Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin condemns any people. (Proverbs 14:34)
One of the concepts I’ve heard is that Progressivism seeks to build a system in which it is impossible for the components (including the people) within that system to do evil. Putting aside the question of what constitutes evil for the moment, they believe that providing for everyone’s needs (and perhaps a good bit of their wants) they will reduce evil to zero because evil, they contend, is the result of either not having, or of having and being greedy. Taking from those who have and are greedy and giving to those who don’t have is apparently believed to fix both those problems. Marx believed that private ownership was evil. I suspect in America, that’s been adapted to mean that private ownership of anything more than everyone else gets is evil. We think that what’s ours is ours by right. It’s those wicked rich folks – or the wicked rich folk who are evil, and it’s the government that doesn’t take from those rich folks that is evil. If the system were to become good enough, the people would, too. The goal is what might be called national righteousness, but individual nations can’t be righteous as long as anyone in the world is not protected from personal evil by the meeting of his/her needs.
At the other end of the spectrum is the entirely private righteousness. If you are righteous, and I am righteous, and enough other people are righteous, then the nation will become righteous as more and more people become righteous in their own private worlds. And as you either know or can tell from what I’ve said so far, I tend to be much closer to this view than to the Progressive. A people can be righteous, or sinful/evil no matter what the system is. If the people are righteous, the government or system will move toward being righteous.
Marx would say that the solution is for the righteous people to rise up and take over the government, but the problem with that is that the righteousness of people does not mean they can resist the temptations associated with power. There was a study conducted briefly at a university in which some students were given the role of prison guards and others of prisoners. The task of the student guards and the professor who acted as warden was to maintain order. In a matter of weeks, they had to end the experiment because the guards and warden had become increasingly vicious (the professor’s family even noticed) and the prisoners had become increasingly passive and depressed. When you’re put in charge of things, it’s easy to solve problems in the easiest way possible: power.
That is the means that Marx taught us to use. It is not the means Jesus taught.
At the other end of the spectrum is the entirely private righteousness. If you are righteous, and I am righteous, and enough other people are righteous, then the nation will become righteous as more and more people become righteous in their own private worlds. And as you either know or can tell from what I’ve said so far, I tend to be much closer to this view than to the Progressive. A people can be righteous, or sinful/evil no matter what the system is. If the people are righteous, the government or system will move toward being righteous.
Marx would say that the solution is for the righteous people to rise up and take over the government, but the problem with that is that the righteousness of people does not mean they can resist the temptations associated with power. There was a study conducted briefly at a university in which some students were given the role of prison guards and others of prisoners. The task of the student guards and the professor who acted as warden was to maintain order. In a matter of weeks, they had to end the experiment because the guards and warden had become increasingly vicious (the professor’s family even noticed) and the prisoners had become increasingly passive and depressed. When you’re put in charge of things, it’s easy to solve problems in the easiest way possible: power.
That is the means that Marx taught us to use. It is not the means Jesus taught.
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