Point ¼: How has the idea of a benevolent government survived the lockdown era? If we’re being charitable, one might ask if these people did not mind or, worse yet, enjoyed being talked to like children. If we’re not being charitable, and you can probably tell we’re not, something was intoxicating about being unilaterally correct. Everyone who disagreed with you was cruel and selfish, as determined by “The Science” ® and “The Experts” ™. You were on “the Right Side of History”.

Until it was apparent, even to you, that you really, really weren’t and “I told you so” didn’t had stopped being sufficent about six months prior to this revelation.

Point ½: How does the idea that people are inherently good survive even essential examination? If this were true, children would behave well by default. “Inherent good” does not manifest at a certain age, depending on the culture. It is “inherent”; it is -always- there. If it’s a matter of teaching what that good is, then it is by definition not inherent; it is taught.

Point 3/4: To say that people are -not- inherently good is not to say they are entirely irredeemable, just that their minds and hearts are generally slanted towards themselves and what is best for their comfort and advancement.

All of this points to the idea that progress is unidirectional and unstoppable, especially now that religion has lost its political and cultural sway. Mankind is unfettered in its journey toward utopia.

So where is it?

Point 1:

Early Marxism in 4 acts

One, the rich and powerful are evil
Two, the poor and weak are good
Third, good and evil are thus determined by wealth and power
Fourth, when the poor become rich, they maintain their goodness.

Contemporary Marxism in 4 acts

One, white people, all of them are powerful and evil.
Two, non-white people, all of them are weak and good
Third, good and evil are thus determined by skin color
Fourth, even if a white person is destitute and a non-white person is influential, the white person is still evil, and the non-white person is still good.
Five, if the non-white person attains power, they keep their goodness.

In either case, Marxism bifurcates humanity into perfectly good and perfectly evil, based on whatever fits the culture to foment revolution. 

In all cases, the Marxist, even wealthy and white, is absolved of his guilt and hostility, at least in a vacuum. He is justified in doing whatever he feels is necessary for the oppressor class.

Point 2:

Do you ever wonder how those who are spiritual but not religious or who are secular but refer to Mother Nature as a benevolent force, talk about someone being there “in spirit,” or believe that everything happens for a reason wholly apart from nature come to their conclusions?

On the first point, Nature is NOT a benevolent force. One is because force has no emotion or moral weight, and two, nature is an ecosystem that developed by chance, where animals subsist by killing each other, specifically the young, the injured, and the old and slow. Cancer is a quirk of nature. Civilization is man conquering nature, and Western civilization, in particular, has rendered many death sentences irrelevant or chronic and has reduced global hunger significantly. 

Second, I’m always interested in people who refer to a spiritual realm but either don’t believe in a spiritual being or think there’s some virtue in saying the being is unknowable and impersonal. An unknowable, immaterial, indifferent mover of the universe is just a force we don’t know the origin of. Aristotle was right about many things (infinitely more than Plato), but the concept of the unmoved mover does not serve mankind well. Life is still a purposeless walk along a path we never asked to be on between cradle to grave, with amusements pockmarking the innumerable hardships along the way.

On the third, How does someone hold to this materialist worldview and insist “everything happens for a reason” as determined by “Nature”? Even the Stoics believed that “Everything happens for a reason,” which is proscribed by “the gods.”

Point 3:

I never tire of observing the failure of the New/Internet Atheist promise, which is just the progressive belief that mankind will, almost naturally, become better once religion loses its political sway. And so, secular worldviews dominate culture. Academia politics and online discourse do not remotely resemble 1 Peter 3:15, 2 Timothy 2:24-25 or how Christ conducted his discourses, but of course, there’s always an out for secularism.

3.1) “Religion hasn’t lost its power because most of the country still says it’s Christian.” This is unhelpful; on the one hand, as we know from specific progressive movements, what you “identify as” doesn’t mean anything if you are not foundationally what you claim to be. Further, the term “evangelical” is so broad it encompasses theologically profound groups like Catholics and Reformed Presbyterians to theologically lighter groups like Baptists, non-denominationalists, and charlatans like Osteen and Copeland. It can also include notably non-Christian cults like the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

While most of the country “identifies” as Christian, for whatever value you ascribe to that, it is clear that secularism, and progressivism specifically, dominates media, academia, and culture. And what has it provided? As was discussed by Toby Young of the UK’s Free Speech Union, so-called “woke (progressive) culture” has given rise to an atmosphere of bitterness and cultural artifacts that don’t come close to Christian works like the King James Bible, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and the Sistine Chapel, or modernist works like Tchaikovsky settling instead for shallow entertainment in movies and TV, computer-generated music, and journalists like Don Lemon and “influencers” like Huberman who fancy themselves to be philosophers and scientists.

3.1) Academically, we have the works of Critical Race Theory from minds like Kimberlee Crenshaw, Gary Peller, Ibram X Kendi, and Robin DeAngelo, each of which bases their worldview on the contemporary Marxism described in point one.DeAngelo’s, The one you are probably most familiar with, is insidious. She notes in her book “White Fragility” that if you even contest the idea that you are racist, that is evidence of your guilt. This is known as a Kafkatrap. While Scripture ascribes depravity to the human race (which bears itself out in the real world), racism is either active or latent in all but the activist. DeAngelo notes at the end of her introduction that we need to “address the definition or racism” and goes on to insist that she is not using this definition of racism before deciding that the discomfort that comes from unmooring the term from its long-standing, objective definition is an indication of the reader’s latent guilt about his subconscious racism.^[1] DeAngelo’s forebears are never this insidious, and I have read their works. The collection is called “Critical Race Theory: Key Writings that Formed the Movement.” Subtlety is NOT something Crenshaw and Peller seem capable of, and any attempt at subtlety by Kendi, DeAngelo, and the like seems a bad faith attempt to conceal the misanthropy, moral gymnastics, and self-promotion that undergird Critical Race Theory. For example, Gary Peller’s essay “Race-Consciousness” sees Peller lamenting integration in all possible forms, from Affirmative action to standardizing education to the colorblind concept of merit itself ^[2].

One last point: contemporary progressives enjoyed talking about “uncomfortable conversations.” As if the discomfort means you’re approaching some new and revolutionary truth about yourself or the world. DeAngelo makes note of it in the first few chapters, Kendi in some of his lectures, discomfort is a significant theme of the CRTer. Discomfort is not, by itself, a sign that you are approaching some brutal and convicting truth. If that were true, then CRT’s indictment of white people and the Bible’s indictment of the human race would be equally valid, though they are contradictory. CRT ascribes virtue and vice to skin color; Scripture says that human nature is corrupted, irrespective of skin color, and doesn’t need to redefine terms because God sets the terms to begin with. From a materialist perspective, it’s hard to argue that melanin counts determine virtue.

If someone says, with utter conviction, that Hitler was right and the Jews might have had it coming. Does the discomfort come from the idea that he might have a point and have done research you hadn’t to come to his conclusion, or does the discomfort come from the unsubtly of his hatred? If it is the latter, then discomfort is not an indication of some convicting truth.

Point 4: Even if you cast aside the redefinitions of the Left, you’re still forced to contend with the Rousseauian idea that “man is a naturally good being, loving justice, and order….there is no original perversity in the human heart.” 

This. Is. Ridiculous. Immediately after laying down the Rousseauian framework, J. R. Beek and P. M. Smalley observe: 

Though the doctrine of original sin is controversial, the reality of sin is overwhelming and irrefutable. Its poison begins in the cradle and raises its ugly head in childish lies and playground cruelty. Sin distorts our relationships, dirties our business dealings, defiles our sexuality, and damages our world. Its ruinous effects range from broken marriages to genocidal wars. ^[3]

Without the motte of “we’re still a largely Christian nation” to serve the bailey of “therefore real secularism has never been tried,” we’re left to explain how mankind is inherently good and is corrupted by society Except, apart from God, we are simply evolved apes. A moral system is just a cultural element, and the idea of inherent good is defeated right there. An objection can be raised that asks us to explain the good done in the world; to my mind, there are two responses. First, there is no objective good if it’s just evolved; it’s just arbitrary; a chance encounter with something that happens to protect us that we need to convince other people is also good.

Also, love between unbelievers is not unique. People seem to love their tribe; we see this in politics. Caring for those who are different and doing so quietly is less natural. Jesus asked his listeners, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them” (Luke 6:32-34 NASB)

Beeke and Smalley quote a 1619 judgment on an Arminian controversy to explain this response better:

There remain, however, in man since the fall, the glimmerings of natural light, whereby he retains some knowledge of God, of natural things, and of the differences between good and evil, and discovers some regard for virtue, good order in society, and for maintaining an orderly external deportment. But so far, this light of nature is not sufficient to bring him to a saving knowledge of God and to true conversion, and he is incapable of using it right even in things natural and civil. Nay, further, this light, such as it is, man in various ways renders wholly polluted and holds it in unrighteousness, by doing which he becomes inexcusable before God^[4]

God is the creator and foundation of the world. Nature itself speaks to a Creator (Psalm 19:1, Romans 1:18-20). The Westminster Confession of Faith declares “the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence” and reveals God’s goodness, wisdom, and power^[5]. From this, we can say that even in a fallen world, we can see God at work. Further, since human beings bear God’s image, there is an element of the knowledge of God in them. The atheist has no standing to explain the good in the world in a way that is anything other than an evolutionary mishap. Romans 1:22-32 describes the result of this full-scale rejection of the objective morality of God.

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^[1] Diangelo, Robin. (2018) White Fragility: Why it’s so Hard for White people to talk about Racism.(iBooks version) Boston: Beacon Press 

^[2] Crenshaw, Miberle, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendal Thomas. 1995 Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement New York: The New York Press. (pp 132-135) 

^[3] Beeke, Joel R., and Paul M. Smalley. (2020). Reformed Systematic Theology: Man and Christ. Vol. 2. Wheaton, IL: Crossway. (pp. 386-387)

^[4] Beeke, J. R., & Smalley, P. M. (2020). Reformed Systematic Theology: Man and Christ (Vol. 2, p. 412). Crossway.

^[5] Westminster Assembly. (1851). The Westminster Confession of Faith: Edinburgh Edition (p. 13). William S. Young.