The Wrath of God our Hope for Glory

In my last post, I emphasized the wrath of God as the root of the Gospel in the sense that our recognition of being under wrath is a precondition for our recognition of the Gospel as good news, and our state of being under wrath is a precondition for the necessity of the atonement.

There is another way in which the wrath of God is good news for us who have been saved. While when we were under wrath the wrath of God was a precondition for the Gospel, now that we are under grace the wrath of God is directed, not at us, but at our enemies.

In both cases, God's wrath is against sin, and that is what is so gloriously good about the news that God hates sin. In a way, in both this post and the last one the point is that God's wrath is Gospel because it is directed against evil. In the first, we saw this as good because it is because of God's wrath that God in Christ came in human form and waged war against sin and death on the cross. Now, the point is that God's wrath is also the reason we have hope that our sin will not forever cling to us.

When we were, ourselves, under God's wrath, it was because we were defiled by sin. Since our guilt has been removed from us, since, that is, our sin has been covered by Christ's righteousness, we are no longer under wrath. However, our sin is still under wrath. In the first place, our sin is under wrath in the sense that our sin was placed on Christ and the wrath of God was poured out on Christ on account of those sins. If our sin did not receive God's wrath, God would not be just, and he would not be good.

So the wrath of God is a result of God's justice. And because God is just we have hope that what is bad now will not be permitted to remain--no one will get away with evil. All evil will be dealt with, and so we cannot say that sometimes bad things happen, as if it were just how things go and we must deal with it. Rather, because evil will be judged and the world will be reconciled to God, we have hope to mourn evil and can rejoice at what is to come, when we will see what we now hope for: the vindication of the righteous and the condemnation of the evil one. In that day we will find ourselves, out of no righteousness of our own, vindicated by God's righteousness, because we will possess as our own the righteousness of God. We will be made more holy, but this will be only according to the power which raised Christ from the dead, by whom we now live. Our good works are not meritorious for us, but for God, since in ourselves we would do only evil, but by Christ we are shaped into Christ's likeness.

Our sin is also still under wrath in the sense that it is still rebellion against God. It is still bad and it is still contrary to God's will. This is no longer a cause of fear for us, since we have Christ's righteousness. It is, rather, a cause of hope for us: because God is against it, a truly efficacious power is at work cleansing us and redeeming us from our sins, making us able to do good rather than evil. We wage war against sin in ourselves. We work out our salvation with fear and trembling, but--and this is our hope--we work out our salvation because it is God who works in us (Philippians 2:12-13). Because God hates our sin, we have hope that he will empower us to overcome it. In part, this is often by causing us to hate the sin ourselves. Because God is against sin, so we are renewed to a new life, a life against death.

When we see the final victory of Christ over the powers of this age in Revelation, we are seeing both of these: Christ is defeating his enemy. That does not include those of us who are in Christ as his enemies, but rather, as in Christ, so victors in him. We are more than conquerors, as Paul writes, over all the fallenness we encounter. As Christ was raised and conquered sin and death, so we are raised with him to newness of life, to living as Christ lived, holy lives before God.

It is not only, then, that we are no longer under condemnation since we are in Christ Jesus, but also that we are on the other side of the conflict. God's wrath is not only not against us, but is also for us, directed on our behalf against sin. We ought to respond to God's wrath in a twofold way, then: in it we see how great our need, and in it we see how great is the power that is at work in us.

This is at once encouraging and humbling. We could not save ourselves, nor could we now sanctify ourselves, but, because God hates sin and yet loves his creation (as we see when he saves the animals from the flood), he has saved us from sin and continues to save us from sin. He saves us from sin by his Son, Jesus Christ, in whom we pass through judgment yet are unharmed. He also continues to save us from indwelling sin by Christ Jesus, seeing that we are in him, we are also alive in him and have his life enlivening us to righteousness. Just as various psalms cry out for deliverance from enemies, we now cry out for deliverance from our enemy, the devil, and God, who is rich in mercy, and who hates the work of the devil, fights for us, as he did for Israel. And we know that we will finally, in the last day, see victory completed both in the world and in ourselves as all things are put under submission to Christ and as we are glorified.

The Wrath of God is the Root of the Gospel

The wrath of God is poured out on all unrighteousness. Any unrighteousness deserves God's wrath.

This is a glorious truth. It is not an easy truth, but it is the root of the Gospel. Because God hates evil, Christ came to destroy evil. Because God loves his glory, and in grace has called us to himself, his wrath is poured out on Christ instead of on us.

If God did not hate evil, then he would not have saved us from it.

We are all unrighteous, and so all deserves God's wrath. It is only in view of this fact, that we deserve God's wrath, that we have any desire for the Biblical Gospel. It is only when we see that we are lost, unable to save ourselves, that we begin to seek another to save us.

We must rely on Christ alone to save us, and we only do so when we are convinced that we are nothing.

Is it Gospel to say that we are nothing? Isn't it? We are often trying to avoid our feelings of guilt, of inadequacy, of worthlessness. The world tells us that these feelings are false, that we shouldn't feel this way, that we should have more self-esteem, but the Gospel's root is in the truthfulness of these feelings. We are nothing, we need not be afraid of acknowledging that fact, and we are therefore freed to rejoice in our weakness. We fear our unworth and weakness because we need to be presentable before God, our unworth and weakness keeps us from God. It is because we have no righteousness, however, that we need Christ's, and it is because we have Christ's righteousness that we no longer need to fear our own inadequacy. Our weakness magnifies God's strength. Our unrighteousness magnifies God's righteousness. When we see how great our sin, we see how great Christ's righteousness was, that he could work so great a salvation. Our salvation is magnified in light of how great our need for it is.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ saves us from the guilt of sin, and therefore from its power.

If we fear our sins, we cannot face them in battle by the strength of the Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead. The teeth of sin are removed by the removal of guilt. Our reliance on Christ's atoning work begins in recognition of our inability to work any good work. It continues as reliance in our reliance on him to work every good work in us. Our recognition of our inability does not stop our good works, but rather stops our reliance on our own power which is ineffective, and redirects us to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit who empowers and impels us to live as Christ lived.

Our recognition of the unrighteousness of our own works also frees us from them because as long as we fear our unrighteousness we must excuse it, or change it by our own ineffective power. We cannot truly acknowledge that we need to change in any lasting way if we do not acknowledge that how we are is not okay. If I seek to change myself, I will only be changed from one kind of unrighteousness to another, but if I seek, by the power of the Spirit, to be changed by God, then I will be changed from one degree of glory to another. For in the righteous holiness of God we perceive our sins and the beauty of his goodness, and so our desires are changed from unrighteousness to righteousness. When we behold God's holiness, we desire to be like him. Yet we also perceive how unworthy we are, and these two are inextricable: we must either see that God is good and we are not, or we will believe that we are good and judge God, not that we can judge God, but we will either hold him to our standard or see that we fall short of his standard.

Then, as we see God's holiness and our unholiness, we will see how great the wrath we deserve, and so how great a salvation we have in Jesus Christ our Lord. Without God's wrath, there is no sanctification, no justification, because without God's wrath there is no need for it. Yet there is a great need in us to be reconciled with God, for we were rebels against him. God's wrath means that sin must be dealt with. Yet we are unable to deal with our sin, and so we need Jesus Christ to deal with it for us.

And this is why, when Paul imagines someone suggesting that we sin all the more that grace may abound, he responds with "By no means!" For our God hates sin, and it is this hatred which is the root of our salvation from sin. It was in recognition of God's wrath against us in our sin that we saw our need for a savior. It was in recognition of our low state that we clung to Christ, and it is by his life which we are renewed to live as he lived. We are changed so as to hate our sin, as we behold our salvation from it. Because we are no longer held guilty for our sins, and because we recognize it to deserve God's wrath, we are freed from our sins. The power of sin can no longer compel us to sin, but the power of Jesus Christ now compels us to good works.

The wrath of God is important for the bigness of God. It means that he is our judge, our Lord. He is the judge, the standard of all goodness. He is not passive as the standard of all goodness, but active and vigorous. He does not merely stand by as the measure of what is good, he executes justice against all ungodliness. This means that we have hope that he will make all things right in the last day. He is mighty and powerful to work righteousness, not as we would have him do it, but in his good and perfect way, in the fulness of time, to bring glory to himself. We look forward to that day, when all the evils will be judged, and all righteousness rewarded. In that day God's wrath will be shown clearly and we will glorify him for hi justice and goodness and behold the fulness of his mercy and grace to us, as he passes over us for the sake of the lamb who was slain.

Self-maintenance: The Future of Car-repair?

There exist two competing tendencies in modern society: individualism, and specialization. These can be understood as two elements to an overall trend toward atomization. Nevertheless, the first asks us to avoid being dependent on others while the second makes dependence practically necessary.

Products which offer increased independence are marketable in this environment. Tools which offer to simplify your life are one example, and the most predominant, but others are possible.

Consider the automobile: it was first made popular as a symbol of independence and freedom. The car has now lost much of that aura. It may be there for some, particularly teenagers, and it does offer the same increased mobility as ever, but it has become commonplace. Imagine, then, simplifying the aspect of life related to owning a car. What would this look like? IKEA cars--cars built for home maintenance. Constructing the car so that all of its components are as easily accessible as possible, and as resilient as feasible.

Would this sell? Probably. Would it be profitable? I think it could be, if done right. each component should be made as independent of other components as possible, and should be sold to the common car owner. Instead of designing a new car each year, the manufacturer may then produce upgraded versions of the various components. A car owner may then buy a single component, or a whole new car, or anything in between, as he can afford. I suspect, done right, some people would spend more on car parts than they now do (keeping in mind that they should not have to spend much, if anything, on man-hours to install those parts), thus making more money for the manufacturer.

This could also speed the acceptance of electric cars if the car were built as an electrical car. This would make sense, because that would reduce the number of fluids that would need to be moved around the whole vehicle. The challenges which generally face electric cars would remain, but the benefits of not needing to spend as much money (and unusable car-hours) on maintaining the car could help overcome those.

Sartre and Meaning in the World

Sartre assumes the lack of God, and takes this to entail a lack of meaning to the world a priori. That is, to Sartre, if there is no God to determine the meaning of things--the mattering of things to persons--then it is up to whatever mind there is to determine how things matter.

The dependency of meaning on mind is right. To matter, a thing must matter to something. That meaning is undetermined apart from a prior mind setting the meaning seems, to me, to be wrong. To set the meaning of words involves a cultural use of the words in a certain way, and this is a case where meaning is set by minds in a wholly contingent way. On the other hand, that breaking my leg is painful is given by the facts of how the world is and how I am, and it is such that the relevant aspects of my makeup are not (easily) available for me to change. Thus, the meaning of a broken leg as bad is given by how things are, independently of the choices of minds.

Where God exists, he may set the meaning of things by setting how the world is. He creates a material world with meaning to us by creating it and us in a particular way. The matter of creation coheres, in this case, with the will and command of God.

Sartre's view of how things mean is dominant in today's society. The idea that an action may mean "nothing" depends, in many cases, on the assumption that the human will is in charge of the meaning of things, of bodily actions. The thought that music or sex might not be taken seriously as meaning what they appear to mean, or have historically meant, depends on this view.

An alternative materialist view would be one which said that where only matter exists, the structure of matter is what determines the meaning of life. This would make the meaning of certain bodily actions (sex, cutting, drugs and alcohol, etc.,) dependent upon how those actions affected one and those around one.

The Sartrean view holds, also, that we are ultimately free. That is, that we may do whatever it is we choose to do. This does not mean we can fly, but that we may seek any aim we will. It is not a denial of the material structure of the world's impingement on what and how we can act, but a denial of the idea that we are constrained by our character or upbringing. It is a denial of the fittingness of allowing a pre-existing culture to impact one's own behaviors. Sartre was hipster before it was cool.

The Meaning of the World

­­­The human being is a primarily embodied, acting body. The human qua agent does things, and most of these things are bodily actions. We can most easily, then, approach an understanding of the human being from the point of view of bodily action. We can discover through this some elements of mental action, namely, purpose. This will lead us to concept and psyche formation. The aim, here, is to develop an understanding of how an infant might come to comprehend the world in a mostly empirical way.

First, bodily action: our bodies move, for some purpose. To count as an action, rather than a mere behavior, a mere bodily event, the bodily movement must be motivated. There must be an acceptance on the part of the one whose body it is that the “Why?” question has application. Thus, an action is a behavior for the sake of a purpose. The purpose might itself be an action. I may be digging a hole in order to unbury treasure, I might be lifting weights in order to get stronger in order to have an easier time carrying furniture up stairs, I might be cleaning in order to be a good husband, and so on.

Action, then, has in its nature the means-end relation. To phi as an action is always to phi for the sake of psi-ing, where psi-ing is also an action. Of course, these relations cannot go on forever. Some action or actions must be deemed to-be-done simply, without reference to some additional action or characterization of the action for which sake it is done. This requires that some action or actions be, by their very nature, to-be-done. For an action to simply be to-be-done requires that it follow from the nature of the agent that the agent should, to be a good one of its kind, do that action, that is, the action which is to-be-done simply for an agent is to be a good kind of the thing one is.

Our conception of the kind of thing we are, then, will naturally give rise to action. It sets the purpose of a being. Here we arrive at the question of how we form our conception of ourselves. I do not mean, here, to suppose that we do this intentionally, or even consciously. Rather, I take it that there is something from which and for the sake of which we act and that it could be construed as our beliefs, whether conscious or not, as to the kind of thing we are. This will also have to do with how our nature relates to the world. Let us call those elements of our action-generating concept which vary from situation to situation our concept of our situation. Within any given circumstance we will act on the basis of what we think we are capable of. This is our concept of ourselves. Our situations are usually defined with respect to ourselves.

Each action has consequences in the world and (often thereby) ourselves. We learn what precisely are the consequences of which actions over time, by experiencing the consequences multiple times. We learn how the world is by finding what we can do in relation to the world. Our concept of a tree begins when a tree’s existence has consequences for our actions. The discovery of the world is the discovery of what the world means for us, and how we can alter how the world is. The world is, then, in a sense, a text which we can edit. By editing this text, we discover the meaning of the world. Acting is, at an early stage, much like scribbling lines on paper and going, “Mommy, what does this say?” Very often, we might say, the meaning of an action is what it does in the world.

To understand the world is to understand what one should do, given certain ends. To say that ethics is objective is to say that there are things which everyone should do whatever their ends. To claim that everyone ought to do such-and-such whatever their other ends requires one of two things: either that any end an agent might hold require the doing of such-and-such, or that whatever end an agent holds, their wellbeing is bound up with doing such-and-such. These two are very similar, since people believe that what they are doing is contributive to their wellbeing. To show that something is necessary to the wellbeing of a person is to show that they should do it.

***

The seeking of the good for oneself involves a kind of hermeneutical circle. I enter the question of what is good with certain preconceptions, which I have gathered from my upbringing, my environment, and whatever other factors there may be. I presume that this is good for me. I then do the sorts of things I expect to be good. Movement happens when I find that this way of living is not conducive to my wellbeing. I find that living this way results in certain things which I take to be bad, rather than good. Thus, I find my view of what is conducive to my wellbeing to be inconsistent, and therefore requiring change.

The world, including my own body restricts plausible views of what is good by failing to present certain things in response to certain actions. To view smoking as good is possible, but requires viewing the benefits of smoking here and now as more important than the later benefits of avoiding smoking. One cannot view long life and smoking as both good without some story of why they do not fit together in most lives. Likewise, certain kinds of people may find the goods of social or intellectual life to drain or energize them more than others, and this will have consequences for what they find to be good for them.

This provides space for the right thing to do to vary depending on bodily makeup. Those with sensitive hearing may find that they should avoid loud music. Those who are hard of hearing find themselves in a quite different position. Those with disabilities finds themselves in this sort of situation with respect to whatever way they are disabled, and require different things for their good than others might. Just as we allow individuals to opt-out of activities that violate their religious convictions, we need to enable those embodied differently to be able to live in the way they need, since the moral demands on them are the same, albeit more empirically verifiably. Those who need to phi in order to reduce stress ought, all else being equal, to phi. Altering environments to be sensitive to varying sensory needs takes priority over altering sensory needs because the body imposes needs for all of us, because we depend on our bodily existence, and because it must be possible for the individual to live prior to alterations given that those alterations have not always existed. The environments which are problematic are newer than the sensory needs, and so violate the living spaces of those who, due to their bodily makeup, cannot function with them. Further, society ought to focus on enabling living in more conditions, rather than primarily trying to eliminate those conditions.

***

The problem of fitting disparate goods together is answered by a Christian ethics which attends to both the fallen present and the eschatological fulfillment. Why do the wicked benefit so often? Because the world is fallen. Why not say that what is good changed with the fall? There will be justice. Everything will be made right. Why bother doing good when we will suffer for it? Because your reward will be great in heaven. Why do we suffer for doing good? Because the world is fallen. No ethic devoid of this kind of picture of what is wrong with the world and what is to come can motivate and explain suffering for what is good.

This comes into play in the inward-turning ethics of hedonism, stoicism, and skepticism. Each refuses to legitimate suffering for good. The first makes the goal the avoidance of suffering by means of finding balance in things. It is the philosophy of dieting, of working hard for good, but not so hard it hurts. The second refuses to be affected by the external world. What is outside of the agent’s control is not permitted to hurt him, because happiness must be achievable, and it cannot be guaranteed when the external world might foul it up. This is a refusal of the current fallen state of the world, and a rejection of the need for it to be renewed. It is an utter allegiance to the sovereign self who must be able to be happy in and of himself (which is, again, the goal). The last, again, aims at happiness by not affirming anything, but holding everything with an open hand. Not even beliefs are permitted to taint the self with the fall. Each of these three philosophies aims at a happiness unharmed by how things actually are, increasingly trying to extricate the self from the effects of the fall. Each thereby denies the need for salvation and the renewal of all things. By denying the need for renewal, they give up any possibility for eschatological hope. Only an eschatological hope allows us to suffer for the good. All others require that we assume that if we are suffering, then we are not doing what is good.

It is true that a firm belief in the goodness of what one is doing supports a kind of joy, but I do not think it is a joy that excludes suffering, but, rather, we as Christians can rejoice in our sufferings because we are sharing in the sufferings of Christ. We can affirm suffering as true suffering because we can recognize it as a result of the fall, as to be swallowed up in victory in the last days. We can say “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” (Romans 8:18). We recognize that we are living according to the rules of a different world, but we live in this world as pilgrims. Our citizenship is in heaven, not here on earth in this present age.

How can I claim that we find what is good through action in the world, yet also say that, as Christians, we act according to the rules of a different world? It is because this world is fallen, and is being renewed. It is because this world still bears the marks of how it was made, and “will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). We live according to how God created the world, and so agree with God as to how the world should be by living according to the rules the world should present.

We claim that death is bad, and yet death surrounds us. Without an eschatology which held out to us the bodily resurrection of the dead, we would have to claim that the end of the body was to be accepted. It is only in light of the resurrection that we can fully proclaim that death is bad, and it is in light of the resurrection that death loses its sting. That death is bad in the present points to the glory of the resurrection. That there is a bodily resurrection vindicates our claim that death is bad for us. Because death is bad, it must be overcome in Christ Jesus. Because it is overcome, we need not fear it, but may live in the hope of eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.

We live according to a view of our wellbeing which we can live according to. If we require, as part of our view of human wellbeing, the view that it is good for human bodily life to go on as long as possible, then we are required to explain why it does not, and why we may not accept the end as given. Why, if ongoing life is good, do people die? Why, if people do die, should we be sad about that? The bodily resurrection of the dead, and the curse of death which accompanied the fall, answers 

these questions in the only way I know.

This is the kind of thinking we are required to do in putting together a view of what is good for human beings. It is the interpretation of the world as a text, asking of each event how it fits into the whole, and of the whole, how it stands in light of the parts. We ask what we ought to desire if we are consistent in our values, and we ask whether those values are thereby evidenced in the whole. We ask what we would do best to value given our view of the whole, and we ask how we should then respond to parts in light of the whole. Each part demands a response, but what response we give depends on how we expect the whole of the world, unto eternity, to turn out. The parts have their value in the way they do, but this may be vindicated or refuted by how things turn out. Wealth, in and of itself, is good, but wealth by theft ends poorly.

Everyone, then, has a practical eschatology. Everyone has expectations of how the world will turn out, and they act according to these expectations. Eschatology is not unique to those of us who believe we have been told how it ends. People who live according to beliefs that history must turn out this way or that also hold an eschatology. Even those who hold a naturalistic view of things live according to how they expect things to turn out because how things turn out affects what the best thing for them to do now is. Our expectations are what we live toward. The Christian eschaton is the foremost expectation in the Christian’s mind. The direction of history, or stock market projections, or political predictions, or what-have-you are all expectations which people live toward, however: in fear, in anticipation, in hope. These drive action toward them, or, when it is “here is where things are headed if we don’t do something” in revolt against them. But our hope is higher and far more secure, and it drives us—If we understand and believe it—to act unto the glory of God in love for others.

***

Not long ago, people were talking about “what’s wrong with the ‘right/wrong side of history’ argument,” but what I hope is evident now is that the argument is not always fallacious. It is no more fallacious than appealing to a virtue term to appraise an action. The problem with the argument as it is often used is that there is disagreement over how history ends, just as there is sometimes difficulty using virtue terms when we disagree about what the terms mean. Where there is agreement over how history ends, the argument is valid. We all live toward how we expect history to end, and so pointing us to that expectation is a perfectly reasonable way to motivate us to live according to it. This is exactly what the passages dealing with the end times are there for! The Bible uses, without apology, the right side of history argument, it just looks to the very end of history, rather than the things in between which will pass away with the rest of the current order of things when that day comes.

Marx Was Right

            First, let me start with the obvious: Communism did not pan out the way Marx and Engels expected it to. Not only that, but the bourgeoisie are still mostly in power. So, contrary to my title, Marx was wrong. Right? Not necessarily. Marx made his predictions from a time before much of the current technology was invented. He had no clue about, for instance, the internet. He did make one big mistake, however: his prediction assumes that the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat will go basically the same way as the previous class struggles have gone, expect that he predicts that they will end with the end of all class struggle. Marx assumes that the stage in the supposedly final class struggle where the oppressed rise up and become the rulers will be just like any other. The problem with that idea is that the conclusion of this class struggle is supposed to remove class struggle. It is supposed to end in there being only the one class. Thus, it must end without the oppressed overthrowing the rulers and taking their place, but by making the rulers obsolete. There can be no transitionary period where the previously oppressed class legislates communism, since that would require a further class struggle to remove the new rulers.

            Marx’s assumptions here lead to problems later on. He speaks of centralizing credit, means of communication, and providing free public education—all centralized around the state. Here, the problem is, again, that Marx is thinking in terms of classes fighting each other in the open. The centralizations around a state require a ruling class which provides these things to a ruled class, which would maintain the division of two classes, and so retain the possibility of class struggle. Instead, Marx should have expected the total decentralization of credit, means of communication, and education. Instead of a centralized bank, direct peer-to-peer financing and investments, like Gofundme and Kickstarter; instead of centralized communication, universal access to and power over personal communication, like the internet and cellphones are becoming; instead of public schooling, highly flexible shared educational resources, such as co-op groups and online education.

What Marx should have expected was that the economic forces which would fuel the final overthrow of the bourgeoisie are not so violent and obvious, but, like that of the bourgeoisie, arise from “a series of revolutions in the modes of production and exchange”.[i] The political advance, then, would likewise be able to take a different form than Marx expected: not violent, but subtle, almost unnoticeable.

            The point of this paper is to argue that, while Marx got some things wrong, these were primarily errors in filling in what kind of conflict, political power, communication, or other concrete details, and not errors in the actual direction things would go: the structural results. I will argue, in fact, that some of the unexpected innovations around us now are the baby stages of what Marx was talking about, although they look remarkably different than one might picture from reading The Communist Manifesto.

            The internet is of massive importance in how our world looks to us from the USA right now. It also did not exist when Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto. In that manifesto, Marx refers to how the bourgeoisie required contact with each other, union, in order to succeed in their revolution, and how “that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletariat, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years”.[ii] Now, read “the internet” there in the place of “railways.” This should make sense without showing how it has actually done the same things, simply based on the common talk of how the internet allows one to talk to someone on the other side of the world. Most of the remainder of this paper will rely on examples of people using the internet to do things which look like the baby stages of something quite similar to what Marx envisioned as the final stage of communism.

            We have libraries, but we also now have the internet. The internet is a repository of free information to which anyone may add. The producers here are largely not paid, but voluntarily produce content for sites like Wikipedia. This is a, if partial, refutation of the belief that we will all get lazy if the communist ideal is realized.

In The Starfish and The Spider, Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom describe how peer-to-peer music sharing (or stealing) services keep cropping up.[iii] The early ones were sued out of existence, but later ones got clever. There are some out there without a sue-able entity to shut them down. There are just the open-source downloadable files going from one person to the next. Basically, the more of that there is, the less one will be able to speak of private property, at least in music. As Marx could have expected, the bourgeoisie sueing the proletariat only made the problem worse: that is why there is no sue-able entity for some of the peer-to-peer services. The whole book is about leaderless organizations and how they just get harder to beat the more you fight them, which sounds like the end point of communism, and yet none of socialism, communism, or Marx get tagged in the index.

Then there are those sites which let you rent a room or get a ride from some stranger, with little sight of a corporation. As these develop, if they can figure out how to do so, private property will slowly disappear. No fight involved except from big corporations suing and getting legislation passed—that is, the fight will be between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, via legislation, taxes, etc., for at least a long while yet. If there ever is a violent conflict, which there might not be, it isn’t likely to be anytime soon. Instead, the proletariat makes itself untouchable, unfindable, by decentralizing its institutions and making those institutions unrecognizable. The institutions of communism are leaderless, they lack countable members, and they therefore cannot be brought down, since there is no one to bring down.

Political power is also revolutionized. It is more likely to be achieved via tools like Youtube, Twitter, and blogs than via violence. These are tools which allow anybody to get their name and agenda out there. They are tools which people running for president in the past election realized they needed to use—even the pope is on Twitter now. Soon, I suspect, the only way to get elected will be by an ad campaign with viral media, rather than TV advertising. This will reduce the amount of sway that large organizations have over politics, since money is much less valuable when working with viral media than when buying air time. It also increases the power of the common person over politics, since it is up to the individual whether to share something with others or not.

Note how in each of these examples the value of money is reduced and profit is not the aim. The point of Wikipedia is that it is free, it relies on fundraising from the users. Peer-to-peer file sharing is motivated by the desire to get music and other files without having to pay for them, largely removing money from the equation. Renting rooms and seats in cars makes the supply of housing go up, reducing the cost. Indeed, since there is little or no cost for the one whose home or car it is, the cost to the renter can be very low without removing the incentive to lease. The political example shows how money loses much of its influence in power struggles, which is very helpful, if not required, if the outcome is to be a society where power is diffused, where society is leveled.

I mentioned that Marx kept thinking of the proletariat as a class, and that this is problematic insofar as its conclusion is the end of classes. This thinking results in his expected centralization to occur around the proletariat. Since this is wrong, as accentuated by the fact that spider organizations, i.e., organizations without centralization, are what is leading the communist revolution, so, too, is the centralization which Marx speaks of. I suspect that this centralization is also much of the what causes the problems which communist governments have encountered.

This means that where Marx says “centralize in the hands of the proletariat” or “…in the hands of the state” where the state is run by the proletariat, we should think “decentralize.” Thus, when he speaks of centralized banking, we should think quite the opposite. Education, too, should be decentralized—and this is happening with sites like eduPOW, where anyone can create a lecture-style course, upload it, and then anyone can download it for $5. There is a sense in which I don’t expect these sites to get much traction, however, since one can find much of the same material covered on Youtube. Nevertheless, whether by eduPOW or Youtube, educational materials are out there which allow anyone to cobble together courses to reach through at least highschool. Eventually, I expect this to broaden out through college, and thus, eventually, our whole education system will be restructured. This means that degrees of various sorts will no longer be necessary, because no one will have them. I do not know how such a revolution will prove to be possible, but insofar as one does not need a degree to start something up, it will likely be possible for a growing number of people. The ability to self-publish books, sell crafty things, and whatever else, means that anyone can generate income by selling their own products.

This also helps with Marx’s alienation problem. This alienation, according to Marx, is due to the fact that the worker does not get to enjoy the fruits of his labors. If the problem is that people are alienated from what they produce, the solution is not to alienate them further, by making them work for some greater good—this is, in fact, a classic argument against communism. The solution is, instead, to enable them to sell their products directly themselves.

The only question to be asked is, “what will become of factories and farming?” These are necessary for our life as we now know it, but it is hard to see how, say, an automotive assembly line, could be crowdsourced. As these become more and more automated, though, who knows? We might not need too many workers, and we might be able to make some viable start up auto companies. It all depends on what kinds of new technology come along.

One prediction of Marx’s that I have not shown evidence for is his prediction that women would be shared. However, this is not out of the question, given the current state of marriage and attitude toward sex. This is the point which makes me most wary of these developments, and which should remind us that not all the results of such a revolution are likely to be good. Indeed, in this fallen world, shifting from one society to another is often merely trading one set of acceptable sins for another.

Note, finally, how all of this is the result of capitalistic tendencies. This, too, should have been expected by Marx. As an economic determinist, Marx believe that the sociocultural and religious environment of a society was a result of the economic substructure. He believed that what happened was determined by economic forces. If we construe “economic forces” as the forces of supply and demand: the force of greed, then this supports the usual capitalist contention that people cannot be forced to live the communist life because they are greedy. However, they may slip into a communist life on account of their greed.

It should go without saying that, if I am right about these things, then the Church needs to figure out how to speak to the world which I am describing. We must figure out where such people will feel their need for a savior, and how the Church must be both careful to be distinctive and open to adaptation. What is good in this development and what is bad? What will the transition be like, and how do we navigate it? What are the values of such a society, and how do they relate to Christian values. How do they either oppose or support what Christians have always claimed?

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[i] Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto: A Modern Edition. London: Verso, 1998., p. 36

[ii] Ibid., 48

[iii] Brafman, Ori, and Rod A. Beckstrom. The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. New York: Portfolio, 2006.

The Problem of Evil

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. This world which he created currently has much evil in it. The question is why? Most responses try to show how the evil might be permitted for the sake of some good which either results in it or from it while being unobtainable otherwise.

God created the world for the sake of his glory. Further, I believe that he governs the world sovereignly. Therefore all that occurs in the world is meant by God for his glory. Romans 8:28 "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." This places the problem of evil in the strongest light: evil exists, yet all that happens happens to the glory of God. How can this be?

There are two kinds of evil: natural evil, as in natural disasters, and moral evil, as in the evil actions of moral agents. The first can be explained as God's punishment for sin. Since no one is innocent, but all are sinners and therefore worthy of death, when bad happens to us we are only getting what we deserve. When we escape bad happening to us it is God's grace to us.

The latter kind of evil is harder to explain. If God is in control of all that happens, then that includes our actions. How can a good God will that we sin? First, we must note that it is possible for us to will something for evil, i.e., with evil intent, while God wills it for good, i.e., for his glory. Genesis 50:20 "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today." The question is only how God gets glory from evil actions.

God gets glory from our evil actions in at least two ways. First, for those who remain apart from him, he shows his righteousness and justice on them by punishing them. Second, for those who repent, he shows how great his mercy and grace are to those whom he loves, whom he has called. This is an exhibition of his holiness greater than would be possible if there were no sin.

This explains how there can be sin, but it does not explain why there is so much sin. To answer that question, we may note, first, that by allowing the full extent of our depravity, the full extent of what we will tend to do apart from him, he shows how good and necessary he is for us to live as we were made to live. Secondly, by letting our evil be shown in diverse ways in various times he warns us of our evil and exhibits our own evil to us, in order that we might repent, and in order that we might recognize our need for his righteousness to work in our lives. Thirdly, we are punished for our rejection of God by the moral evil of those around us, as when the Israelites were punished by God sending foreign nations to conquer them.

In addition to these reasons why we might expect evil to be as great as it is, and why evil actually serves to glorify God, and so is involved in countering itself, we may note that the cross of Christ is a place where evil is directly confronted as evil. Our answer to the problem of evil is twofold: that it has been conquered in Christ's death, and that it is being turned to good. We, then, as the body of Christ, must be involved in the task of bringing the kingdom of God to earth in this way: combating sin and death by the power of Christ who defeated both sin and death once and for all.


Any answer to the problem of evil will imply a response to evil. The ultimate response to the problem of evil was Christ's death on the cross in which God's justice and grace were shown together. This is where we must go in responding to evil. God's justice is shown in it, and so is his grace, and in Christ God is reconciling all things to himself. We, because we are joined to Christ in his life and death, are joined to Christ in his defeat of sin and death. In light of that, we should live lives which redeem the evil in our lives by showing the power of God in our weakness.