CHAPTER 6
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT GOD
Every soul has religion, which is only another word for its existence. All livingforms in which it expresses itself - all arts, doctrines, customs, all metaphysical and mathematical form-worlds, all ornament, every column and verse and idea - are ultimately religious, and must be so. But from the setting-in of Civilization they cannot be so any longer. As the essence of every Culture is religion, so - and consequently - the essence of every Civilization is irreligion
Oswald Spengler The Decline of the West
Today's radical Christians throw out a challenge to traditionalists. The challenge consists of demonstrating a practical concern for Christ's teachings about love and justice. This is perceived to be a call to social and political activism on behalf of the underprivileged and downtrodden. If we believe in a Bible-based system of ethics what argument can there be against such a proposition? There exist injustices in the world. Do we not show our commitment to Christian beliefs by getting involved in political activism and social reformism? How does one respond to these provocative ideas about combating injustice?
In the mainstream churches the forces of secularism and liberalism have long held sway. This process began long before the sixties but has greatly accelerated since then. Traditional ideas about the reality of God long ago evaporated. It would seem that all that is left for people who dwell on issues of philosophy and ethics, is to fall into line with the intellectual elite, and with their secularistic attitudes. The call now is to become "genuinely concerned about issues of peace and justice". Instead of an understanding based on the reality of God's power, we now have a preoccupation with social and political issues. Political involvement by Christians substitutes a God-centred religion for a human-centred one. This ultimately points the way to Marxism, and other man-made ideologies which are not only false, but inimical to Christianity, and hugely destructive to humanity.
Politically involved Christians will maintain that their activism is premised upon basic biblical concepts of showing justice to the poor. Firstly, Christ's ministry was directed at the lower classes ("Blessed are you poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God" Luke 6:20). Christ associated with the lowly, the despised and the rejected, rather than the elite of society. Contrast this with the identification of the established churches with the forces of social conservatism, especially in the impoverished Third World. When we turn to the Old Testament, we find that the prophets called for justice on behalf of the poor. Moreover, these prophetical demands for reform are at the expense of the ruling classes and the social establishment. The ultimate expression of activism put into practical effect is in the reign of King Josiah who, working from the top down, brings justice and reforms to his society. With these kind of arguments, how is it possible to resist the call to political activism in the name of Christ?
On the most basic level, that of Christ's own statements recorded in the gospels, it can be conclusively argued that Christ himself disdained all political action in his teachings. When testifying before Pilate he states "My kingship is not of this world; if it were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world." (John 18:36) In the politically charged atmosphere of Ist century Judea this rejection of political activism has a persuasive ring to it. Liberation theologians, and others, talk about the need to show Christian love by actively identifying with independence and "liberation" struggles in the Third World. How much more justification for a liberation struggle could there be than in the case of Judea under the heel of the Roman Empire? One surmises that Christ was born into these circumstances precisely to demonstrate the utter irrelevance of worldly politics to genuine religious experience. If Christ had no interest in freeing his own people from the Romans, politically, it would seem fairly obvious that he had no program for any other kind of revolutionary struggle.
The standard response to traditional Christian teachings (for example, those relating to the ordination of women) is an appeal to so-called "contextual theology". That is, that we now live in a different world from biblical times, and the rules have changed accordingly. Christ's rejection of political action was a teaching unique to his time, and more specifically, pertained to the circumstances surrounding his sacrificial death on the cross. The answer to these arguments of course is that Jesus, the founder of Christianity, was entirely concerned with matters of the spirit. This style of Christian belief is derisively termed "privatist" by detractors. It has to do with sorting out our relationship with God in our personal lives, and with understanding the meaning of our own lives in the plan of God, rather than with our commitment to theories of radical political change which have been conceived of by man, and in which God plays no real part.
Modernist thinking about Christianity (implicit in "contextual theology") is that the Bible is not to be taken literally. It is to be treated only as a vague source of inspiration. Although even traditionalists will argue about Bible infallibility, there is at least a consensus that the Bible is authoritative on theological issues. For modernist Christians the Bible is seen as all but irrelevant as they seek to discern the underlying moral and ethical principles applicable to the modern world. This process has been carried so far, the scriptural Christ become so lost to view, that it is a genuine mystery just how the figure of Christ fits into their thinking at all. If they do not believe in the biblical Christ, in what sense are they then "Christians"? The ultimate irony is this: liberal Christians ceaselessly assert that the Bible should not be taken literally, it has largely symbolic value, much of scripture is free verse thought up by pious and sincere apologists. Part of this involved scouring the Old Testament for passages which would give added colour to their account of the life of Christ. There is a facile acceptance of these ideas among liberal Christians. The most obvious objection is, why would early Christian writers, whose object it was to put across an image of Jesus as the most honest person who ever lived, tell a pack of blatant lies - so that their devotees would believe that Jesus was the most honest person who ever lived!? What is going on here? What is the point of this? The liberals will assert that these writings are not actually lies, they are, well you know, embellishments on the truth. "Jesus was illegitimate, but the Septuagint talks about the Messiah being born of a virgin, so let's say that's what happened." "Jesus didn't really feed the multitudes with loaves and fishes, but God did feed the Israelites with Manna from heaven during the Exodus didn't he, so we'll just add something in along those lines." "Now it would be nice if Jesus really had risen from the dead wouldn't it In other words, lies!
Why should a person who holds these views be considered a better "Christian" than any other? The answer is that they regard their own set of presuppositions as being more representative of Christ and his ethical teachings than those of Bible literalists. Modern Christianity is now simply a rag-bag of ideas designed to give one a warm inner glow. The question remains however, if they reject the biblical record of Jesus (which they do) where then does their vision of him come from, and why should it be considered superior? Here are people who say that Christ performed no miracles, did not rise from the dead, was not born of a virgin, and who may believe that Christ in fact did not even exist as a historical person. Yet the Bible is the only record we have of Christ's life and works. Unless Jesus has appeared to these people in a vision, how can they claim a more authentic commitment to Christ than those who believe in the biblical account of his life? Their more authentic form of Christianity derives from a Marxian (as opposed to a Christian) analysis of society, and principles of political activism inspired largely by the youth revolt of the sixties. These ideas of activism proceed from the conviction that certain classes and groups in society are uniquely responsible for the injustices of the world, and that, as per Marx, (whatever Christ might think!) these people need to be opposed on the political level.
As for being overly fixated about the Bible, when you are on your death-bed gasping for your last breath of air, who would you rather talk about, the God of the Bible or Reinhold Niebuhr?
The issue of Bible truth is considered a side issue to an understanding of Christianity. Christ himself is taken to merely symbolise a set of humanitarian ideals. The Bible is nevertheless held up as a textbook on revolutionary consciousness. Reference is made to the "prophetic message " of the scriptures in the quest to bring about a society of peace and justice through political action by Christians. There is an intriguing irony in this argument. Liberal Christians would be the last people in the world to believe in the prophetic message of the scriptures. By this I mean the actual foretelling of future events by the prophets - specifically predictions of a Messianic Age (the Kingdom of God on earth) to be ushered in by the returning Christ at his second coming. This is the very kind of literal belief in scripture commonly espoused by fundamentalist Christians which invites derision from progressives in the mainstream churches. The "prophetic message" for these people now has an entirely different connotation. The visionary aspect of the prophetical writings is now almost completely left out the picture. The significance of these scriptures now lies in the element of social criticism, denunciations of the rich and powerful by the prophets, and the call for social justice. It is true that a biblical prophet is generally caricatured as a wild-eyed fanatic calling down cataclysmic destruction on a wicked society, and that this picture is a somewhat stereotyped and inaccurate portrayal. There was always more to being a true prophet of God than merely predicting gloom and doom, and the end of the world. The prophets were visionaries who could not only "see into the future" but who were just as adept at accurately interpreting events, past and present (Isaiah 41:22), and communicating their meaning according to God's purposes. This obviously suggests a special ability to discern the ills of society by reference to the precepts of holiness and justice enshrined in God's revelation to man. It is therefore quite correct to point to the concern of the prophets with "peace and justice issues". It is wrong however to leave their actual prophetic message of the end times, Day of the Lord, and Messianic Kingdom out of the picture. It is also quite wrong to use these prophetic utterances to support programs of social reform as put forward by Christian political activists today. The reason for this is that the social criticisms of the prophets were a call to return to the special demands of God's covenant with the chosen people, not
simply an invitation to take part in politically reforming society.
By "political" I am referring to the organising of mass movements and pressure groups, to agitate for reform, and so on. In other words, acting in the secular realm for secular ends. It is impossible to divorce the reformist efforts of the prophets (including Jesus Christ) from the spiritual dimension of the Judeo-Christian religion. This is something left-wing Christian activists are continually doing, and it is why they are quite wrong in their application of supposedly Christian teaching to support ideas of social and political change. By the spiritual dimension of Christianity I mean a concern for the whole meaning of God's revelation as recorded in the scriptures. I think of this as the Old Testament (or New Testament) discipline. It is something referable to the need for inner personal holiness according to the covenant. The prophets were concerned about the iniquity of the whole of society measured against the demands of God's law. They addressed the more evil of Israel's rulers only because they were leading the people astray form God's covenant through their misrule. This did not represent some general program of social reform as devised by the prophets themselves - as with modern day political activists - but the will of God as communicated to them by divine revelation. The concern for "justice" was in fact not an end in itself, but only an adjunct to the whole body of divine law recorded in the Old Testament. Justice was, in short, defined by reference to that law. It had to do with the received will of God, not the political conceptions of man.
None of this implies that there is no role for a Christian in trying to reform society politically. A Christian may work to bring about political reforms consistent with his religious beliefs. For example, one may run for parliament in order to get rid of X-rated videos. But the point is that political action by itself is not part of the Christian calling. On the contrary, it could be convincingly argued that the teachings of Jesus (and Paul) positively forbid such activity. The Bible talks about submitting oneself to governmental authorities ("render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities" "do not resist one who is evil" - Mat.22:21; Rom. 13:1; Mat.5:39) This reflects the idea that central to Christ's teachings is the expectation of God's kingdom. This is something which goes beyond mere political thinking. It is therefore quite wrong and faithless to become enmeshed in the values and beliefs of an evil world which God in his word has promised to sweep away and bring in a new order, not by the efforts of man, but through his own intervention in human affairs. An individual may decide that God specifically charges him personally to act politically in some way, but this should not proceed from a mere set of philosophical inclinations. Political involvement certainly can not be laid upon any Christian as a necessary part of his spiritual life according to the New Testament.
We can conclude that if a Christian chooses to get involved in political activism it should, firstly, not be considered an essential part of his Christianity (even if his political objectives are consistent with Christian beliefs). As such, no Christian activist should be able to say that his activism is being carried out in the name of Jesus Christ (because Jesus never commanded any such activity), nor that it is incumbent upon other Christian believers to be doing likewise in furtherance of their Christian principles. Secondly, obviously no "Christian" activism should be engaged in to bring about political and social changes which are inconsistent with biblical teachings. God may not "vote conservative", but he certainly does not endorse political causes which are contrary to his revealed word! Support for gay rights and abortion, and even feminism (because it undermines biblical principles of family life and the nurture of children) are clearly contrary to Christian teachings.
What about the political activism of Jerry Falwell's erstwhile Moral Majority movement, or Fred Nile's Call to Australia Party? I agree with their values, and their political aims, but I do not believe that these political pressure groups are doing something which is motivated or inspired by the spirit of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, I believe that the politicising of Christianity by right-wing activists can draw attention away from the essential spirituality of Christian teaching. Hence, it is self-evident that homosexuality should be rejected by Christians, but at the same time exclusive emphasis on this issue, and this unpopular minority, can distract attention away from a host of other iniquities in society which are equally abhorrent to God eg. "healthy and normal" teenage sex, the explosion of non-homosexual venereal disease, to say nothing of the greed, violence and corruption (in both government and business) which is rampant in our societies, perpetrated by good decent heterosexuals in our midst. These are as much an affront to God as are sexual perverts, and we need more people who will speak out against these things. But the essential point is that it must be put across in the spiritual language of the Bible, expressly as a religious message. What Christ taught, and what was implicit in the sayings of the prophets, was that we have to not only become more spiritual people, but that our task as Christians is to make God absolutely the centrally most important factor in our lives. Every decision we make in life - every day of our lives - must be dictated by the question What does God want me to do in this or that situation?
Right-wing Christian politics obscures these issues to the extent that it becomes mired in the values and conventions of this world (such as political confrontationism) and not the Kingdom of God. We need a more overtly religious message of warning to our decaying world (particularly the western world) that in the eyes of God our number is up, and that he is not going to tolerate our iniquities for much longer. It is no use our right-wing political activists patting themselves on the back and thinking that they have got the game sewn up, simply because they have got out there and stirred things up politically. They risk buying into the values of a world steeped in arrogance, confrontation, and power-seeking, just as their left-wing counterparts have done.
How then should one deal with an issue such as the decriminalization of homosexuality. As a Bible believing Christian I think that homosexuality should be considered a crime, although the fashionable view today is that it is merely a moral question for adult people to decide for themselves. My view is based on the Old Testament civil law which calls for homosexuals to be punished for their abomination. If I do not think Christians should operate in the political realm how then is it possible to argue for the retention of laws against homosexuality, or for that matter, abortion? The answer is that it is not the political aims I am opposed to. I simply think that it is misconceived to think that political activism and law is the key to the communication of moral values. I am not opposed to the application of religious law in society supported by political processes. It is just that this is not in itself enough. No amount of law is going to make a society morally righteous by biblical standards. We should not simply be punishing homosexuals and executing murderers. We should have a society which feels a deep-down conviction about the rightness of these things as part of a total acceptance of God's law and his ways.
This is spirituality, not politics. This is the prophetical vision of the Bible. It is not a solution imposed from the top down, as with our moral campaigners of today in the Christian political movements. They should be concerned with conveying a message of spirituality, not simply morality. This message must also take seriously the imminence of God's intervention in world affairs to inaugurate a new age of peace and justice. To ignore this aspect of Christianity strips it of its essential meaning.
There is another fundamentally important side to this issue. Let's assume that political involvement is correct for Christians. There is a qualitative difference between activism of the right-wing kind and that of the left. Left-wing politics aimed at achieving a society of "peace and justice" has as its starting point an attitude of hatred. This hatred is directed towards those identified as possessing conservative values, or who can be identified with institutions and ideas belonging to conventional western society. I am not going to work for the salvation of my fellow-man by setting up an adversarial hate relationship with particular classes of people. Like secular political groups, this is the underlying characteristic of Christian social activists today. Nothing in my religious outlook, or my beliefs about man and society, necessitates that I feel hatred or contempt for others (despite frequently having to engage in a bitter defence of my beliefs against those who do!) True Christians are not going to hate bankers and industrialists because, according to Marx, these people "exploit the working class". Even less are they going to express hatred and contempt for those who have not made a decision about how valuable they are to the struggle for a just world, by virtue of the fact that they possess "ideologically sound thinking". If it is objected that no hatred is involved, only an awareness of the uniquely evil nature of these oppressor classes, the point should be made that Christ never in any of his teachings implied that Christians should target particular classes and groups of people for special treatment or disapproval. His outlook was of the deep sinfulness of all people as suggested in the statement recorded in Luke 18:19 "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone". All the elements of capitalist society existed in his time. There were landlords, bankers, aristocrats and yet we find no exhortations to especially oppose these people, and certainly no calls to try and change society as a whole away from the norm. That society had to change was present in his teachings, but this had to do with reforms which the Messiah would carry out when he (not his followers) instituted the Kingdom of God. But there is still no suggestion that in the new order there would be no rulers, capitalists, land owners, or private property! It is simply false to assert that because Christ came to "preach good news to the poor", he was putting forward ideas of class struggle. Nothing of this comes through in his teachings, and it is only a rationalization engaged in by Christian activists who have become fixated with Marxist ideas of radical political change! Christ's concerns were as much for those who were poor in spirit as the economically impoverished classes. In the Old Testament, King David was a model of faith, and yet he was a rich and powerful man who was profoundly humble in spirit! Even the patriarch Abraham, contrary to the popular image of him as a poor Bedouin, was probably a wealthy and powerful tribal lord who plied the trade routes of the ancient world as a merchant. There is no suggestion anywhere in the Bible that God desires people to set about changing society away from traditional ideas of property and commerce. The eighth commandment says "Thou shalt not steal". Such a commandment is meaningless if God disapproves of private property. In the millennial kingdom every man will sit under his fig tree, not a collectively owned one! In the New Testament the first Christians lived communaly only because the end of the age was at hand (in their view) and they were bracing themselves for the end. There is no reason to think that they forswore concepts of private property as some kind of expressly Christian ideal, and even if they did, this hardly supports the kind of compulsory selflessness imposed upon society by Marxists and socialists. In the episode concerning the rich young man who cannot bring himself to part with his riches, Christ's statement that one should sell everything and give it to the poor is received with consternation by his presumably impoverished followers. They ask in astonishment "Who then can be saved?" Why do they have this attitude when Christ's statement was clearly aimed at the "wealthy classes"? They knew that they were as deeply unworthy of salvation as the rich man was, not as regards their socio-economic status, but their own attachment to the things of the world. Christ was not teaching "against the wealthy", he was merely indicating how far removed from material concerns all of us must place ourselves before we can obtain salvation. This has nothing to do with a class analysis of society. These are spiritual matters, and have nothing to do with socio-economic status. He concludes by saying that "with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible". This demonstrates that the real issue is the transcendent nature of God's power, and not ideas of economic and political analysis. The same explanation applies in regard to the statement that "it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle" (Mat. 19:24).
What does spirituality mean here? This is not a call to personal piety like some nineteenth century Methodist preacher, nor is it looking back to some Golden Age in the past. I am talking about something which has never existed before. The application of Christ's teachings about spirituality is not the message of modern mainstream Christianity today. My purpose is not to judge people here, but to provoke people who are truly concerned about the deplorable state of the world. I am talking about responding to what is really wrong with human society., If the energies of people involved in trying to bring about political change were directed instead towards efforts to bring about a spiritual renewal of humanity, we might really begin to address the root cause of our problems.
As a Bible-believing Christian, I accept as literally true the prophetic teaching of a Messianic Age in world history to be set up by a returning Christ. This is a belief in the exercise of real power by a real God who has a purpose and plan for humanity and individual people. It is not fashionable, but its rejection by the modern churches deprives Christianity of the only real hold it has over people's minds. Without this belief in a real God who will intervene and reform this world via the agency of a resurrected Christ, Christianity is a meaningless set of platitudes (including the much abused term it gospel", which means "the good news of the world to come" Lk.8: 1). Not only does this represent an almost totally neglected aspect of Christian truth, but it answers our innate need to believe in the possibilities of a world of justice and peace. This need is what provides the impulse to political activism.
To understand how I picture this Messianic kingdom, try thinking of a world in all respects like the present one. This world is populated by people who are far from perfect - in fact no more imbued with inherent goodness and righteousness than ordinary people in today's world. These people, however, possess one crucially important characteristic. In accordance with Christ's teachings in the New Testament, they possess a total commitment to serving God spiritually. They desire to make God the number one consideration in all of their actions, and in all of their decisions. They endeavour to put into effect all of Christ's teachings about total submission to God and his ways. They often fail, but their dedication to this goal is the principle thing which motivates their lives. This aim in life is as compelling as the desire for money is instinctive to people in our time. There is still a degree of theft, violence and immorality in this world, but five thousand million men, women and children all aspire to follow God's ways, above every consideration in life and material existence, even though they possess no other magical spiritual powers. I see true Christians today as representing the vanguard of this new society.
The point of these observations is that it is my belief that a world such as I have described would bear no similarity to today's world, simply by virtue of the total spiritual re-orientation of the human mind. Qualities of kindness, mercy, forgiveness, and sacrifice would dominate men's thinking. The world would look physically different; the economic nature of society would be such that all people would live on self-sufficient land holdings without the burden of a crushing bank mortgage; and not crowded into little brick and mortar boxes as in today's suburban environment; there would be small communities of people not huge sprawling cities; the nuclear family would be a thing of the past. Supportive, nurturing, extended families would be the rule; there would be no exploitative capitalists, nor power-hungry political leaders inspired by twisted ideologies; there would be no organised crime; there would be no armies, and consequently no massive defence expenditures; environmentally polluting fossil fueled engines would not exist because all technological innovations would be guided by spiritual conceptions of human progress.
This picture does not represent a step backwards to some ancient traditional society. This could be a world of computers and space shuttles, but human progress would be a function of a renewed spiritual nature. I think of this new world as being as good as today's world is bad. The leopard shall lay down with the lamb, and this image illustrates also the taming of man's own wild, aggressive nature. It is of course impossible to imagine all of this coming into existence, and being sustained, through man's own efforts. This is why it is necessary for such an order to be instituted and governed by a divine personality (the Messiah).
When we think about such a new world it should bring to mind a question of profound importance, one which people rarely ask themselves. Why, exactly, do we live in a basically evil world? Why is human nature inclined towards evil? Why, for example, is the world not predominately good? This raises another intriguing issue. People continually question whether there is a God. Why is it that for all their doubts about the existence of God, no-one ever seems to acknowledge the existence of the devil? I would have thought it was obvious that there are agencies of evil in this world which make it the kind of place it is. I personally do not believe that it is simply a product of evil human nature. I believe that people are influenced by spiritual forces to act in the way they do. Tides of evil sweep over this world. Like the wind they cannot be seen or touched, but we experience their effects, just as we feel the effects of a hurricane. We do not combat these evil influences by ignoring that they exist. We do not reform the world by failing to take account of the factors which make it the way it is. The real battleground is a spiritual one, and it involves us all as individual people. Christianity is not simply a device to make us feel good inside. Christ says that the kingdom is for men of violence, and to be seized by violence (Mat. 11: 12). If you think this is a call to commit acts of physical violence, then you have a few basic problems with the spiritual message of Christ! He also said that he came not to bring peace but a sword, to divide people! (Mat. 10:34) These precepts relate to our personal struggle with God. We don't divorce ourselves from the evil of this world by effectively blaming it all on someone else. This is not the teaching of Christ. It is however the natural inference of progressive political thinking today, including that of politically active Christians.
Religious fundamentalists are criticised for being intolerant and moralistic. But contrast their beliefs with the flaccid and directionless traditional church denominations which represent the broad mainstream of modern Christianity. The moralism and intolerance relates to certainties about life which are grounded in a literal belief in a personal God and in his revelation to man (the Bible). Fundamentalists emphasise direct experience and personal revelation. Their acceptance of literal Bible truth places them in line with Christ's teachings, since they accept the idea of a personal God who works in the world. An "intolerance" and a system of values based on God's teachings to mankind should not be equated with intolerance based on simple human prejudices. As for these convictions merely reflecting an interpretation of Christianity, this really amounts to playing with words. It is quite clear that Christ endorsed the biblical system of morality and law as recorded in the Old Testament (Mat.5). How can those who reject Christ's actual sayings possess a superior understanding of what he taught than those who believe everything he said? The Judeo-Christian religion asks for such unwavering adherence to the precepts of living recorded in the Bible. It is Bible-believing Christians who have the boldness to aspire to the personal ethical standards of the Christian religion. This is something liberals and modernists relieve themselves of by claiming that they have a deeper understanding of the "complexities of life". This is another way of saying they are confused about life's meaning and about the purpose for which man was created. At no time did Christ water down his teachings in pursuance of an ideal such as "tolerance". Where is the tolerance in his pronouncements about judging unrepentant sinners at the end of the age (Mat.25:46)? What he did do was to make us conscious of the need to be more tolerant in our dealings with our fellow-man on the personal level. This has nothing to do with compromising on the laws of God, nor on feebly giving in to people who are pushing philosophies and ideologies which are contrary to Christian truth. Christ would begin his discussions with the scribes and Pharisees by calling them liars and hypocrites. This was from the man who told us that we should love our enemies. But he was addressing his accusers as a class of people, not judging them as individuals, and he was confronting these people in the realm of theology and ideas. He did not stand before these people and say: "I know you're all a great bunch of guys, and maybe we don't quite see eye to eye, but ... ... Christian tolerance, on the level of argument and debate, does not extend to those who subvert basic Christian truths as revealed in the scriptures.
A true Christian will realize that he is obligated to live according to God's standards - which under the New Testament discipline are much higher than traditional church religion would suggest. He will think through the logic of this proposition and realize the ultimate purpose of God for man. God sets high ideals because the stakes are high. They relate to God's plans to establish a world of peace, justice and righteousness - the very aims of activists in the secular world, except that God's plan involves the individual in a struggle to overcome the downward pulls of the world, morally and spiritually. If Christians do not follow through on the clear message of Christ on such matters they are merely wallowing in the same state of confusion as the rest of humanity. These religion-based expectations may sound utopian and pie-in-the-sky to the uninitiated, but what hope have political efforts to reform the world offered? Man is clearly unable to bring about a world of peace and justice on his own, partly because there is so little acceptance of the profound changes which he needs to make to his basic nature. This is where the real point of contention is for mankind. In this we must not tolerate "conservatism" and "reactionary thinking". We need to become super-radical about personal change! Modern man is so decadent compared with his forebears that he mistakenly thinks that this Christian solution has been tried before and found wanting, therefore the only hope lies in radical political and social reforms aimed at the external facade of society, and which leave out the Christian/spiritual dimension. The truth is that, in the past, humanity has not even come close to fulfilling Christian teachings about spirituality (ie. a complete subjection to the will of God and the teachings of the scriptures).
I am not appealing here to doctrinal Christian belief in a set of rigid teachings held by people who possess only the haziest notions of what Christian life (and human life) is all about, but to people who are really able believe in the reality of the world to come, and their place in it as individual people. To put it another way, I ask the most hardened skeptical person to consider the fact that one day soon they are going die, and even before death strikes they will have puzzled over a world of evil and suffering for which there are no apparent solutions. These things should give everyone, religious or non-religious, socially conscious or non-socially conscious, cause to think about the deepest, most profound questions of existence. It is simply not good enough to say that life is meaningless, there is no purpose to it all, and that is that! A skeptical humanist in today's world can express these sentiments, but this cannot be, and should not be, an adequate response to the world into which he was born. This should not be the case either, in terms of how he conceives of his own moral and ethical responsibilities. The world is the way it is because of the personal evil inherent in all people. It is not simply "the system", or structural violence". This myth has sustained every kind of misconceived experiment in social reform imaginable in the modern era, for example socialism and affirmative action. The problem is individual people, not classes of people somewhere over there, or private property, or the institutions of traditional society, and it is time people woke up to the fact that a deeply spiritual change is necessary in the nature of man. This is not something mainstream Christianity has dared to teach the world. This is because it is a hard, and unpalatable message for churchgoers and non-Christians alike to swallow. The churches cannot afford to alienate their followers by dispensing uncompromising truths! Our deep sinfulness and spiritual inadequacy is the issue which needs to be addressed. The full Bible message of personal change and reverence for the laws of the creator need to be taught without qualification to a world saturated in evil. That such a message may be called narrow-minded, bigoted or simplistic is no objection. The world is consumed by perversions and evils plainly abhorrent to God, which are excused (by so-called Christians among others!) in the name of nebulous ideas of "tolerance" and intellectual sophistication.
We are not prepared for the hard solutions, we go for a quick and easy approach which suits our self-centred attitudes to life, but which is contrary to God's commandments. The rigid morality engaged in by the fundamentalists represents a commitment to the idea that there is an omnipresent intelligence watching over humanity. This is not a narrow- mindednes s based on human ideas of law and society, but a conviction that there exists a divine standard of conduct emanating from one who authoritatively commands obedience to these commandments. This represents spiritual strength, not intellectual weakness, and this is something we need more of.
The confusion and moral weakness of mankind expresses itself on social issues like capital punishment and abortion. Here we witness the ridiculous paradox of liberals (both Christian and non-Christian) who favour abortion of innocent, unborn children, and at the same time virulently oppose capital punishment for sadistic, brutal murderers. They will deny with breathtaking gall that a fetus is not really human until it is born. They will protest that we commemorate birthdays, not conception day. Maybe, but this merely reflects the fact that until birth the living, human fetus is not a part of our day to day experience. But we don't regard a baby a week before it is born as non-human simply because it has not yet come into the world. The relative development of a potential human being is no more relevant to the question of humanity, than is the relative development and age of children as they grow up. Abortion is the catch-cry of self-centred human beings whose major concern is looking out for number one. The rationalization is to prevent babies being born into poverty - but naturally the unborn fetus has no input into just how grinding the poverty must be before its life will be terminated! When feminists shriek "Get your laws of our bodies" I would be the first to agree with them. But it is not their bodies I am worried about. It is the bodies of the innocent unborn which concern me!
Capital punishment is rejected because it is barbaric and brutalises society. We are already brutalised by the perpetrators of savage crimes of violence. We have the society we deserve. We should have the criminal punishments we deserve also. Opponents of capital punishment will say "Could you execute somebody, could you stand by and watch someone hang?" Let me ask them "Could you stand by and witness what was done to Anita Cobby, and then have the front to ask me that question?" They will then trot out the customary drivel about capital punishment not acting as a deterrent. They will actually assert that fear of pain and retribution will play no part in the decision to commit a crime. This is a novel insight into human psychology! What they claim is that the existence of provisions on the statute books relating to capital and corporal punishment does not serve to deter crime. What they conveniently fail to point out is that, to the human mind, the actual enforcement of punishment, seen to be done, and consistently applied, is all that is ever going to deter crime. In modern day Saudi Arabia, Koranic teachings about punishment of crime are routinely employed for all to see. Here, even political liberals know that these punishments have a deterrent effect on criminal activity, and they do not question their utility. Criminologist Roger Hood admits that public opinion generally supports capital punishment, but notes that one must distinguish "popular support from well-informed opinion". 2 Obviously what constitutes "well-informed opinion" is what Mr. Hood finds ideologically acceptable! Confronted with evidence of decreasing crime rates in Saudi Arabia, Hood fends off assertions about the effectiveness of stringent punishments by appealing to the possible "influence of other changes" in society. 3 Anything to avoid admitting the efficacy of capital punishment!
We imagine that in the barbaric past routine enforcement of punishments for crime did not make society better. The reality is that in the ancient past, punishment was both capricious and cruel. There was no attempt to make the punishment fit the crime. There was actually a scandalous dereliction of duty when it came to punishing criminals. 4 The authorities were as spineless in disciplining their societies then as they are in the present era. Man was in a state of moral and spiritual decadence then, just as he is now. It takes moral fibre, the courage of its convictions, for a society to live up to its ideals. We should not look back to the Golden Age which political conservatives are said continually to invoke in these matters. We need something completely new and different. We need conviction, morals, values, beliefs. This is what a Bible-based view of the world and of society should consist of, backed up by the knowledge that we live in a world presided over by an all-knowing, all-powerful God. We need to cultivate the capacity we have for comprehending God's ways and his laws instead of running around in circles trying to formulate solutions for our dilemmas as if it consisted of just one more technical problem for man to solve! There is so much in the world which speaks of a divine order, a divine intelligence. There is a spiritual depth to man which demands spiritual answers. It confronts people with the responsibility to live by rules and moral precepts, but for those with (ostensibly) a conscience towards the world, this is where the battle really is, in approaching issues of evil and injustice. Just what solutions do liberal social reformers propose for this world that will work? Just how are we going to address the problem of crime without trying to understand the profound evil which motivates and actuates criminal behaviour. This is a spiritual matter which secular social philosophy cannot comprehend. Capital punishment is not revenge, it is justice. All people, criminals and non-criminals alike, need to know that they are living in a society of justice, where wrongful acts incur a price for the person committing the crime. The reason we don't have capital punishment is not because we are a "humane" society - the terrible crimes of violence we witness prove that! It is because we lack a commitment to ideas of justice. We have no commitment to any ideas, period! This is why our empty, sterile, intellectual elites are able to successfully impose their screwball ideas on the rest of society. They are able to influence our criminal justice system towards unending sympathy for the perpetrators of crime, and not its victims, as part of their anguished and confused vision of a "compassionate" society. (Consider again the Cobby example above). Politicians legislate criminal sanctions, and judges hand out sentences, unburdened by the fact that it is not their wife or their child who has been attacked by a slavering, mutant sex murderer! Our intellectual elite wins by default, because there is no-one who cares enough in our society to stand up for what they believe in. Ordinary people out there in the real world know that we should have capital punishment, but they are intimidated into not speaking out. How do the elite get away with this? On university campuses in the sixties a small band of political radicals ran student affairs. They accomplished this by being organised enough to be able to pack student meetings with just enough of their members to get their measures voted in. The non-involved student body were not interested enough to stop this process. Any militant minority can work its will provided there is a lack of a committed opposition (look at revolutionary politics in the Third World). This does not prove the justness of their cause, but merely testifies to the apathy of the rest of society.
The main argument against capital punishment concerns the possible execution of innocent people. The example of Lindy Chamberlain is invariably raised (her farcical prosecution shouldn't have occurred in any legal system!) It is my belief however, that the need to create a deterrence to crime goes beyond this objection. The number of lives saved by executing criminals would far outweigh the number of unfortunate people wrongfully convicted, both by preventing repeat offences, and the general deterrent effect a consistent policy of capital punishment would have on potential criminals. This argument holds even against the contrary assertion that many murders are one-off crimes of passion in domestic circumstances. These certainly do not constitute the whole story of crime and violence in our society! And why should this excuse offenders anyway, since the real message of capital punishment should be that society, in its concern for justice, will not let criminals go unpunished. The machinery of criminal justice may fail like any other innovation in modem life. Do we seriously entertain the idea of doing away with Jumbo-jets because they occasionally crash, killing hundreds of people? Of course we don't. We accept these failings as part and parcel of something which is overwhelmingly beneficial to society as a whole. Biblically based ideas of proportionality in punishment, are as much a function of standards of proof and certainty of guilt, as any other consideration. In the case of Lindy Chamberlain, there was no body, no motive, no nothing! Execution for murder in this, and similar cases, would clearly be inapplicable.
I began this book by recalling the Cuban Missile crisis. I spoke of the mental anguish humanity feels when it contemplates nuclear obliteration. Peace movements have arisen in response to this threat. Its counterpart among believing Christians lies in the anticipation of the Kingdom of God (however that might be conceived of). One is a desperate bid to try and save the world by the imparting of political consciousness - an approach which has never yet succeeded in reforming man, and reforming the world! The other pictures man as part of a divine plan of redemption and renewal. The problem with religious formulations of 'end of the world' scenarios is that they are rarely enlightened by convincing explanations of why God puts us through the evil and suffering which we experience. The reason for this, as always, lies in our rejection of the biblical revelation of God, and the reality of his existence. But another more subtle point is that God clearly does not want to reveal himself fully to mankind at this time in history. (Note the cryptic statement of Christ recorded in Mat. 13:10-15 and Luke 8: 10.) As in the case of the prophet Elijah, God wants to be known as a "still, small voice", which is to say, he wants us to know him in the smallest, quietest way. He will prove his existence to those he will in the least obvious way possible that is still convincing to them, when he chooses to do so (it is not we who come to God, but he who draws us to him John 6:44). Why does God act in this inscrutable, mysterious way? It is evident that God's purposes in the present world do not involve some general revelation to mankind (other than that included in the Bible). God at this time is clearly not working in the world in a way which is apparent to most people. The point here is that this makes all the more inevitable some kind of dramatic breaking into history by God, whereby the full revelation of his reality becomes clear to all, at a particular point in time. If this is not so, how can it be that God tolerates an evil world? There must be some kind of culmination to the evil that we see all around us. Evil is an entity which inhabits our world, and there is a general misapprehension of its true nature. For example, people think of demonic possession as some sort of weird aberration. They do not understand that the influence of evil is all pervasive. Its effects appear in the form of depression, anxiety, and the twisted forms of reasoning we recognise as varying degrees of madness commonly discerned in our day to day dealings with people, not all of whom are consigned to institutions. Medical science has proved itself entirely incapable of dealing with, or even defining the nature of, mental illness. Evil is a manifestation of pure idiocy and chaos, a phenomenon external to man which enters into man and influences his conduct in this direction. In cinematic terms, the reality of evil is portrayed more accurately in a movie like the The Alien than it is in an expressly "demonic" offering such as The Exorcist. "Satanism" is alive and well, and is more likely to reside in a conservatively dressed businessman walking down the street, than in some clown in a cassock who dances around a burning cross!
Demonic powers stalk our world and feed off the death and destruction of humanity, such as periodically occurs in instances of mass murder, most appallingly in episodes of madness like the world wars, the Holocaust, and the killing fields. (In the Bible there is an account of demons cast out of human beings who immediately take up residence in a herd of swine who promptly go mad, committing mass suicide, Mat.8:28-32). Our only protection as individuals, and as a society, is to seek out and practice the will of God as a real part of our lives (Jas.4:7), not just as a fine sounding phrase such as we are fed from the pulpits of mainstream Christianity.
The climax of evil comes in the form of Armageddon, and is followed by a new earth of peace and righteousness, because there must also be a culmination of good. God clearly does all this in fulfillment of his purposes. That purpose must be something awesome for mankind as a whole, because God is hiding himself from man, permitting evil to run rampant, and allowing mankind to suffer all in pursuance of some kind of redemption we know by the biblical term it salvation". The awesome purpose has to do with allowing humanity to achieve eternal life in a perfected world, and achieve a status which raises man to the level of near-divinity. The general ignorance of this plan for the world, and for humanity, is the great gap which exists (and always has existed) in orthodox Christian teaching, and which makes a mockery of Christian truth in the eyes of the bulk of humanity. They are not told of the ultimate meaning of human life. God is not going to consign most people to hellfire, as taught by traditional Christianity. This is a gross distortion of Bible truth, both in its exclusive character, and in its interpretation of the word "hell" in the sayings of Christ. He was referring to a process of total annihilation for some unrepentant human beings - not the place of unending torment as portrayed by Dante!
God will perform a work which is (and will be) intelligible to future generations as a fantastic feat of creative power, and which will negate all of man's convictions about the futility and evil of the world in which we live. But a crucial part of this fulfillment requires that God have in this world people whose basic quality is belief, faith and obedience. God requires that they serve out an apprenticeship of holiness in an evil world so that they may inherit a cleansed earth. In the world to come, freed of the influence of evil, people will not believe that a world such as ours could have ever existed - a world of death and suffering; a world of bombings in Belfast, starvation in Ethiopia, and serial murders. They will need to see newsreel footage to be able to comprehend it! It will be the survivors of our age who will hold the memory of man's great testing ground in the divine plan to fulfill man's destiny. All people, even in our time, have a dim awareness that such a meaning must lie behind man's existence. We look towards Armageddon in expectation of our destruction because we are conscious of our depravity as a species.
There is such a thing as a corporate consciousness in man. An example of this is the flood stories of the ancient world , as separate in time and place as Classical Greece and ancient Sumeria, and the Australian Aborigines and the North American Indians. This represents a memory of a universal deluge which remains embedded in the human subconscious. In a similar way, humanity holds deep within its soul a vision of a world-wide cataclysm to come, and the end of the world as we know it, which explains the persistence of this idea in our thinking. (Note the prophecy of the "black men" of Cambodia in Chapter Two.)
But we also know of our potentialities spiritually, because we are in touch with an infinite being, and an ultimate purpose, whether we are lying in a sewer in Bangladesh, or between satin sheets on Fifth Avenue. If we do not reach out and grasp this purpose then we are denying a part of ourselves, a part of our humanity which is all too easy to push to the back of our minds in a world of materialism and day to day distractions. We can comprehend this meaning if we overcome our reluctance to ask really ultimate questions about why we were born and why the world is the way it is. We also fail to confront what we know are our ethical responsibilities as individuals because we lack guidance and conviction.
For some reason life came upon this planet. Whether we evolved, or whether we were put here, the universe has given rise to life, and intelligent life at that. Therefore, we must be prepared to think seriously about the meaning behind our existence. The fact that we think in these terms at all suggests that there must be an ultimate meaning. And if the universe can give rise to life, then why not eternally existing life? This has implications both for our own lives, and for the question of the existence of a divine being.
These thoughts are not for the intellectual elite. Christ never said "Blessed are the Doctors of Divinity for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs". I speak here to ordinary people who sense deep-down that there is a great purpose to human life which cannot be discerned and expressed in purely intellectual terms, and who know that there is something more to life than the pontifications of our secularised opinion formers. These people are really the blind leading the blind, because they leave spirituality - a striving after transcendent values -out of the picture with their remorseless rationalism. And when they do not, they speak falsely of man's innate capacity for growth and self-improvement. Here they leave the tangible influence of evil out of consideration because we are not supposed to dwell on feelings of guilt. This is old hat, Old Testament stuff. Unfortunately, it also happens to be the truth. The problem of evil is practically inexplicable to human philosophy. We cannot grapple intellectually with the profound suffering of this world. The spiritual agencies in the universe which are the source of evil cannot be adequately dealt with according to our mundane understanding of things. When Caroline Jones states that fundamentalists have a vested interest in Armageddon 5 she ignores this uncomfortable truth. There is a real God, and he works in a prophetical/historical realm. Everpresent threats to world peace in the Middle East are a portent of the outworking of Bible prophecy, and the fulfillment of man's destiny on earth. This world will be cleaned up through the agency of God's spiritual power which will overcome the forces of darkness presently dominating man. Armageddon merely represents the final climactic struggle between the forces of good and evil which permeate the cosmos. People must believe in Armageddon as prophesied in the scriptures, if they are to believe in the prophecies of the world to come. People know in the depths of their being that God must one day beak into human history in order to bring about ultimate renewal and reform. This does not need to imply that one actually looks forward to the death and destruction of humanity.
Anti-nuclear campaigner Helen Caldicott, who describes herself as a "powerful and attractive" woman, states:
I think Jesus was the son of God ... If we all lived according to what he taught, then we would not be neurotic any more, we would grow up. ... all religions really say the same thing, which is 'Love thy neighbour as thyself', but to do that one has to clean one's own psyche .. Our responsibility is to ourselves to clean up our own act before we operate in the world ... 6
My sentiments exactly. So how is it that I am in almost total disagreement with this left-wing activist? Whenever she addresses international issues, her critique is always of U.S. foreign policy (or Australian foreign policy), it is never of Russian or Chinese foreign policy. Her views are dictated by an ideology of dogmatic opposition to everything she associates with her own society (which includes America for these purposes). She possesses an adversarial hate-relationship with her own culture, and this is because she is motivated by anger towards a society she cannot meaningfully relate to. Her efforts to bring about nuclear disarmament are motivated by a deep hatred and negativity which I do not share, and is a kind of thinking which was never taught by Christ. We should indeed clean up our own act! Nuclear weapons are everybody's problem, but the issue is not simply getting rid of them. Nuclear weapons do not cause war, people cause war, nuclear or otherwise. The human traits which give rise to war are as much a part of Ms. Caldicott's make-up as anybody else's, and I see no evidence of any dramatic step towards spiritual uprightness in a person who spits venomous hatred towards the likes of President Reagan, and others. In any case, even if nuclear weapons were banned, they would simply be re-invented following the commencement of hostilities in any future war. A half a dozen conventional wars would probably have broken out in Europe in the post-war era but for the nuclear deterrent - and these would have ultimately developed into nuclear conflicts anyway! There are no easy answers to these questions, but taking the high ground on the basis of no discernible moral authority does nothing to distance the likes of Helen Caldicott from the foibles of humanity.
The purpose of human life is to be tested in an evil world, in order to be prepared for a future life of God-like divinity in a new order of world history known in the Bible as the Kingdom of God. This is usually put across as an entirely symbolic teaching. We are called by Christ, in the New Testament, to a life of faith and belief. The starting point is acceptance of the literal reality of God. (This kind of thinking is written off by humanists as "childish" and simple-minded.) The next step is to begin keeping the ways of God as commanded in both the Old and New Testaments as the way in which we express this faith in God; where the Kingdom takes precedence over our day to day material concerns in all our decisions and actions. The final reward is to inherit the Kingdom of God as eternally living beings, as in Christ's prophecy that the "meek shall inherit the earth". Of course, all this will be dismissed as the ravings of a religious nut, but these are the simple teachings of Christ which a quarter of the world's population nominally adheres to. It is the only thing which could ever make sense of the mad world we live in. It is merely the full expression of the yearnings people have which draws them to Christianity in the first place, so why deride it and hold it in contempt?
The world is not as arbitrary as it appears. It is clear from the scriptures that people are rewarded and punished in this life according to their deeds. Our moral actions have consequences whether we like to think so or not - for both good and evil. We cannot get around this by protesting that God lets innocent people (including children) die for sinful conduct. Everything evil which happens in this world is something which is permitted by God as a punishment upon mankind as a whole for his iniquity. It is pointless to try and understand the general suffering of humanity by reference to particular acts of divine retribution. God has set in train automatic punishments for evil. Our inability to interpret this effect in specific instances does not invalidate this truth. God also rewards for moral conduct, but this is something people do not understand because of their spiritual blindness.
All humanity is tainted by "the curse" of Genesis (Chapter 3). None of us are worthy in the eyes of God. The reason why apparently innocent people suffer can be put down to the fact that God punishes future generations for the evil of their ancestors (Ex.20:5). This is not unjust, because it demonstrates the inexorability of God's judgment of humanity. And even if it appears so, the problem as always is that we fail to understand the fantastic promise of God's salvation to mankind as a whole. Our final destination is God-like status as children of God - a purpose which more than compensates for the sufferings we have endured over the millennia.
The Salvation Army receives praise for dispensing hot soup to down and outs. The problem with such people is not that they lack food, warmth and shelter. What they lack is a meaning in life. Why isn't some attention paid to dispensing the good news of the New Testament, a commodity of infinitely greater value? It is this knowledge that all people crave to hear. God has brought every single human being into this world for a reason. No-one's life is an exercise in futility. If we respond to God, he will respond to us, but it has to be according to his discipline, not one of our making. We are pitted against God in a mighty struggle to overcome the evil which influences us. The criterion and standard of conduct is God's law, with a spiritual dimension which is revealed in the teachings of Christ. We are called to put God first in all things and to respond to his call throughout our lives as a profoundly spiritual experience. This involves the challenge to face the moral and spiritual demands which confront us as individual people in respect of our own personal lives, not diverting them away from ourselves by a concern "for the world". Nor should we fool ourselves that we can approach issues of war and injustice as a political struggle with those lacking ideologically correct reasoning, a view which proceeds essentially from a mistaken interpretation of the causes of evil and injustice, and which in turn derives from an overinflated, and unjustified, sense of our own moral superiority.
It is these ideas which hold out the promise of wholeness and completion to man in this world, and not the shallow rhetoric of so-called progressive Christianity (much less the call to participate in fruitless programs of political reform). Man is in a state of crisis. Only in God does there lie any hope for those who dwell in the shadow of nuclear destruction, and who live out their days in a blur of moral and spiritual obscurity.
1. Lisa Beyer "Lifting the Veil" Time 24 September 1990
2. Roger Hood The Death Penalty (Oxford: OUP, 1989) p. 167
3. lbid, p. 118
4. Michael Ward Papers on sentencing (Canberra: A.C.T. Magistrates' Court, 1989) p. 14
5. The Search for Meaning : Book Two / edited by Caroline Jones (Crows Nest: ABC Enterprises, 1990) p. xii
6. The Search for Meaning / Caroline Jones (Melbourne: Collins Dove, 1989) p. 173
CHAPTER 7
THE BOB DYLAN SYNDROME
He's a really sincere guy ... He's really put it all together.
Journalist, Phillip Adams, has written approximately a hundred books on why he doesn't believe in God. He is a potential victim of what I think of as the "Bob Dylan syndrome". This is the tendency of people to adopt deeply held religious beliefs in the face of all "reason", to the general consternation of the politically progressive. What these people are experiencing is the insistent call of God to a life of faith and belief
In the case of Dylan himself it was almost incomprehensible to his admirers of the protest era that he should in the late seventies adopt religious beliefs identifiable with the likes of Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority, and thereby become, if only by association, connected with the political right.
Dylan's experience provides us with a case-study of the relationship which exists between fundamentalism and conservative politics. We come into the world with an innate sense of higher realities (ideas of God, country and moral values) which we "unlearn" by exposure to secularistic thinking. Dylan, pre-eminently among the social commentators of his time, was immune to this effect.
Looking at Dylan's philosophical leanings throughout his career, one detects a pattern of thinking which shows a sensitivity to profoundly spiritual questions of life; one which refused to accept the posturing and sloganeering of the protest era, in favour of these deeper thoughts about life's ultimate meaning. It also serves to demonstrate that left-wing politics and Christianity cannot co-exist. Left-wing philosophy looks outside oneself to ideas of collectivism and corporatism (as in corporate identity, and corporate action to achieve change). It can never be a truly spiritual affair because spirituality is an individual experience of God. The "father of protest" was not only not left-wing, but his basically conservative philosophical instincts finally asserted themselves in the form of religious fundamentalism. His followers from the sixties would do well to reflect more deeply than they have about the significance of Dylan's spiritual odyssey.
Conversion experiences such as that of Bob Dylan are always likely to occur and upset the comfortable assumptions of people who are convinced that fundamentalists are merely pathetic simpletons. This doesn't work in the case of Dylan; he was the absolute exemplar of how the youth movement perceived itself, in terms of intelligence, coolness and sophistication. Dylan upset the progressives in two ways. Firstly, his conversion amounted to an implicit rejection of the (philosophical) materialism and nihilism of "the Movement". Secondly, and far more disturbingly for erstwhile lefties of the sixties, in doing so he became unwittingly a participant in the political/religious movements which grew up at the time of the Reagan presidential campaign. By adopting born-again Christianity, he provided evidence of a philosophical world view which is invariably friendly to right-wing politics. Was this the case? Could it seriously be argued that High Priest of protest back in the sixties, the man who is often credited with having virtually begun the protest era single-handedly, was actually a closet right-winger? This is my contention. Certainly the editors of Village Voice would seem to agree. They have termed Dylan a "right-wing ... middle-aged, American Jew". I (Right-wing, middle-aged and American are bad enough. May we to assume that "Jew" is also? In the good old days this used to be called anti-Semitism!)
The enduring myth of the 1960's was that Bob Dylan was a spokesman for the whole panoply of left-wing causes which were popular during that period. That he should be seen in this way is not surprising. Songs like The Times They Are A'changing and Blowin' in the Wind were seminal influences on the nascent protest movements of the early 1960's. Dylan is rightly regarded as one of the most important influences in motivating the young towards political activism in those heady days of social unrest. He seemed to embody the spirit of restlessness and revolt which was beginning to brew amongst the milling legions of post-war baby-boomers. Dylan was the voice of the sixties. No figure in popular culture had as great an effect on the social and political outlook of that generation. But just how accurate are the commonly held assumptions concerning Dylan's political significance?
The image of Bob Dylan as a radical has of course never been without its problems, and has become less tenable with each passing decade. We must ask ourselves at the outset whether Dylan began as a leftist and evolved into a right-wing conservative (the popular view), or was Dylan always fundamentally inclined towards a whole range of traditional values, the existence of which explains much of the controversy surrounding his relationship with the protest movement, and his failure to support its political aims. It is after all in classic songs like Its Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) from the irreverent and radical mid-sixties that Dylan decries the trivialization of religion and declining moral standards with his references to "flesh-coloured Christs that glow in the dark" and "obscenity who really cares?". In my view the latter interpretation is the correct one, and the history of the political and religious movements of the last decade provides much in the way of support for this view.
What was Dylan's relationship with the protest movement? The histories of Bob Dylan recite the familiar story that the itinerant folk-singer from Minnesota began his career by infiltrating the Greenwich Village beat scene which was set to become the intellectual powerhouse of the coming decade. The influence of counter-culture figures like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and other founder members of the beat generation, hung heavily over the Village at this time. The beatniks were less political than the hippies, but they represented a more genuine sub-culture. The hippies might have worn long hair and beads, and dossed together in group houses, but it was always obvious that by the time they reached their mid-twenties they would be driving Volvos and holding down steady jobs. It is also worth noting that the founder of the Beat Generation (Jack Kerouac), like the founder of the protest generation which followed, was politically right-wing. (Kerouac was spasmodically a devout Catholic, just as Dylan has always flirted with Christianity and Judaism.) Is this because these moving spirits had more depth than their shallower devotees?
In the early days he wrote political songs like Talkin' John Birch Society Blues and one or two anti-war songs like Masters of War and With God on Our Side, but on the whole seems to have had only a passing interest in the politics of the Village scene. His only real political commitment was to the civil rights movement which has remained a life-long preoccupation.
He soon became disenchanted with the protest genre as a vehicle for his talents after the assassination of President Kennedy, and he now became an introspective figure concerned with expressing his own personal problems in his music. Combined with his conversion to the electric guitar in 1965 (Time magazine observed that Dylan now sang along with a plug-in guitar to match his electric lyrics!), this turnaround caused tremendous resentment among his followers, and was the first inkling that Dylan could not be stereotyped either musically or politically as an unquestioning supporter of the counter-culture. This falling out with the protest movement is generally put down to Dylan's quest for individuality, but it was merely the first installment in a continuing saga of misplaced expectations on the part of his politically involved devotees. For these people the emotional commitment to the causes of the time made it impossible to conceive that Dylan could be any less committed than themselves to "the Movement".
Dylan's loss of interest in protest is seen as part of a general decline of hope among those who expected significant social change following the election of President Kennedy. 2 But the fact is that political activism was just getting off the ground at this time with the Ban the Bomb movement in Europe and the first rumblings of discontent among the youth of America.
Disenchantment over the Kennedy assassination could not have been anything more than a temporary setback to those who were committed to political involvement, if subsequent events were anything to go by. This explanation for Dylan's mysterious lapse in political fervour is clearly a rationalization - the first of many which followed. The literature of Bob Dylan is full of forced assertions of support for the ideals of the protest movement through a spurious interpretation of his song lyrics. Thus a line such as "even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked" is taken to prove incontrovertibly that Dylan hated Lyndon Johnson! There was no deliberate turning away from activism on his part, for the truth was he was never really committed in the first place.
And then there was Vietnam. In the 1960's one's view of the war in Vietnam defined one's political standing. Dylan's attitude to the war was conspicuous by its absence. The fact is that in the mid to later sixties, at the height of the war, and with Dylan at the very pinnacle of his creative powers, he managed to write not a single song - indeed not even a single line - on the subject. This oversight has caused no end of discomfort among many Dylanophiles. The assumption is that while Dylan clearly disapproved of the war, he held this view merely privately and not publicly(?), 3 a return to the theme of the politically alienated individual not wishing to become too closely allied with actual political, movements. There are two major problems with this ratiocination. The first and most compelling one is simply that, political cause or no, if Dylan was in any way troubled by the Vietnam experience there is absolutely no reason why he would have failed to express this in his music in some form. Dylan, even in his non-political guise, was clearly enough in touch with the wider world to express at least passing interest in a political issue of this magnitude. Secondly, Dylan was unreservedly committed to at least one of the political causes of the time - namely the civil rights movement. >From Hattie Carroll, through George Jackson, all the way to the campaign to free Rubin (Hurricane) Carter, Dylan had actively involved himself in the civil rights movement at all levels. He has even lent moral support to anti-apartheid protests of more recent times. It is therefore quite wrong to see in Dylan's silence about the Vietnam War some kind of unspoken acceptance of the anti-war argument. The prevailing mood of the time was very much one of "them and us". For Dylan to have not commented on the Vietnam War means only one thing. Whether he supported the war or not, he most certainly did not see in it any great wrong that needed to be rectified and commented on. This point alone is sufficient to largely demolish the myth of Dylan as the high priest of the protest movement. The comments ascribed to Dylan concerning the bombing of Hanoi sometime in the late sixties (related in Anthony Scaduto's book Bob Dylan 4 are a little out of kilter with the sentiments being expressed by the peace protesters of those years!
There is of course no doubt that Dylan had no time for political dogmas, "strict party platform ties" (It's Alright Ma) as he called them, and regarded political thinking per se as so much "crap". 5 But Dylan has always possessed the basic philosophical baggage which inclines people to the right-wing when these tendencies are given political expression. To see the truth of this assertion we must look at the phenomenon of the rise of the religious right in the late seventies. For here we see the appearance of a political pressure group founded upon fundamentalist religious philosophy, and where we encounter the most startling occurrence in the long history of Dylan's clashes with the protest movement of the sixties.
Dylan's music had always contained favourable references to Jesus Christ and Christianity (When the Ship Comes In; With God on Our Side; Shelter from the Storm; Idiot Wind; etc.) This fact has long been recognised, even if it did not strictly fit the image of Dylan as the cool hipster. But in 1979, Dylan stunned the rock world by converting to born-again Christianity and releasing the gospel album Slow Train Coming.
Dylan fans were beside themselves. They had good reason to be; for with his conversion to fundamentalist Christianity the hero of the counter-culture had largely identified himself with not just a religious view of the world, but one which carried with it an unmistakable right-wing political bias.
This is borne out by an analysis of the Moral Majority movement. Dylan's conversion occurred at a fortuitous moment in the history of the United States. The political activism of the left in the sixties and early seventies had polarised many Americans and this led to a right-wing backlash. The New Left had captivated the youthful idealists of the baby-boom generation who were unmoved by the certitudes, of their forebears. The members of Nixon's Silent Majority felt threatened by this concerted attack on traditional morality, and conservative social and political values. The Moral Majority arose in response to this. They were the shock troops of the right-wing revival just as the SDS had been for the left in the sixties. The political extremism of both groups underscores a peculiarity in the way we think about politics. Ingrained prejudices towards liberalism on the one hand, or conservatism on the other, invariably predispose us towards the politics of either the left or the right. With the Moral Majority a new dimension was added to our understanding when it became apparent that fundamentalist Christianity and right-wing politics were bed-fellows proceeding from a common view of the world.
The rise of religious fundamentalism in the 1980's was not confined to the United States alone. It is a worldwide phenomenon. In Israel the religious right has become a force to be reckoned with in the guise of orthodox Jewish organizations like Gush Emunim. As in the U.S., religious fundamentalism and right-wing politics go hand in hand. A born-again Dylan is one thing, but in 1983 he became a member of the ultra-orthodox Lubavitcha sect of Hasidic Jews, and provided further proof - if any were needed - of his persistent fundamentalist leanings. Dylan has long cultivated his Jewish roots and expressed support for Israel, much to the ire of generally pro-Palestinian leftists. But this should also be viewed in relation to long-standing tendencies in his thinking. As far back as the early 1970's Dylan publicly supported the Jewish Defence League (which has been seen as a Jewish version of the P.L.O.) and expressed admiration for right-wing activist Rabbi Meir Kahane. 6 Kahane (who was assassinated in November 1990) gained notoriety for advocating the expulsion of the Arabs from Israel, and various other hard-line policies which caused him to be labeled a "Jewish fascist".
Dylan has repeatedly been criticised for his obvious lack of interest in political causes such as Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation -in the song Sundown on the Union Dylan even goes so far as to attack unionism! - but what most people seem to have missed is that the signs have always been there that Dylan possesses the philosophical underpinnings of a true conservative. Considered against the background of his involvement with avowedly right-wing religious groups, Dylan's political complexion takes on a new meaning. It is from the perspective of the 1990's that we get a clearer view of the political sympathies Bob Dylan has exhibited in the past.
In a 1979 book entitled The 80's: A Look Back 7 there is an imaginary scene where a U.S. government committee called HUAC (The Hollywood United Activists Coalition) presided over by Jane Fonda, engages in a 1980's style hawkhunt. One of its interogees is a born-again Christian called Bob Dylan Zimmerman who testifies that he was secretly for the war and "longed to kill a commie for Christ". This is satire, but the image of Dylan as a closet conservative is the reality.
These conclusions do not reflect popular thinking about Dylan, nor the world in general. They remind us that there is a deeply religious side to humanity which many "educated" and "enlightened" people are unable to come to terms with because it threatens a set of philosophical convictions which could be summed up as "the ideology of the sixties", and one ostensibly symbolised by Dylan himself. His "fall from grace" is stark testimony to the emptiness, meaninglessness and general bankruptcy of this whole system of ideas.
1. Chris Rowley Blood on the Tracks (N.Y.: Proteus Publishing Co., 1984) p. 151
2. Ibid. p.73
3. Ibid. p. 113
4. Anthony Scaduto BobDylan (Castle 1971) p.198
5. Bob Dylan: in his Own Words (London: Omnibus Books, 1978; N.Y.: Quick Fox, 1978 (Reprinted 1982); p. 117
6. Time 31 May 1971
7. The 80's: A Look Back at the Tumultuous Decade 1980-1989 / edited by Tony Hendra, Christopher Cerf & Peter Elbing (N.Y.: Workman Publishing Co., 1979) p.65
POSTSCRIPT: THE GULF WAR, 1991
As this book goes to print our society is beset by protests over the Gulf War. I believe that the themes examined in this book have a special relevance to the current crisis. A rejuvenated anti-war movement has picked up where it left off in the early 1970's. This is despite the fact that the issues raised by this war are fairly cut and dried. We have a situation of outright aggression in the Middle-East by a dictator whose goal is to become the leader of the Arab. world. His strategy is to confront the West, and Israel. The occupation of Kuwait is a mere pretext for this long-term goal. Saddam plans to suck the Americans into a bloody ground war, and when the U.S. public has had enough, sue for peace, and then withdraw from Kuwait. He will then look like a hero in Arab eyes for having stood up to the West. To believe that this crisis could be avoided through "negotiations" is as foolish as it was in the case of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Saddam has already taken on hero status in the eyes of many Arabs. Like a modern Bismarck, he seeks to unite the scattered nations of the Arab world into one great pan-Arab federation, and in the process expunge centuries of humiliation at the hands of western nations.
Saddam has shown himself to be completely ruthless and lacking in all moral qualms. He is the perfect villain. This is a man who launched an eight year long war with Iran in which hundreds of thousands of people on both sides were killed, expecting that it would be a short campaign given the revolutionary turmoil in that country. He gained nothing, and in the process inflicted horrendous suffering on both nations. This says something for his political judgment. During this war he resorted to chemical weapons and nerve gas, moral depths to which even Hitler did not descend. He has attacked Israel with missiles which are so inaccurate that their only purpose is to terrorise civilians in populated areas. He is willing to put his country through the most incredible suffering because he believes he can outlast the West in a military conflict. Saddam has a good grasp of recent Arab history. He knows that leaders like Nasser, Sadat and Arafat have emerged politically stronger following military set-backs. This is a man who would be capable of using the oil weapon to destroy the economy of the Western world. Except for quick action by the Americans, Saddam would already be in control of over fifty percent of the world's oil supplies.
Opponents of U.S. policy dispute that Saddam is another Hitler, and that their position amounts to one of appeasement. In their view Hitler was an entirely unique phenomenon. In fact, at any given time throughout the twentieth century there have been a dozen Hitlers on the world scene, and we should have learnt by now that the only way to contain aggression is to attack it at its source.
As people get out onto the streets, a la' the sixties, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Western world has entered into a condition of senile dementia. The worst enemies we have ever faced could not have destroyed us from without as effectively as the pampered, self-indulgent Western world is destroying itself from within. The legacy of the sixties can now be seen for what it always was - a concerted attempt to sow confusion and discord within our societies. The so-called "peace" movement is in reality little more than a "hate-America" club. They should be known as "hate-mongers" rather than "peace activists". They did not bother to stage political demonstrations against Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. If it had kept quiet about this entirely justifiable war, we might still be deluding ourselves that in the sixties they were acting from pure motives in response to a supposedly unjust one. It is now plain that the activism ' then was not provoked by an "immoral" war, but derived from other causes. Its performance in the current war betrays the real, as opposed to the ostensible, motivations. At least the appeasers of the thirties learned the error of their ways in their treatment of Hitler. Our current crop of appeasers either know nothing of history, or are completely blinded to reality by their ideological convictions.
The media has played its part here too. Generally left-leaning and always sensationalist, the media has given enormous exposure to protest groups demonstrating against the war. No sooner had hostilities commenced than news-people began reporting anti-war gatherings of a mere handful of protesters. Like some Frankenstein monster, the modem media machine must highlight every facet of controversy in these situations. It must draw out every nuance of drama and confrontation for the sake of good copy. With our country preparing to go to war, with men and women geared up for battle, our newsmen have delighted in presenting a picture of the entire country in a state of uproar over our involvement in the conflict, precisely the kind of response these political groups depend on in order to thrive and grow. What sort of effect is this reportage supposed to have on the morale of those about to go into battle? If people want to demonstrate against war that is their business, as much as I might disagree with them, but for our news editors to be providing so much positive support to these people strikes me as amounting almost to treason! In World War 11, not even the Germans and Japanese could have generated this kind of negative propaganda!
How the war will end no-one can say, but this much we can be sure of. It was begun by an enemy of the West who believed that he could outlast a soft and decadent foe (the United States) which had already demonstrated its lack of resolve in previous conflicts of recent history, and which was the only force standing in the way of his plans. If our peace movement has its way, his judgment will have been vindicated, and this will encourage other petty dictators to embark on their own programs of conquest all over the world in the post-Cold War era. This will be one more victory for aggression in the sorry history of the twentieth century, and one more defeat for one of the most fragile and precious achievements of modern times - Western democracy.
