Christian sharing is voluntary through love, socialism is forced through fear.
That some Christians, and there are many, have been lured into socialism isn’t surprising. We always want to take shortcuts on the broad highway, rather than the hard yards on the narrow path.
Charity, as with anything else in the Bible, comes down to personal choice. You must choose to be charitable. Socialism forces charity externally, which is thus not charity at all.
But the most important part of charity is that it remain discreet. The Bible specifically calls out those who virtue signal their perceived goodness as being worthless miscreants. You give in order not to receive.
Socialism is the very opposite of this.
However, it must be remembered that the Bible was written in reference to a people who were made up of wandering tribes. Within that context, some degree of what we might call socialism is required for simple survival. The family, the tribe, that is what was important. Outsiders were put up with but not embraced.
Our own ‘great nations’ with all of their top down controls are the antithesis of the family, in fact they are antipathetic to it. As is socialism.
Socialism and sex are similar.
They’re great fun if no one has a gun to your head.
Plato….he was perhaps the first utopian philosopher and he influenced, I think a lot, Rousseau, Marx, Nietsche and others. Every religion has some utopian principles but most religions acknowledge that man is fallable and thus want to rein in man’s flaws. Utopian philosophy does not do this.
Incorrect.
Wrong again.
They were farmers and herdsmen, not hunter gatherers.
Also wrong.
Obedience to God was the only important thing.
Moses slaughtered the makers of the Golden Calf and their entire families.
Socialism annihilates the individual – a core of Christianity. All the lessons of the Bible are about how the individual should conduct themselves to develop a unique personal relationship with God.
It also misreads the Bible as a series of outcomes, not acts. For them, an act of charity is not a laudable following the example of Christ. For them the important thing is the transfer of wealth to the needy. And people being fickle means leaving charity to individual choice is not good enough. State enforced or implemented giving is the solution. The moral dimension is gone.
(Christ, of course, taught poverty was bearable, even closer to him. Material concerns had less claim on them. He was poor himself.)
And sure enough, socialists are without exception very amoral people. They can affect a Pharisaic posture in tone, but it is cold, calculated, and designed for their own advantage.
rosiesays:
June 14, 2022 at 7:07 pm
Bought any good indulgences lately rosie?
The devil can quote scripture.
As the devil and his ilk do not work on human timescales, setting up socialism and other road-to-hell-paved-in-good-intentions ideas over the course of centuries is very plausible.
Looking at the French Revolution, the spark of that horrific affair was another intellectual wickedness known as Enlightenment.
Many people don’t know that the roots of Enlightenment and Enlightenment itself are opposed to what’s Good. And now in 2022 we see the real evil fruits of that where you can draw a line back to that philosophy some 300 or so years ago.
However it has always been theater way; the days before the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Aztecs, Carthage. I am sure the devil took centuries to help debase those cultures.
It repeats itself when man forgets God
Socialism is a political construct that is pretty much the brainchild of Satan. It’s diabolical nature is immediately apparent to anyone who has bothered to examine it closely rather than swallow the thinly disguised pap that is blythely tossed around in our dumbed down universities, addled media outlets both old and new, and the utterly putrid parliaments of what was once the free world. The Church is not just silent, but complicit in rolling it out.
The Devil only cares to steal and kill and destroy. How he manages that has variously manifested in different historical periods but the end result is always the same. Corpses, and millions of them. Socialism and its monstrously uglier sister, communism, are always involved at some point in those dark and disgusting black holes of both recent and distant past.
A failed idea that, like vampires of myth, never, ever dies.
The connection between leftism and Christianity is obvious.
Leftism’s hallmark is ferocious self-hatred.
Christianity teaches us that we are all sinners. Self-hatred is being consumed by the sin.
Christianity presupposes the authority of God as creator. He is the ectype; man is the archetype. Man rebelled; hence sin is the transgression of God’s law. Jesus Christ, as both God and man (unblended) entered history (i.e. the time and space which he created), to die and receive the due penalty of the law in the place of those who would accept it for themselves, rather than this penalty – eternal death – falling on them. This satisfies the demands of the law that reflects God’s morally perfect character and demonstrates God’s love to all (refer to Romans 5:7-9).
Autonomy, or self law, presupposes the authority of man. The assumed self-existence of matter and human logic rules out the possibility of such a creator as the God of the Bible. Through logic man aspires to comprehensive knowledge and human flourishing. The only problem is that man’s nature as morally corrupt is not addressed. Autonomy, humanism, man as god, and its offspring, such as socialism, assume that human nature is good. Evil is inherent in the environment, therefore man can be remoulded through the state as the instrument that re-establishes correct relations. Note that the presupposed existence of universals and relations (i.e. true propositions or truth) are those that man through logic affirms, not that they are eternal in the absolute personality of God, who, given his transcendence has no problem maintaining the reliability of Scripture or the Bible through time and history. This outcome is the effect of Kant’s rationalism.
Socialism is a euphemism for fascism: the rule of certain elite through the machinery of the state – you can forget Marx’s march to state socialism and communism – to overturn the “evils” of individualism, self-interest, private property, inequality and God’s law. It is achieved by revolution, but results in the undermining of capitalism and criminal/civil justice in preference for the unattainable ideals of social justice and equalitarianism.
“For one will scarcely die for a righteous person–though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die–but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God” (Romans 5:7-9).
I think you are missing something. Leftism in its current form is actually closest to Islam.
Especially with the global warming and Covid stuff there’s been an increasing jihad to “save” the people of the world, even if they don’t think they need to be saved. That’s very Islamic. The new religion has food laws (veganism/eating bugs), it has sex fetishes, it has mandatory rituals (recycling), it has public prayer (welcome to country/smoking ceremonies), it has conspicuous virtue signalling coupled with endemic corruption. All of these are also features of Islam.
It’s no wonder then that the Left is allied with Islam against Christianity. Eventually there will be a falling out between them, which has been starting a little bit in countries like France and Denmark, but at the moment they have more in common than they have differences.
Tom, I’m sorry that all you were taught was what a terrible sinner you are and not the reverse side of the relationship.
The Bible is replete with expressions of God’s sincere, eternal love for you.
There are plenty more, both in the old and new testaments.
You are not created to hate yourself. You are here because you are loved and you are expected to love by the One who IS love. The only hatred you can reasonably hold is for sin that clings so close – give it to him and he will remove it as far as the east is from the west.
As a Christian, I find the commandments ‘do not covet’ and ‘do not steal’, not to mention ‘you shall have no other gods’, incompatible with Socialism, the roots of which can be traced to the radical wing of the Enlightenment.
Oops. God is the archetype; man is the ectype.
“Especially with the global warming and Covid stuff there’s been an increasing jihad to “save” the people of the world, even if they don’t think they need to be saved. That’s very Islamic. The new religion has food laws (veganism/eating bugs), it has sex fetishes, it has mandatory rituals (recycling), it has public prayer (welcome to country/smoking ceremonies), it has conspicuous virtue signalling coupled with endemic corruption. All of these are also features of Islam.”
Just as they are also features of other religions. What are you on? What about evangelicals” wanting to save the people of the world? What about the notion that you can only saved if you believe in Jesus?
Judaism has very specific food laws, Judaism has very specific sexual laws. I’ve know the Shulhan Aruck….which is the code of Jewish law. I very much doubt you do.
Every religion has virtue signalling.
It was ever thus for the course of heresy in the church.
First the heretic asks for toleration of his views, which he deems harmless.
Then he seeks recognition of them as “an aspect of the truth” or some such mealy mouthed formula.
Finally they – for they have now become a party within the church, even led by bishops – grasp for supremacy. The truth and those who hold to it are then no longer tolerated within “the church”, which has now become a synagogue of Satan, filled with those who say they are Christians, but are not; they are lying (to paraphrase the apostle John).
Hmmm.
Peter Smith, Rafe Champion, and a presumably similar-minded person sitting together in a coffee shop?
I sense an insurrection in the making.
Cassie – This is the guiding letter written by the church elders in Jerusalem only a couple decades after Christ.
Acts 15:22-29
Of course Rafe nailed it.
If you look closely at the French Revolution, a justifiably cynical view was that it was a battle between the divine right of kings and the divine right of the smartest ( or is that smarmiest?) in the room.
The whole liberty thing was just to sell it to the masses.
That’s because every religion, including the climate one, is full of people like me. We don’t adhere to the rules, such as they are, quietly and secretly.
As for Christians, one of the orders is to go into all the world and speak about Jesus. Another is to serve others and do good only. Obeying them can get you into a power of trouble, but there it is.
Cassie – I’ll add that the laws of Judaism were given by God. As a Christian I honour my Jewish friends, as is instructed in the New Testament, and because they’re friends and neighbours (“love your neighbour as yourself” is in the Torah and was also emphasised by Jesus).
The antisemitic stuff which infested some Christian denominations at various times is in spite of the Christian Bible not due to it. Same goes with some rituals – as per that text I’ve just quoted there are very few actual Christian ritual requirements in the Bible. It doesn’t stop people adding rituals, and I have no problem with that – humans love rituals, it seems instinctive. We have our own rituals in our church, but that’s what we’re comfortable with and we don’t impose them on anyone else. Unlike Islam and the green-progressives.
I think Islam is actually partly stolen from Judaism because Mo lived in a Jewish political entity in what is now western Saudi Arabia. Which explains both Islam’s hostility to Jews and the rituals – which are abhorrently perverted versions of our Sovereign Lord’s commandments.
“Cassie – This is the guiding letter written by the church elders in Jerusalem only a couple decades after Christ.”
Spare me the sanctimony. I’m not a Christian, in case you haven’t noticed.
Oh and there’s an old adage that says it it wise to admit when you’re wrong, perhaps you should try following it.
Not sure where anyone finds socialism in the Bible. Dig a bit to the historical facts that poor Jewish people had some help from their synagogue. After they left Judaism they no longer had access to that help. Hence the situation in Acts where they then out of Christian love shared with those in need. I fail to see how merciful behaviour could be linked to socialism, it is the totally opposite.
Cassie – In what way am I wrong? That’s the issue: it’s a matter of belief. I believe I’m correct based on the tenets of Christianity, you believe I’m not because of the tenets of the Torah. I have no problem with you disagreeing with me on such things.
I know Jewish people in Israel find evangelical Christians annoying – the articles about that in Arutz Sheva are fun. But Christians by and large do not enslave or exterminate people who choose not to believe in Jesus Christ (and when they did so in past history it was diametrically antithetical to Bible teaching). Nor do Jewish people enslave anyone who doesn’t believe in Judaism. But Islam and green-progressivism do enslave people who refuse to believe in their religions: jizya and lockdowns being examples.
Christianity supports “charity” or, in the old parlance, “offering a hand up”. What is not freely given, is effectively stolen.
The bible offers no obvious support for a culture of entitlement – in the old parlance “socialism/communism”
Cassie, I can assure you that some parts of the RCC did lose its way in this belief. But it was clearly rectified in Vatican II when the Synod asked “if you can only be saved by belief in Christ, what happens if you lived in the Amazon and never heard about him?”
In Lumen Gentium, the RCC clears this up: Christians will be judged as to whether they lived Christ-like lives. Non believers and those who have never met Christ will be judged by the standards they set for others. There’s a lot more that could be said but that the crux of it (pun intended). 😛
“It repeats itself when man forgets God”. Seems all so true.
As a non-organised religion person I’m finding many of the comments, pardon the pun, “enlightening” and look forward to further contributions.
The central issue I think is what is good and what is evil . Every religion has rules that try to define them but there are exceptions to every rule . I think the result of a rule or act define its “goodness” or “evil” . As the saying goes ” The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. Everyone is in charge of their own lives and responsible for their decisions and actions and that is all that you can control . When someone attempts greater control of circumstances it generally ends in tears .
“Cassie – In what way am I wrong?”
My point confirmed.
Hilarious OP and thread, very entertaining, well done everyone.
A Brownstone article worth reading to confirm the incredible damage done to liberty in the western world in the last two years.
https://brownstone.org/articles/your-misery-is-all-about-their-power/?utm_medium=onesignal&utm_source=push
Well you could tell me. I’m a geek, we need things explained to us.
I wrote this on the Open Thread, but maybe it belongs here:
Carthage was already debased prior to its creation, it was populated by Israelis (primarily the southern half of Dan) who had rejected the God of their fathers and became Baal worshippers. Even their priesthood was made up of Kohens who became priests for Baal.
“Socialism is a euphemism for fascism: the rule of certain elite through the machinery of the state…”
This.
While it was ever thus, this appears to be the first time that the elite actually promote socialism first, and say it is the salvation of the masses. In previous incarnations it seems to me that the elite of the resultant socialist state were self-selected from the plebs and the existing elite were either “converted” or lost everything. Maybe they are just getting ahead of the game this time around – they expect their own depredations to create a socialist revolution, and by supporting and financing it, they hope to avoid any unpleasantness and keep their elite status.
Salvation by works, eh?
And a high bar for acceptance too.
Read Romans & Galatians.
Being an Atheist and Centre Right I could not give a toss about the Left and Socialism. Not too sure about any link between the Left (Socialism) and Christianity.
Wasn’t it Karl Marx who said that Religion is the Opium of the People? Or was it Groucho Marx? Maybe Marx was thinking more about the Christian Church and the Russian Orthodox Church in particular at the time. Who knows?. Not me and I don’t care either.
All I know (IMHO) is that the Left is/are NASTY. The Left is/are serious offenders with a devilish track record – Stalin and Mao in particular.
m0ntysays:
June 15, 2022 at 11:37 am
Hilarious OP and thread, very entertaining, well done everyone.
Montypox. You seem to have been MIA recently and absent from your (crap) posts. Militarily speaking, there may be some Corporal Punishment for you and you may well now be demoted to just Private Parts. Now that could be a Major Disaster for you but not for a lot of us Cats here. TC.
“Which explains both Islam’s hostility to Jews and the rituals… “
No – the hostility came about because Mo said that we are all brothers, all believers in the one true God, all destined for heaven because of that. The Jews (well, their then leaders) said that Mo and his ilk could never be a part of the “Chosen People”, being sons and daughter of the “wrong” brother. It was at that point that while praying and after stewing on it for a while, he turned his back on them (and Jerusalem). By doing that where he did, he was facing Mecca. And hence Islamists face Mecca when they pray, and not Jerusalem as they did prior to that day.
So, in truth, the Jews rejected Mo, not the other way around.
Unless we’re clear about what socialism is, and defined in a way that is distinguishable from other political and social movements, these questions are very difficult to get off the ground. The same is true about whether we are asking whether socialism and Christianity share the same impetus, or whether it is the playing out of certain Christian principles, and so on. For my part, even if these are answered clearly, the question is No. Whatever it is we call socialism only emerges very late in the piece, over a millennium after a mature Christian intellectual tradition emerges, and, probably more problematic for the claim, socialism is decidedly and consciously anti-Christian.
Note on Plato: He isn’t utopian. The Republic and the Laws are very pessimistic works.
dover0beachsays:
June 15, 2022 at 1:58 pm
Unless we’re clear about what socialism is………….
As Margaret Thatcher once said, “The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” To me, that is what Socialism is all about and a lot worse to boot BTW.
What sharing is that? Owning nothing and being doled out whatever the elites are prepared to give you while they live like kings? I don’t call that sharing, I call it slavery.
There is a simple test of the difference between Christianity and socialism.
Which one of them could survive without taxation?
Jesus knew.
Render under Ceaser what is Ceaser’s.
The OP didn’t really define ‘leftism’ but if he means simply put authoritarian government control of the wealth of the masses then it is diametrically opposed to Christianity, as many have pointed out.
Helpful reference is the parable of the vineyard workers in Matthew 20 which is entirely capitalist (if that is the aspect you are looking for). Briefly:
The Lord is depicted as the owner of the vineyard (property ownership).
He hires workers. He sets the wage which is offered to the workers and agreed on before they start.
After working they are all promptly paid in full (fair pay)
Some then dispute the payment because it was not an hourly rate (equality based / jealousy argument)
The owner points out the prior agreement which had been met.
“Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?”
Pompey’s faction was right wing, Caesar’s (and Mark Anthony’s) was left.
So the split predated Christ.
Mark Anthony was more ideally Left, Caesar and Augustus were exploiting it for power. Power hungry despots exploiting the Left for power were a feature from the very beginning.
Maybe there is a thing or 2 to be learned from the teachings of Jesus.
I appreciate your comment 2D but we are trying to protect Western Chritendom from the violent leftist hordes in our time.
Rome stuffed it from within and it is bloody apparent that the scum from then are still gibbering, and hooning, and slaverring in their debauchery.
Socialism has always been a kind of ersatz religion. But Climate Change is a religion.
No Jannie
Socialism and climate change are the same thing…
F*cking witches and druids a shaken an a shiverin to make the crops grow an the rains flow an protect us from that scary world out there…
They are not throwing warriors in the peat bogs anymore nor ripping beating hearts out of the living nor even throwing virgins into the volcano…
Beta blockers and transgenderism is the new ferken offerings to the pagan freaks.
Australia has always been run by Protestants. It is only since the 1970s that the offspring of these weird Presbyterians/Baptists/Methodists/Congregationalists/Unitarians/fringe Anglicans have transformed into agnostics/atheists. Their churches are now museums or coffee houses. And now their semi-educated spawn, proudly educated at city Grammar schools, believe they have the ultimate wisdom to lecture us in Gaia/climate change/ systemic racism/etc. They are the same preachers, just preaching different rubbish. Likewise the ALP is filled with with creeps who have renounced their parents’ Catholicism and actually spout lines that they were born in a log cabin, rather than the reality of a state-provided apartment with minimal rent. The political class in Australia is particularly repulsive.
Christianity is the is wet dream of marketers – a product with a 2000 year life Cycle.
It matters not whether God, religion, Jesus, Mohammered, etc. are real or not, everyone believed, and fear was its sthick.
Marriage is about the only “religious” ceremony not entirely divorced from religion, and politics wants it gone.
Homosexual crap and abortion are the tools to undo religious influence, and those who are foolish enough to pay them any regard. Look how Anglican has been destroyed from within in UK.
Since the emergence of “Intellectual” man, people have sought to own that fear, and it has mostly successfully been taken by governments. Socialism is the “fear” porn of politicians.
Now, what we are seeing is that the psychology industry has opened the “fear” door to grifters of all colours, but most notably the climate changers and the medical industry