While we celebrate our freedom as Americans, we must remember that there are at least two threats to true freedom. One is the false hope of ultimate or unrestrained freedom. A person or a culture that desires a world of unrestrained freedom must deny the existence of objective moral standards. According to Pastor Tim Keller (Sermon: “Uncovering Satisfaction”), great thinkers conclude that if you want perfect freedom, you have to admit life is meaningless. Keller cites philosopher Albert Camus’s reasoning on this point: If there is nothing beyond death, does it matter how you go down—tugging or mugging? Unrestrained freedom on the part of one or a few can mean tyranny and even death for anyone who resists.
Extinguishing Freedom
Therefore, a second threat to freedom is an ideology in which a relatively few individuals obtain the power to force their moral and social order upon the majority. Most Americans today cannot imagine what it would be like to live under a tyrannical regime. Consider the heart-rending report of Park Yeon-me who escaped from oppression in North Korea (See HERE.). During her TED Talk, she stated, “North Korea is an unimaginable country. There is no internet. We are not free to sing, say, wear, or think what we want.” Reports like Park Yeon-me’s should make us more vigilant and committed to elect leaders at all levels who love America and who are not greedy for power.
A nation without God's guidance is a nation without order.
Happy are those who keep God's law!
Critical Theory (CT) Has Toxic Roots
The independence and freedom we are celebrating this weekend would not be possible without the biblical foundation that our Founders established for American governance. One year ago, we raised the question, “How Firm Is Our Foundation?” (See HERE.) At that time, we pointed to the moral decay that is undermining the fabric of America through attacks on three important “spheres of influence:” HOME, CHURCH, and GOVERNMENT. During the months since that time, America has experienced not only the full effects of the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic but also, an attack by another “virus” of sorts: an ideology rooted in the philosophies of George W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx in the form of Critical Theory (CT) (or “Critical Race Theory,” CRT). See HERE.
Here, we will greatly condense Hegel’s philosophical beliefs, but hopefully you will see how CT is rooted in the soil of Marxist and Hegelian thought. Hegel used a dialectical approach based on the notion that a thing or idea could be understood by discovering beneath its apparent unity an “underlying inner contradiction.” When the contradiction (problem) is brought together, the resulting solution represents progress in an evolution toward a higher-level or more perfect state, or synthesis. In other words, for each thesis, first identify the antithesis. Then, a synthesis of the two will lead to the truth.
CT Looks for Contradictions
Critical Theory (CT) proponents apply the Hegelian dialectic when they emphasize the apparent contradiction between the following two ideas:
1) Thesis: America is a rich nation.
2) Antithesis: Many Americans are poor.
To address this apparent contradiction, as we explained in some detail HERE, CT classifies all people into two broad categories:
1) Oppressors
2) Oppressed
Without question, CT has served notice to the American culture that it is time we “woke up” to the fact that many of us are oppressors of other people and we ought to feel guilty. Or, we are oppressed and ought to feel bitterness and resentment against our oppressors. “Oppressors” are being encouraged to feel guilty enough to make restitution and even reparations for past injustices against “the oppressed”—that is to “be woke.” At the same time, the stoked-up bitterness and resentment of “the oppressed” fuels a habit of blaming others and encourages their sense of entitlement. The result is the introduction of a toxic mix into our culture based on immutable human genetic traits, most notably skin color and gender.
Like the multiplication and spreading of a virus, CT uses a blot on America’s history; namely, past racial injustice and our continuing struggle with racial reconciliation to justify cries of “white supremacy” and to point its accusing finger at almost anything and anyone. Individuals who are ruled guilty of racism and white supremacy must be taught (“reprogrammed”) and “persuaded” to make restitution to those whom they have oppressed. Hegel’s dialectic between “being” and “nothing” invites us to press for a “synthesis” of “becoming” something better.
According to CT, it follows that well managed and maintained neighborhoods “look racist” and must be brought down to the level of often poorly governed, disadvantaged neighborhoods through alteration of zoning laws. Good schools must also be guilty of institutional racism and therefore, are a contradiction to the notion of equity in education. The list gets longer as more CT enthusiasts look for contradictions and cry foul.
CT Misses the Real Problem
Nathanael Blake, writing in The Federalist, identifies the weak underside of CT. (He uses the term “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) often used interchangeably with CT.) Blake acknowledges the inconsistencies and failures of our culture, but makes the case that CT, or CRT, misses the depth of the problem. Click HERE to read. He believes that CT correctly raises two fundamental questions:
1) “What is wrong with the world?
2) “How can we fix it?”
CT Is an Old Deception Repackaged
As we saw, the ideology of Critical Theory can be traced back through Marx to Hegel, but it goes back to the Garden of Eden. Satan himself used what is now the Hegelian dialectic in his temptation of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3): start with a thesis and then suggest an apparent contradiction:
1) Thesis: God is good (Genesis 2: 15-16).
2) Antithesis: God is an oppressor (Genesis 2: 17)
In spite of the goodness of God’s creation (Genesis 1: 31) and God’s goodness in providing all of the trees of the Garden as food except one tree (Genesis 2: 16; 3: 2), Satan uncovered an apparent antithesis: God is keeping something from you. Therefore, He is your oppressor and you should feel oppressed. Satan used this dialectic between “being” and “nothing” to lead Eve to suggest a solution to the problem in order to “become” something. In Eve’s case, she saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband [Adam] with her; and he did eat (Genesis 3: 6).
The Christian account of sin is both more personally accusing and forgiving than critical race theory. Although Christians acknowledge that the effects of sin can linger long and even be embedded in social, legal and political systems, we know that evil originates in the darkness of our own hearts. Christianity teaches that individual guilt is prior to systemic guilt, and it therefore provides for repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation in ways that critical race theory does not.
The Gospel: God's "Synthesis"
How does the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, overcome the rottenness of individual and institutional sin that CT is so good at pointing out but so ineffective in addressing? Perhaps another Hegelian dialectic of sorts will explain God’s redemptive plan:
1) Thesis: God is holy, cannot tolerate sin
2) Antithesis: Mankind is sinful; worthy of death
The gulf between a holy God and sinful mankind was so great that it can only be bridged through God’s redemptive plan in which He gave us His only Son, Jesus Christ, who died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, in order that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit… (1 Peter 3: 18). The Apostle Paul wrote that, by the transgression of the one [Adam], death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ (Romans 5: 17). And, praise God, while CT serves the purpose of Satan to undermine, accuse, and condemn us where we fail God; nevertheless, as Paul wrote, God’s law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more… (Romans 5: 20).
Nathanael Blake summarizes our task well as a people celebrating our true freedom in the midst of an imprisoned world in which we are called to be salt and light: Law and culture almost always need some reform, but the work of racial justice begins, not with systemic critique, but with love based on the recognition that we are all children of God. This truth, rather than the racial suspicion and even essentialism encouraged by critical race theory, best enables us to identify and remedy injustice. The fight against critical race theory is therefore necessary to create space for the development of genuine love and justice.
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