“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” Victor Hugo[1]
Ideas are more than floating thoughts. The right idea in a conducive environment can have overwhelming power. When an idea enters a person’s or culture’s imagination, it can ignite a revolution. Cultural artifacts like the 1950s hula hoop, or crazed dances like Chubby Checker’s The Twist or soft serve ice cream cones, come and go. They provide lots of fun and do no harm. There are, however, ideas that once implanted in a person’s mind, become like thought bombs that can be ignited by life circumstances and burst into their imagination of a better life or world. Recently I have been reading America’s Cultural Revolution by Christopher F. Rufo. The book includes a history of ideas and how life circumstances can create revolutions that matter.
The book begins with a scene in the summer of 1967 when an elderly philosopher named Herbert Marcuse[2] took the stage at a conference in London. He spoke in a thick Weimar-era German accent. Among the very large crowd were infamous radicals like Allen Ginsberg, Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis. His topic was “Liberation from the Affluent Society.” He was in agreement with the sexual, moral, and political rebellion of that period. But at its root, it was about a Marxist revolution, going back to Hegel’s famous dialectic, thesis, anti-thesis, with the outcome, synthesis.
This was Hegel’s 18th century idea bursting forth in the mind of Karl Marx in the 19th century and now in Marcuse’s writing in the 20thcentury. Frankly, this is the same old idea that continually fails, it can never succeed, but before it is abandoned, as in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and North Korea, generations must suffer and millions must die. Marcuse’s dialectic is simple, the present society of western life and thought must be destroyed so the utopian world can be built from the ashes. The problem is, after tyrants have torn it down, not one has been able to rebuild it successfully.
That is why the state must control all facets of society including the standard freedoms of democracy. What we are witnessing in our present culture, including the decline of the church, is the product of the left. It is doomed to fail, but not before millions will suffer. The message should be clear to us by now—the controlling elite don’t care how much the average person will suffer. The cause is too great and any cost is worth their version of Shangri La. I would like to explore Marcuse a bit more. How does a person reach such beliefs?
Standing Guard on the Alexander Platz
Herbert Marcuse, age 22, stood guard with a rifle slung over his shoulder on the Alexander Platz. He was under orders to shoot any counter-revolutionary snipers. An intellectual with a gun and cigarette, inspired by the idea of a cultural revolution advocated by Hegel and Marx, is ironic and fitting. The people he was fighting were proponents of the same things that inspired him—revolution, utopia, dystopia, and hope of a new world run by an intellectual nobility. But first, the powerful must fall, the system burned down, then a new world can be rebuilt from the ground up.
All philosophers use life experience, observations, schooling, and woundedness to craft their personal theories. There are no exceptions to this rule, because every human goes through the same process. Marcuse could throw around Kant, Hegal, Marx and Freud, but his parents, their wealth and privileged life, The Great War, and military service played an equal role. Other philosophers only give philosophers air cover to name and certify their beliefs. Growing up in a house with ten bedrooms, servants, and the best education clearly were factors in shaping the young Marcuse. But it must be admitted, something went haywire for him to reach the truth that he saw—his life and philosophy were truly a non-sequitur. He never seemed to recognize that his diagnosis was partial and partisan.
Marcuse, disillusioned by practical politics, withdrew and devoted himself to study at the University. It is not surprising that he chose an intellectual nobility, composed mostly of people like him to run the new world. He advocated what he called the “dictatorship of the intellectuals.” [3] This is not unlike a political party or an elite community such as the World Economic Council suggesting that they are best suited to rule the masses. They don’t care about much about the details of the normal person’s daily life, but they do want to pull all the important strings.
Marcuse, armed with his ideas, escaped Germany and arrived in New York on July 4, 1934. He said, “When I saw the Statue of Liberty, I really felt like a human being.” Finally, a freedom he could enjoy and benefit from. Finally, he was free to oppose and plan its destruction because he believed there was something better. He held positions at Columbia, Harvard, and Brandeis before arriving at The University of California at San Diego. Many of insights were correct: Capitalism had run amuck into runaway consumerism, and the promised Great Society of the Johnson Administration was a false promise that made victims out of the underclass. It also had sentenced the African-American family to a permeant servitude and dependency on Government subsidy. The “Welfare State and the Warfare State” a twin engine of repression. [4]
Blueprint for Revolution
Marcuse’s writing spread like wildfire among young radicals, and inspired the leaders of the Weathermen, a group dedicated to bringing down the United States Government through any means possible, including violence and murder. He provided the script for the Blueprint for Revolution. Quite interestingly, in 1970 the staff of then, Campus Crusade for Christ, [now known as CRU] were given New Testaments with Blueprint for Revolution on the cover. Of course, the movement was composed mostly of newly minted college graduates who were calling for a spiritual revolution through a relationship with Jesus Christ. It was peaceful and based on the Gospel about Jesus and the Gospel of Jesus. Its only sinister plot was to convert leaders of every stripe who would take the gospel to all of society. It was all based on freedom of choice with no intention of bringing down any governments. The jury is still out on whose revolution was more successful, but at this point in the United States, it appears that in terms of the secular society, we are living in the middle of a Marcuse/Marx revolution.
Marcuse became disappointed with the student revolution and he saw it as never being accepted. He saw the entire society turning against their cause. He counseled his followers/readers to adopt the Long March through the institutions, a long-term retreat strategy employed by Chairman Mao during China’s civil war. Mao and his soldiers took a five-thousand mile strategic retreat that would become known as the “Long March of the Red Army.” [5] It was a year-long retreat—his men died of starvation, cold, disease, and violence. Then Mao launched a counterattack and defeated the Nationalists who retreated to the Island of Taiwan.
Marcuse called students to return to the classroom in a strategic retreat that would take two to three generations, but would take control of America’s great Universities. Today, most of the major universities in America are leftist seminaries teaching ideas that Hegel, Marx, and Marcuse would find quite agreeable.
Remember, ideology changes slowly, Thesis: sexual activity is designed by God to be between a man and woman in marriage. Antithesis: Sexual activity should be free and a matter of choice, not bound to any religious restrictions. Then the dialectic or debate begins, and the result is the Synthesis. The Synthesis changes as the debate goes back and forth until we get to where we are today. Fewer marriages, fewer children, fewer true believers.
Not to speak is to speak, not to act is to act
Yes, we, the Christians, the stewards of God’s word, must speak up. We must join the debate, but with truth and grace. Paul reminds us of what we must do.
“We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons not worldly weapons to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:3-6 New Living Translation.
One of the signs of delusion is to hold on to a belief that has never worked and will never work. This certainly is the plight of Marxism, Socialism, and especially theories of revolution put forward by Herbert Marcuse. As the Apostle Paul tells us, the goal here is to fight and destroy “proud obstacles that keep people from knowing God.” Right now the mighty human power of the University, major corporations, Big Tech, Major Sports, and Media are aligned to keep people from knowing God.
So, what are the “mighty weapons” in our arsenal?
Paul, given the times and context of his life, believes that reason and debate have a place in the fight. He was a very bright student and was quite adept at reasoning, and debate as was in evidence in Athens. [6] There is a battle for the mind at the intellectual level, and those students and faculty members who are so called, should engage, even when putting self at risk. Paul, however, does seem to be speaking of a Christian resource that is not available to everyone. Paul also is speaking in the context of a church situation in Corinth.
Here are the weapons Paul is speaking about:
1. Spiritual authority endowed to disciples
The mighty weapon is first, his apostolic authority in the church, but also a general authority to call all Christians to action and to truth. It is the kind of authority that Jesus endowed his disciples with during the issuing of the Great Commission. “I have all authority in heaven and on earth, Go therefore and Make Disciples of all Nations.” Christ has given each of us a spiritual authority and the rights of family members to go boldly before this throne of Grace. [7] There is no greater authority or access to anyone greater than our leader, the Lord Jesus Christ.
2. The preaching and teaching of God’s word
I think of a young Dietrich Bonhoeffer stepping forward at a crucial gathering of the academic elite at the University of Berlin. The large auditorium was packed with esteemed faculty and community leaders. Bonhoeffer’s only weapon was the truth about Christ and His preeminence. He stepped forward and spoke powerfully and freely of the vital role of preaching the gospel. A simple statement can be made in a coffee shop in the same Bonhoeffer tradition. Recently a young woman with a PhD, very smart, somewhat skeptical, spoke to me about the importance of all religions, that they are about the same. I smiled and said, “A leader of any religion would be insulted to think their beliefs were just moderately true or important. Christ didn’t leave us that option, if Christ is who he said he was, then he is the God of the universe. If he lied or was deluded, then Christianity is not moderately true, it is totally false and should be completely ignored. We have two choices, ignore Him or get on our knees and worship Him as the Lord of Glory.” I smiled, she smiled, she said, “Interesting” and returned to her chair. The right to preach the gospel comes with the authority to preach the gospel. You can call it preaching, witnessing, talking, sharing, I don’t care, just say what is true.
3. Take down strong holds and defeat false arguments—are we ready to take them captive?
The true father of the sexual revolution is believed to have been Wilhelm Reich, [8] an Austrian Doctor of Medicine and psychoanalyst, a second-generation Freudian. His writings inspired generations of activists to the sexual revolution. He claimed the movement had two enemies. The Christian church and the parents of children because both were the means that traditional Biblical values are passed on from generation to generation. The hatred of the church is satanic, its origin is Lucifer, and it is a life and death struggle. Wasn’t it the cry of the French Revolution, which wasn’t much of a revolution, because it only lasted ten years, Denis Diderot said, “We won’t be truly free until the last King is strangled to death with the guts of the last priest.” [9]
The zest for Christian blood was only assuaged in America by the First Amendment to the Constitution. The church being separate from the state has been a true gift. Religion holds American together. If, however, the church was to cower, shrink, and lose its message and power, the destruction and damage already done by the far left would cause the culture to fall hard and fast. I think of the answer Benjamin Franklin gave when asked by an interested bystander as he left Independence Hall in Philadelphia after the Constitutional Convention, “What do we have?” Franklin replied, “A republic if you can keep it.” If an independent and free church goes, then everything else is a house of cards.
Many speak of the extremism on both far left and far right. There is much to dislike about the far right. But frankly, the extreme left is far more dangerous right now. The far right has almost no cultural power or credibility. The far left however, has what Os Guinness defines as “social location.” They own the culture right now. Meaning, they hold the levers of power and they own the people trained in the universities to agree with their philosophy. Therefore, they are in lock step with the silicon valley giants, major corporations, media outlets, academia, even the world of sports and entertainment. They are proposing a utopian vision that will destroy everything in its path.
The world is littered with the ruins of such efforts. It is a world upside down that actually takes the 1619 project seriously—or at least pretends to. For these fanatics, the revolution never succeeds, and their suppressions never end. These ideologies must be defeated. This is why Paul says these strongholds must be torn down, taken captive and destroyed. It can and should begin with a prayer meeting, and a rousing call to action. But then the church must get out of the sanctuary and have their hands full of the kind of weapons that will tear down, capture, and destroy the intellectual edifice that Lucifer has built. Not with military power, but with a spiritual power rising from the truths of God’s word and from his authority. Speak up, stand up, don’t shut up, and let’s pull this post Christian, post truth culture out of its death spiral.
Bill Hull
September 2023.
Museum of the Bible Update
Psalm 139:1-4—For the choir director: A psalm of David.
O Lord, you have examined my heart
and know everything about me.
You know when I sit down or stand up.
You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
You see me when I travel
and when I rest at home.
You know everything I do.
You know what I am going to say
even before I say it, Lord.
Dear Readers,
I regret to tell you that for medical reasons, the event at the Museum of the Bible has been postponed and will be rescheduled in 2024. The medical issue is one of blood pressure and a lack of stability along with some associated symptoms. I am not able to travel at this time. I believe this is a temporary hold on travel. I will continue to write the column and do all the work and speaking I can from my ministry base. I am quite disappointed but know that God has all things in His hands. We will refund all registrations in the next few days.
[1] Victor Hugo was a French poet and novelist. 1802-1885, Known for novels Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre- Dame.
[2] Herbert Marcuse may be familiar to many of my generation. I heard of him from college students, as he was a professor at University of California San Diego. His radical views were opposed by both Governor Ronald Reagan and Pope John.
[3] Rufo, page 16
[4] Rufo, page 14.
[5] Rufo, page 36.
[6] See Acts Chapter 17. Paul’s daily interest and observations, insights and presentation to the philosophers.
[7] Matthew 28:18-20, Hebrews 4:12-14.
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich
[9] https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/denis_diderot_105429
Bill, myself and my disciple group are praying for healing, courage and peace for you and for Jane.
God's speed!