Sarah Flashing challenged the supposed fairness of our critics. Malkin challenged the social justice (in this case media justice) movement and its supposed fairness. These words, to many readers and listeners, sound perfectly reasonable. But is there more? Certainly we have all heard the Marxist and socialist labels being thrown around this past year much more than ever before. Is there even a relationship between thse concepts and the fairness doctrine, or is this only childish name-calling?
Klaus Bockmuehl wrote a very useful small book that outlines the nature and character of Marxism. The Challenge of Marxism covers matters such as ethics — subjects which set the course for modern liberalism. On the matter of ethics he says:
In studying the classic writings of marxism-Leninism, Christian readers again and again are fascinated by the apparent structural similarity between Marxist and chrstian ethics even when their aims and means are widely different. ...
We are not assuming here that Marxism and Chrstianity could merge. As we observed before, marxism and Chrstianity are incompatible because Marxism — differing in this respect from other forms of socialism, contains an intrinsic atheism. Nevertheless, the ethics of both Christianity and marxism are at least formally comparable because they both represent programs of establishing a sovereignty: the sovereign in Christianity is God; in Marxism it is man. (p. 86)
It is this difference which also identifies those apostate Christians, as well as those who are otherwise uninformed, who practice the ethics of Marxism and pretend that they are Christian. When one substitutes the “truth” of Marxism for the truth of Christianity then what remains is not only a new heresy, but a sacrifice of Christianity itself.
Today Marxism welcomes theological irrelevance because it makes Marxism look good. When theology fails to confront the real current issues, Marxism moves in to offer its atheist solutions. This is the first consequence of “unreal” theology. (p. 34)
The evangelists for a Marxist world have an eschatology. They imagine a world where needs are met, where class-based wrongs are eliminated , where all are equal — because equal is the only thing which is truly fair. This eschatology drives them. Bockmuehl clarifies the situation quite succinctly:
Marxists know what their job is and they do it. (p. 35)
A first-hand account of this challenge to Christianity was plainly attested to Becky Pippert in her Out of the Saltshaker video series. She clearly noted the shame of the Christian to evangelize while the Marxist went out with no shame whatsoever, sharing and persuading people with their vision for a better world.
Let us treat those who intentionally compromise Christian doctrine and trade it for Marxist ideals as the apostates they are. Let us also be more outspoken and practical with the solutions Christianity has to offer — both now an through the past two millennia. We must know better what our job is and be about it.
