At the time of writing this, both France and the United Kingdom are in the throes of elections with potentially historic implications. Putin is trashing Ukraine where Zelensky dictatorially cancelled Presidential elections recently. Fundamentalist Iran is in process of electing a new President and the bloody Arab-Israeli conflict threatens world stability again. China wants Taiwan, the South China Seas, and to succeed the USA as primary power in the world. Later this year, the USA will relive the angst of the 2020 Presidential election – and possibly much worse. Everywhere there is a clash between the new and the old order. Progressives and Conservatives are implacably opposed. The fundamental fault lines of the world’s political geography are being exposed, and the simmering tensions everywhere raise the menace of political earthquakes, by which I mean war.
So how should Christians view these developments?
Basically by adopting the right standpoint – the position from which we view the world. Perspective determines our view of reality and how we make sense of this world.
To take a specific example, the view of western Progressives means that they refuse to face the reality the rest of us have to live with – they persist with a human centred ideological perspective and paradigm which cannot grasp how to handle the real world. In France right now, the hard Left is on the streets issuing threats of actual violence because their ideological bogeyman could form the next government. Even though the peaceful process of elections to settle conflict and avoid war is actually taking place, the hard Left is filled with righteous anger and sees itself as fully justified in refusing the verdict of the ballot box. Its Marxist, materialist inspiration is exposed and it sees itself as fully justified in taking any measures at all to stop the Fascist Rassemblement National.
The French hard Left are the true fascists, of course. The RN is no such thing, whatever the media keep intimating. It is the hard Left which petrol bombs the police during demonstrations in France and then portrays that legitimate institution for maintaining law and order as the guilty and illegitimate party. It is the hard Left which peddles the lie that the French police are institutionally racist and inherently inclined to kill – “la police tue !”
Historically, the fascists in Italy and later the Nazis in Germany behaved like the Bolsheviks before them. Fascism is a left wing phenomenon: the fascists and the Nazis were never Conservative in either mentality or practice; they were totally new movements with hardline ideological agendas, using both street violence and the ballot box as means to their own ends. Like their mentors the Bolsheviks, they had no intention of allowing dissent of thought or action. Disagreement had to be crushed.The original fascists were led by Socialists in both Italy and in Britain, and the full name of the Nazi party is “the national socialist German workers party”. Nationalism was exploited ruthlessly by every Communist regime of the 20th century.
These were totalitarian and dictatorial movements expressing class struggle and conflict to overthrow the traditional political and social order which existed before them.
In contrast, the Christian paradigm teaches that the true, fundamental conflict lies within each of us because we are sinners estranged from God – we are born in a state of inherited sin.
France’s ideological idol, Rousseau, perverted the spiritual truth of what we are long before Karl Marx. ‘Man is born free but is everywhere in chains’ perverts the Christian truth that we are born in sin, and that is why we are not free – free from the self centredness of sin which poisons human relations and lies at the root of this world’s problems. Rousseau’s philosophy is akin to that of the pagan philosopher Plato whose Republic looks like the blueprint for every 20th century Totalitarian State.
In short then, we are living in the midst of humanity’s own state of sin, and we are reaping the consequences. The consequences of self delusion; the consequences of idealistic expectations which can only be fulfilled by Jesus Christ as Lord in each and every human heart; the consequences of inequality visited on us by those who claim the eradication of inequality as their goal, believing foolishly that we can trust in fallen humanity as its own god or ideal; the consequences of rampant Materialism in social and economic belief and practice. Decades of advertising preaching consumption as the goal of life has poisoned our collective subconscious and given rein to the globalist crony capitalism of the billionaire priests of Mammon and their Corporatist acolytes in government Establishments across the world.
Materialism in philosophy, politics, society, culture, economics, academia, media, law and judiciary is the now determining standpoint and paradigm for western society. Materialism is the Religion which dictates the assumptions and worldview which constrain and determine the mindset of our institutions and culture. And that is the root of the problem: we have adopted the wrong God, and we live with the consequences of disobeying the primary Commandment of our one true Creator:
Thou shalt have no other gods before ME.
It is a serious mistake to trust in mere men, or in political parties or idealistic philosophies. Start looking to the true God revealed in the Bible.
We must see that God is on the throne and that God will not change – we must. The problems of this world confirm the truth revealed by the Christian perspective: – rebellious, sinful human beings put themselves on the throne of their lives – they demand their own view, ambitions and wants. That is the problem – not God.
Christians, however, are called to live
- trusting in the Son of God who gave himself for us
- realising that circumstances are the means God uses to sanctify us – to change us
- knowing that God’s purpose is to bring forth a pure, spotless bride for the Son
All things work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.
ALL THINGS !
DEUS ERGO SUMUS 