Why do Chris­tians Find Marx­ism Attrac­tive?

This is a com­pan­ion piece to our pod­cast episode “Why is Marx­ism Attrac­tive? And Even to Chris­tians?”

The Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal church has a major prob­lem — one that, until per­haps recent­ly, has large­ly gone unno­ticed. Some of the most promi­nent voic­es in evan­gel­i­cal­ism today are tout­ing Marx­ist philoso­phers, and indeed, even Karl Marx him­self, speak­ing of him in glow­ing terms. For exam­ple, renowned pas­tor Tim Keller assert­ed in an Octo­ber 22, 2000 ser­mon,

There has nev­er been, except for one per­son I know, there’s nev­er been anoth­er major thinker…that had this high a view not only of work but of all work, and all work­ers… The only per­son who had this high a view of work was Karl Marx.

Made for Stweard­ship, Octo­ber 22, 2000, Tim­o­thy Keller

Accord­ing to Keller, the man who had the high­est view of labor on earth, except for God Him­self, was Karl Marx.

Keller is not alone in this view. The infa­mous Black Lib­er­a­tion the­olo­gian James Cone wrote in his book, For My Peo­ple, that the

Chris­t­ian faith does not pos­sess in its nature the means for ana­lyz­ing the struc­ture of cap­i­tal­ism. Marx­ism as a tool of social analy­sis can dis­close the gap between appear­ance and real­i­ty, and there­by help Chris­tians to see how things real­ly are.

James Cone, For My Peo­ple. Quote avail­able online here

Despite Cone’s explic­it­ly Marx­i­an views, his writ­ings have been rec­om­mend­ed by well-known Chris­t­ian author Jemar Tis­by,¹ South­east­ern Bap­tist Sem­i­nary pro­fes­sor Wal­ter Strick­land, dean of Howard Uni­ver­si­ty School of Divin­i­ty Yolan­da Pierce, and the Sal­va­tion Army, among many oth­ers.

What is Marx­ism, and the Rise of Cul­tur­al Marx­ism

Clas­si­cal Marx­ism is defined as “both a cur­rent with­in the rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ment against cap­i­tal­ism and a cur­rent of social the­o­ry which engages a wide spec­trum of peo­ple.” The phrase against cap­i­tal­ism refers to over­throw­ing any eco­nom­ic sys­tem in which peo­ple have pri­vate prop­er­ty rights, in favor of social­ism, a sys­tem where a dic­ta­tor­ship of the pro­le­tari­at (work­ing class peo­ple) “seizes polit­i­cal pow­er and turns the means of pro­duc­tion into State prop­er­ty.” Accord­ing to Marx, once the con­flict between the bour­geoisie (cap­i­tal­ist busi­ness own­ers) and the pro­le­tari­at (work­ing class peo­ple) is over, social­ism even­tu­al­ly will ush­er in a state­less, class­less utopi­an soci­ety. Marx called that soci­ety com­mu­nism.

By the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, it was clear that clas­si­cal Marx­ism was­n’t work­ing. The rev­o­lu­tions pre­dict­ed by men like Marx weren’t hap­pen­ing, were short-lived and vio­lent, or pro­duced bloody, repres­sive states like the USSR. Pop­u­lar sup­port for Marx­ism was strug­gling. This did not deter the diehard Marx­ists, though; they held onto their reli­gious belief in the inevitabil­i­ty of the com­mu­nist utopia. How­ev­er, they knew that sell­ing an ide­ol­o­gy that caused so much death would be dif­fi­cult, at best. There­fore, men like Anto­nio Gram­sci began apply­ing Marx’s the­o­ry to cul­ture. The ide­ol­o­gy that result­ed is now known as “Cul­tur­al Marx­ism.”

Since peo­ple were begin­ning to turn against social­ism and com­mu­nism, Gram­sci devised a plan to make the pro­le­tari­at, or mem­bers of the work­ing class, believe in it again. The plan shrewd­ly called for infil­trat­ing cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions and chang­ing minds from with­in on a wide­spread basis. In Gramsci’s prison note­books, he laid out his plan:

“Social­ism is pre­cise­ly the reli­gion that must over­whelm Christianity…In the new order, Social­ism will tri­umph by first cap­tur­ing the cul­ture via infil­tra­tion of schools, uni­ver­si­ties, church­es, and the media by trans­form­ing the con­scious­ness of soci­ety.”

Anto­nio Gram­sci, Prison Note­books. Quote avail­able online here

Gramsci’s scheme has suc­ceed­ed! Over the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the teach­ings of the Cul­tur­al Marx­ist Frank­furt School, which was estab­lished in Ger­many between the two World Wars, invad­ed the Unit­ed States. Marx­ist pro­fes­sors began infil­trat­ing Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties, pro­mul­gat­ing Marx­ist teach­ings to younger gen­er­a­tions. Most sig­nif­i­cant among these pro­fes­sors was Her­bert Mar­cuse, who lament­ed that the work­ing class in Amer­i­ca was enjoy­ing their lives under cap­i­tal­ism. He the­o­rized that the work­ing class nev­er would want to over­throw cap­i­tal­ism under these con­di­tions, so he believed that a new pro­le­tari­at would have to arise in the form of the “ghet­to pop­u­la­tions,” along­side rad­i­cal­ized col­lege stu­dents and the left­ist intel­li­gentsia.

Efforts to rad­i­cal­ize the “ghet­to pop­u­la­tions” gave rise to Crit­i­cal Race The­o­ry (CRT), the belief that “[sys­temic] racism is the oper­at­ing prin­ci­ple of soci­ety cre­at­ed by white peo­ple for their own ben­e­fit.”² In this view, “white peo­ple” are the new bour­geoisie; they hold pow­er and are ben­e­fi­cia­ries of “the sys­tem” (in this case the ways of know­ing, speak­ing, and cre­at­ing pol­i­cy that main­tain whites’ supe­ri­or access to wealth, resources, and oppor­tu­ni­ty in soci­ety). By con­trast, “non­whites” (espe­cial­ly “blacks”) are vic­tims of white “oppres­sion,” even if whites do not engage direct­ly in racist actions. Crit­i­cal Race The­o­ry says the sys­tem itself is per­pet­u­at­ing black sub­or­di­na­tion while whites ben­e­fit from it. It is not sur­pris­ing that in a 2010 inter­view, Crit­i­cal Race The­o­rist Richard Del­ga­do admit­ted that the found­ing con­fer­ence on CRT in 1989 was com­posed of “a bunch of Marx­ists.”³ Thus, CRT can be right­ly char­ac­ter­ized as Marx­ism applied to race.

Dodg­ing Account­abil­i­ty

As we have seen, Marx­ism has made sig­nif­i­cant inroads into both sec­u­lar soci­ety and in the church. Why is it appeal­ing, giv­en its abysmal track record?

In sec­u­lar soci­ety, Marx­ism appeals to athe­ists, pagans, and peo­ple who claim to be non­re­li­gious because it is a belief sys­tem that sets the state up as God and there­by allows its adher­ents to avoid a sense of account­abil­i­ty to the real God, the God of the Bible. That God demands account­abil­i­ty. (Hebrews 4:13)

Even though athe­ists and agnos­tics tend to boast that they don’t have a reli­gion, the truth is that all peo­ple, as image-bear­ers of God, have an intrin­sic need to sub­mit to and wor­ship some­one or some­thing, whether it be a deity, a man, or the gov­ern­ment. As C. S. Lewis once observed, “Once peo­ple stop believ­ing in God, the prob­lem is not that they will believe in noth­ing; rather, the prob­lem is that they will believe any­thing.”

In The Com­mu­nist Man­i­festo, Marx offers this oppor­tu­ni­ty for wor­ship of the State above God. He declared, “There are, besides, eter­nal truths, such as Free­dom, Jus­tice, etc. that are com­mon to all states of soci­ety. But com­mu­nism abol­ish­es eter­nal truths, it abol­ish­es all reli­gion, and all moral­i­ty, instead of con­sti­tut­ing them on a new basis; it there­fore acts in con­tra­dic­tion to all past his­tor­i­cal expe­ri­ence.”

No Absolutes

For sec­u­lar Marx­ists, there are no tran­scen­dent truths or moral imper­a­tives, so man is free to do as he wish­es, with the government’s per­mis­sion, of course. This isn’t a huge hin­drance to these peo­ple, because sec­u­lar gov­ern­ments per­mit much of what sin­ful sec­u­lar indi­vid­u­als wish to do! But the dis­cern­ing Chris­t­ian read­er will notice that Marx’s rhetoric is direct­ly in line with Satan’s lie in the Gar­den of Eden. Tempt­ing Eve to dis­obey God’s com­mand not to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowl­edge of Good and Evil, Satan told Eve, “You will not sure­ly die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, know­ing good and evil.” (Gen­e­sis 3:4–5)

One thing Satan was insin­u­at­ing here is that God was oppress­ing Eve and her hus­band by with­hold­ing knowl­edge that would make them equal to God. Thus, Satan urged Eve to over­throw her “oppres­sor” by rebelling against His com­mand. Marx’s call to eat of the tree of com­mu­nism includes a call to abol­ish reli­gion and moral­i­ty, which is rem­i­nis­cent of the same temp­ta­tion Satan placed before Eve.

Giv­ing Greed the Green Light

Anoth­er allure of Marx­ism to sec­u­lar­ists is that it exploits the innate propen­si­ty of humans to be cov­etous. In Exo­dus 20:17, God com­mands His peo­ple, “You shall not cov­et your neighbor’s house; you shall not cov­et your neighbor’s wife, nor his male ser­vant, nor his female ser­vant, nor his ox, nor his don­key, nor any­thing that is your neighbor’s.”

God includ­ed this as the tenth of His Ten Com­mand­ments, guide­lines that sum­ma­rize the moral law, because He knew that as sin­ners, all peo­ple tend to be jeal­ous of those who pos­sess mate­r­i­al goods and wealth that they them­selves lack. Cov­et­ing is a breed­ing ground for rabid envy and hatred, God for­bade it.

By con­trast, Marx encour­ages it when he writes,

You are hor­ri­fied at our intend­ing to do away with pri­vate prop­er­ty. But in your exist­ing soci­ety, pri­vate prop­er­ty is already done away with for nine-tenths of the pop­u­la­tion; its exis­tence for the few is sole­ly due to its non-exis­tence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, there­fore, with intend­ing to do away with a form of prop­er­ty, the nec­es­sary con­di­tion for whose exis­tence is the non-exis­tence of any prop­er­ty for the immense major­i­ty of soci­ety.

The Com­mu­nist Man­i­festo

In the first place, the objec­tive observ­er will real­ize that Marx’s con­tention is a gross exag­ger­a­tion. The idea that 90 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion have noth­ing while 10 per­cent own every­thing is obvi­ous­ly sil­ly. But hyper­bole aside, the main thrust of Karl Marx’s argu­ment is that abol­ish­ing pri­vate prop­er­ty is jus­ti­fied because most of the prop­er­ty is in the hands of the wealthy, and Marx sim­ply can’t stom­ach that! Iron­i­cal­ly, tak­ing it from the wealthy and giv­ing it to the State doesn’t improve the lot of the poor; it makes it worse. Nev­er­the­less, eying the wealthy with a focus on what they have ver­sus what he or she does not have is fer­tile ground for bla­tant cov­etous­ness — and dis­con­tent.

Marx was say­ing the work­ing class should have dis­dain for the wealthy mere­ly because they own more prop­er­ty. Nev­er mind that most wealthy folks worked hard to earn what they have! Nev­er mind that those who are rich might be in a posi­tion to offer jobs to those who need them! Nev­er mind that they might even be gen­er­ous as well as fru­gal with their assets! Again, Marx’s rhetoric direct­ly oppos­es God’s injunc­tion not to cov­et one’s neighbor’s prop­er­ty, no mat­ter what he has, how much he has, or how well he man­ages it.

Eye­ing a Utopia

We must be aware that cov­etous­ness is a Marx­ist tool. Marx­ism uti­lizes it to cre­ate a desire for a com­mu­nist utopia, a “fair” and “just” soci­ety in which every­one is equal and there is no oppres­sion. Accord­ing to the com­mu­nist nar­ra­tive, every­one will share all of the com­mu­nal prop­er­ty, “from each accord­ing to his abil­i­ty, to each accord­ing to his need.”⁴ But a bib­li­cal world­view informs us that attempts to cre­ate a utopia here and now are futile, as the world has been stained with the curse of sin ever since Adam and Eve ate from the for­bid­den tree: “For we know that the whole cre­ation groans and labors with birth pangs togeth­er until now.” (Romans 8:22)

Fur­ther­more, we will not expe­ri­ence per­fect par­adise on earth until Jesus returns to restore His cre­ation at the end of his­to­ry: “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sor­row, nor cry­ing. There shall be no more pain, for the for­mer things have passed away.”(Revelation 21:4) Any attempts to cre­ate a utopia before Jesus returns will be both futile and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.

That said, until Christ returns, we do well to heed Scripture’s inher­ent affir­ma­tion of an eco­nom­ic sys­tem that

• leaves room for indi­vid­u­als to acknowl­edge God,
• allows par­tic­i­pants with­in the sys­tem to be cre­ative, work hard, and be reward­ed for their work,
• penal­izes lazi­ness,
• per­mits and even com­mends char­i­ty, and
• by uphold­ing moral val­ues, sets the stage for ordered free­dom and lib­er­ty.⁵

Don’t be fooled. That sys­tem is the free enter­prise sys­tem, com­mon­ly called cap­i­tal­ism.

Core Ques­tion: What is Sin?

A fourth rea­son why Marx­ism is such a draw for peo­ple is that it offers answers to fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about the mean­ing of life, and it does so with­out God. Let’s con­sid­er sev­er­al of these.

For one, Marx­ism defines sin as oppres­sion per­pe­trat­ed against you by the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem. Just ask Robin Dian­ge­lo, a Crit­i­cal White­ness Stud­ies schol­ar who makes a moun­tain of mon­ey in speak­ing fees in cap­i­tal­ist coun­tries, even as she dis­par­ages cap­i­tal­ism as racist. Dian­ge­lo con­tends,

When a racial group’s col­lec­tive prej­u­dice is backed by the pow­er of legal author­i­ty and insti­tu­tion­al con­trol, it is trans­formed into racism, a far-reach­ing sys­tem that func­tions inde­pen­dent­ly from the inten­tions or self-images of indi­vid­ual actors.

Robin Dian­ge­lo, White Fragili­ty, p.20

In the fore­word to Diangelo’s book, Michael Eric Dyson claims that racism is the “orig­i­nal sin.” There­fore, sys­temic racial oppres­sion, regard­less of anyone’s inten­tions or actions, is a sin­ful real­i­ty, accord­ing to the pre­vail­ing Marx­ist world­view.

Core Ques­tion: Who is Guilty?

Anoth­er ques­tion Marx­ism attempts to address is: who is respon­si­ble for sin? And the answer is…oppressors! As we have seen, in Marx­ism and the “woke” ide­ol­o­gy it pro­motes, it isn’t your actions as an indi­vid­ual that make you respon­si­ble for sin, but your belong­ing to a group that is deemed to be oppres­sive and racist. Thus, you are respon­si­ble for the wrong actions the group is guilty of because you are a part of that group.

Let’s be even more spe­cif­ic and direct. If you are white, you are guilty of “white­ness” and of racism and oppres­sion. As Dian­ge­lo goes on to state in her book, White Fragili­ty,

[F]irst we [whites] exploit­ed peo­ple for their resources, not accord­ing to how they looked. Exploita­tion came first, and then the ide­ol­o­gy of unequal races to jus­ti­fy this exploita­tion fol­lowed. Robin Dian­ge­lo, White Fragili­ty, p.16

Notice how Dian­ge­lo uses the pro­noun “we” when refer­ring to past injus­tices com­mit­ted by whites in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Because she views whites as a col­lec­tive, she sees her­self as respon­si­ble for per­pet­u­at­ing the same sys­tem of oppres­sion that result­ed in slav­ery, Jim Crow laws, and so forth. Let’s put aside for a moment the glar­ing fact that Diangelo’s asser­tions about racism ought to be viewed skep­ti­cal­ly because, in her world­view, she her­self is a racist, sim­ply because she is white. If she is a racist, then why should any­one lis­ten to her insights about racism? Obvi­ous­ly, this major con­tra­dic­tion is large­ly ignored by both her and her fans.

Diangelo’s claims demon­strate that under Marx­ism, col­lec­tive oppres­sor group iden­ti­ties — not indi­vid­u­als —are respon­si­ble for sin. But don’t for a New York minute think this fact absolves you as an indi­vid­ual of respon­si­bil­i­ty! No! As part of the oppres­sor group, white indi­vid­u­als are guilty and must repent of their “white­ness”! Instead of being respon­si­ble indi­vid­u­al­ly as an indi­vid­ual, CRT activists would make whites respon­si­ble indi­vid­u­al­ly as a col­lec­tive group iden­ti­ty. Since they always will have white skin, though, they’ll always be guilty; so this is an are­na in which repen­tance and for­give­ness are sim­ply impos­si­ble!

Core Ques­tion: Who is in Author­i­ty?

Marx­ism has an answer for yet anoth­er cru­cial ques­tion peo­ple ask: What is the source of right and wrong? Here is the answer: gov­ern­ment and those in pow­er. Today, this includes both the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and cor­po­ra­tions. For exam­ple, in his response to the tri­al that found Offi­cer Derek Chau­vin guilty of mur­der­ing George Floyd, pres­i­dent Joe Biden said this in his address to the nation, “Sys­temic racism is a stain on our nation’s soul, and a knee on the neck of jus­tice for black Amer­i­cans.” Yet it was Chau­vin on tri­al, not Amer­i­ca. And it was with­in the Amer­i­can jus­tice sys­tem that Chau­vin was found guilty. Pres­i­dent Biden’s state­ments paint­ing all Amer­i­cans guilty of racism, rep­re­sent a rede­f­i­n­i­tion of jus­tice, in which Robin Diangelo’s con­cep­tion of whites being ben­e­fi­cia­ries of a sys­tem which sub­ju­gates non­whites, cre­at­ing dis­par­i­ties in wealth, resources, and oppor­tu­ni­ty, is the new Marx­i­an def­i­n­i­tion of injus­tice. Thus, jus­tice would mean adjust­ing shares so that non­whites would have the same amount of wealth as every­one else (social­ism).

There’s more. A strik­ing instance of racial Marx­ism backed by cor­po­rate pow­er sur­faced in a leaked slideshow pre­sen­ta­tion giv­en by Robin Dian­ge­lo at a diver­si­ty train­ing event for the Coca-Cola com­pa­ny, in which she exhort­ed white peo­ple to “try to be less white” and clar­i­fied how to do this: “To be less white is to: (1) be less oppres­sive; (2) be less arro­gant; (3) be less cer­tain; (4) be less defen­sive; (5) be less igno­rant; (6) be more hum­ble; (7) lis­ten; (8) believe; (9) break with apa­thy; (10) break with white sol­i­dar­i­ty.”

Since ordi­nary peo­ple would not become Marx­ists on their own, Marx­ism uti­lizes state and cor­po­rate pow­er to impose on soci­ety its views about what’s right and wrong. His­tor­i­cal­ly, the same method for imput­ing sin to col­lec­tives and using gov­ern­ment to impose its own arbi­trary will has held true for Marx­ism. Under Mao Zhedong’s com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion in Chi­na, ordi­nary artists were denounced as “counter-rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies.” Only pro­pa­gan­dized art that pro­mot­ed the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty nar­ra­tive was allowed to be dis­sem­i­nat­ed. These por­trayed “greedy cap­i­tal­ists” as pow­er-hun­gry tyrants, and com­mu­nists as peace­ful, fair-mind­ed peo­ple liv­ing in har­mo­ny.

Core Ques­tion: Who can Restore What is Bro­ken?

Every human being has a nat­ur­al ten­den­cy to won­der who can or will restore what sin has bro­ken. Marxism’s answer: the gov­ern­ment. In a now infa­mous ser­mon, pas­tor and the­olo­gian Dr. Eric Mason said the fol­low­ing:

If I’m hon­est about repa­ra­tions over the years, I haven’t thought a lot about it as much as I would have liked to as one of the out­work­ings of what it looks like to kind of fix things and deal with some of the racial ten­sions in our coun­try.”

(114) CANCEL CULTURE | A Bib­li­cal Case for Repa­ra­tions | Dr.Eric Mason — YouTube

In this ser­mon, Dr. Mason con­tend­ed that the gov­ern­ment should forcibly con­fis­cate wealth from whites and redis­trib­ute it to blacks. Incred­i­bly, Dr. Mason went on to attempt to make the case (unsuc­cess­ful­ly) that this Marx­ist redis­tri­b­u­tion scheme was bib­li­cal.

Core Ques­tion: How can the Prob­lem of Sin in Soci­ety be Resolved?

Appar­ent­ly leav­ing few core reli­gious mat­ters untouched, Marx­ism even tries to address how sin should be paid for — with the erad­i­ca­tion of the oppres­sor class. In Amer­i­ca, that idea man­i­fests in the form of calls to “abol­ish white­ness (pri­vate prop­er­ty, cap­i­tal­ism).” An Al-Jazeera arti­cle address­ing the top­ic states, “Today, we would add that as long as 150 mil­lion Amer­i­cans define them­selves as white with all the expec­ta­tions, priv­i­leges and vio­lence that accrue to that iden­ti­ty, there is no hope for us as a nation.”

For now, abol­ish­ing white­ness involves call­ing for abol­ish­ing the “sys­tem” and call­ing on whites to renounce their white iden­ti­ty. How­ev­er, it seems obvi­ous that this type of anti-white sen­ti­ment also will even­tu­al­ly lead to wide­spread calls for geno­cide against whites, which is already hap­pen­ing in South Africa. Julius Male­ma, mem­ber of the South African Par­lia­ment and leader of the Eco­nom­ic Free­dom Fight­ers, the third largest polit­i­cal par­ty in that nation, recent­ly chant­ed in a sta­di­um filled with tens of thou­sands of sup­port­ers: “Shoot to kill!… Kill the Boer, the farmer! [white peo­ple].” If Crit­i­cal Race The­o­rists con­tin­ue scape­goat­ing whites for all of America’s prob­lems, we can expect Malema’s rhetoric to spread to the Unit­ed States in the not-too-dis­tant future. Be fore­warned! Marx­ism already has shown that it can only be imposed by the bar­rel of the gun: In the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, Marx­ist gov­ern­ments claimed the lives of more than 100 mil­lion peo­ple, accord­ing to the most con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mates.

The Bible Has the Answers Peo­ple Need

We’ve seen that Marx­ism is a reli­gion, but not a benign one. It appeals to and pro­vides fer­tile ground for base, prim­i­tive, raw, self­ish, and evil human instincts.

The Bible gives entire­ly dif­fer­ent answers to the core ques­tions we have cit­ed. In real­i­ty, sin is any­thing con­trary to God’s char­ac­ter; and the break­ing of God’s law, sum­ma­rized in the Ten Com­mand­ments, are right­ly often cit­ed as per­fect exam­ples. (1 John 3:4) In addi­tion, Ezekiel 18:20 clar­i­fies that “The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The right­eous­ness of the right­eous shall be upon him­self, and the wicked­ness of the wicked shall be upon him­self.” It is God Him­self who gives us rev­e­la­tion about what sin is through His law: “I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known cov­etous­ness unless the law had said, ‘You shall not cov­et’.” (Romans 7:7) Most impor­tant­ly, Jesus, God’s Holy Son is the only One who can pay for sin and restore what sin has bro­ken; and He did so on the cross: “The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the vic­to­ry through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthi­ans 15:56–57)

Mas­querad­ing As a Vehi­cle to Accom­plish Bib­li­cal Goals

If the Bible is so clear­ly anti-Marx­ist, anti-sta­tist, and anti-com­mu­nist, then how can the­olo­gians like Tim Keller attempt to blend Marx­ism with Chris­tian­i­ty and not get caught pro­mot­ing self-refut­ing ideas? First, to the undis­cern­ing ear, the rhetoric sounds legit­i­mate. The prob­lem is that minds lack dis­cern­ment. In oth­er words, the church is rife with Chris­tians who are bib­li­cal­ly illit­er­ate. Today, pas­tors are mov­ing away from what the Bible says and cater­ing to the felt needs of the con­gre­ga­tion. This approach leads to larg­er con­gre­ga­tions, but as the con­gre­ga­tions grow, so does the num­ber of non-Chris­tians with­in them. I’m all for evan­ge­lism, but not at the expense of dis­ci­ple­ship. Remem­ber that Jesus’ com­mand­ed His fol­low­ers, includ­ing us, to “make dis­ci­ples,” not “attract con­verts” (see Matt. 28:19–20). Obvi­ous­ly, peo­ple must be con­vert­ed to become Christ’s dis­ci­ples, but get­ting peo­ple who are out­side the church mere­ly to come inside must nev­er become the pri­ma­ry goal.

The blend­ing of Chris­tian­i­ty with world­ly con­sumerism rais­es no defense against Marx­ism, because only God’s Word has the answers for how to defeat man-made philoso­phies: Note also that Paul warned the Chris­tians in Colosse, “Beware lest any­one cheat you through phi­los­o­phy and emp­ty deceit, accord­ing to the tra­di­tion of men, accord­ing to the basic prin­ci­ples of the world, and not accord­ing to Christ.” (Colos­sians 2:8)

And to the Chris­tians in Corinth, the apos­tle wrote, We cast “down argu­ments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowl­edge of God, bring­ing every thought into cap­tiv­i­ty to the obe­di­ence of Christ,” (2 Corinthi­ans 10:5)

Redefin­ing Words

One of the main ways Marx­ists are able to infect Chris­tian­i­ty with their lies is by appeal­ing to the Ten Com­mand­ments and Old Tes­ta­ment Law, since most peo­ple do not know the mean­ing of the words in some of the Com­mand­ments, and since the Com­mand­ments use broad lan­guage (because they address a wide range of human activ­i­ty). For exam­ple, “Chris­t­ian” rap artist Lecrae claimed the fol­low­ing in a video about pol­i­tics: “The Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty or the par­ties of the like uphold eth­i­cal val­ues such as “love your neigh­bor as your­self,” the jus­tice of the oppressed, which is all through­out the Old Tes­ta­ment.”

Lecrae said this in the con­text of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic party’s will­ing­ness to for­ward Marx­i­an nar­ra­tives of sys­temic racism. Because most Chris­tians do not know the bib­li­cal def­i­n­i­tions of “love,” “jus­tice,” and “oppres­sion,” Lecrae has been able to infuse racial Marx­i­an pow­er dynam­ics into these Com­mand­ments. As long as you believe that:

• “Love” means being will­ing to give up your pri­vate prop­er­ty; that
• “Jus­tice” means forced con­fis­ca­tion and redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth and oth­er resources; and that
• Being “oppressed” means hav­ing less wealth as a col­lec­tive sta­tis­ti­cal cat­e­go­ry,

Then yes, you will con­clude that the Bible teach­es Marx­ism. But those are not the true def­i­n­i­tions of these words.

• Love means being self-sac­ri­fi­cial for the good of one’s neigh­bor, in keep­ing with the Ten Com­mand­ments (1 John 4:9–11; Romans 13:9)
• Jus­tice means treat­ing peo­ple impar­tial­ly and fair­ly, no mat­ter how rich or poor, and no mat­ter their skin col­or. (Leviti­cus 19:15)
• Oppres­sion means suf­fer­ing wrong­ful vio­lence or an injus­tice at the hands of anoth­er. (Exo­dus 3:9; Deuteron­o­my 26:7; Job 35:9) We’re speak­ing here about an actu­al injus­tice, not one mere­ly assumed or sup­posed.

If igno­rance of God’s Word is the rea­son the Amer­i­can church got into this social­ist mess, then the solu­tion is clear: Chris­tians need to be ground­ed in a bib­li­cal world­view. God says in Eph­esians 4:11–15 that, through teach­ing and learn­ing from God’s Word, pas­tors, and oth­er mem­bers of Christ’s body seek­ing to edi­fy all the believ­ers in the church, believ­ers in Christ will mature in the faith so that “we should no longer be chil­dren, tossed to and fro and car­ried about with every wind of doc­trine, by the trick­ery of men, in the cun­ning crafti­ness of deceit­ful plot­ting.”

Chris­t­ian Truth Ver­sus Marx­ist Lies

Fur­ther­more, there is only one hope for those out­side of Chris­tian­i­ty to escape from the snare of Marx­ism: the gospel. Unbe­liev­ers need to know that they have sinned against a holy God by cov­et­ing against their neigh­bor and by desir­ing to tear oth­ers down, among oth­er things. They need to hear that although they are head­ing to hell if they don’t repent of break­ing God’s law, they can find hope in Christ. He car­ried our sins upon Him­self on the cross, pay­ing the penal­ty that we all deserve for our rebel­lion against Him. After dying, He defeat­ed death by ris­ing from the grave and is now the defense lawyer in heav­en for all who trust Him to save them. (1 John 1:5–2:2)

All who repent by turn­ing from their sins, con­fess­ing their guilt before God, and trust­ing alone in Jesus to save them, will be rec­on­ciled to God and will inher­it eter­nal life.

That is the mes­sage every Marx­ist (and all of us) needs to hear and believe. If God can save a wretched sin­ner like me (and like you), He can sure­ly save Marx­ists too.

Unless oth­er­wise indi­cat­ed, Scrip­ture has been tak­en from the New King James Ver­sion®. Copy­right © 1982 by Thomas Nel­son, Inc. Used by per­mis­sion. All rights reserved.

This arti­cle was an expan­sion on the EWTC News Pod­cast (for­mer­ly the Woke­pe­dia Pod­cast) episode “Why is Marx­ism Attrac­tive? And Even to Chris­tians?” linked below.

1. Jemar Tis­by, “Col­or of Com­pro­mise,” Chap­ter 6 ↩︎
2. What is Crit­i­cal Race The­o­ry? | James Lind­say — YouTube ↩︎
3. Seat­tle Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law, “Liv­ing His­to­ry Inter­view with Richard Del­ga­do & Jean Ste­fan­cic,” p.225 ↩︎
4. Karl Marx, “Cri­tique of the Gotha Pro­gramme” p.10 ↩︎
5. Deuteron­o­my 8:18; Gen­e­sis 1:26–28; Proverbs 6:6–11; 2 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 3:10; Eph­esians 4:28; Romans 13:1–7; 1 Peter 2:13–17; 1 Tim­o­thy 2:1–4 ↩︎