Sunday, April 17, 2011

Suspicion & Faith #3: Marx

Karl Marx was an atheist and the founder of communist ideals. Because of this, many American Christians reject his ideas before even giving them an initial hearing. However, he displayed a concern for the poor and weak in society than aligns more closely with the prophet Amos and Jesus himself than most of us actually demonstrate. Therefore, it is in Marx’s Christ-likeness (even if we judge that a small area) that Christians can hear a challenging prophetic word.


Marx’s opinion of faith is most succinctly and famously summarized in his statement that religion is “the opium of the people” (137). This concept needs to be unpacked a bit. The opium stands as a painkiller, one for the oppressed masses to help them “deal with the physical and emotional deprivations of poverty and powerlessness” and also for the oppressive masters “to assuage their guilty consciences” (138). Thus, Marx argues, religion serves the political and economic purpose of allowing suffering to endure in society. The oppressed ‘escape’ or even accept their lot by believing that the “Bible’s message of liberation [should be] interpreted exclusively in innerworldly, otherworldly, and afterworldly terms” (187), while the oppressor justifies his domination as the will of God. However, Westphal argues this is not an inherent aspect of religion, but evidence that religion has been co-opted as an ideology that legitimizes social practices and institutions. Religion too often becomes the servant of the sociopolitical status quo in which the powerful dominate the weak. When our religious beliefs and practices lead us to “total, uncritical acceptance of the status quo, sinful silence in the face of human suffering and manipulation of the Word of God in order to justify oppression” (192), we are following a man-made ideology that Marx, the prophet Amos, and Jesus reject in unison.


In previous posts, I have described instrumental religion (we use God as a means to our own ends) and possessive religion (we seek to monopolize God as our private property). To this, Westphal adds the One-Way Covenant in which we “unilaterally dictate the terms of our relation to God’s power and authority” (207). The One-Way Covenant reminds me of a brief scene from the Simpsons: Homer has gotten himself into a jam. The problem is so bad that he is driven to prayer. In a sacrifice to the divine, he has set out milk and cookies. As Homer closes his supplication for God’s intervention, he finishes with “and if you want me to eat the cookies and milk, give me no sign.” This is the One-Way Covenant in which we tell God what we want and then assume he has signed off on it. We do this on a personal level with our plans and desires and at the collective level with institutions and actions (war, oppression). We often defend our activity with “God said…” or “I prayed about it before…” in order to stamp God’s sanction on our decisions and behavior.


The One-Way Covenant leads inevitably toward idolatry—the “baalization of Yahweh” (210). We do not reject Yahweh outright, but he is “revised to suit our economic convenience” and to “sanctify social injustice, if not by ‘embracing’ it, at least by ‘enduring’ it” (210). It is this process that allows Christians to love God and follow Jesus without actually loving what God loves or doing what Christ did. An honest reading of the Jewish Law or the various prophets or the words and acts of Christ demonstrates that God has a bias toward the poor, weak, needy, widow, orphan, and foreigner. Marx’s value to the Church is that he translates the social justice messages of Amos and Jesus from thousands of years ago into our modern, secular, capitalist society. In addition, rather than reading Marx’s atheism as an affront to God, it can be read by the believer as a challenge to our idolatrous, instrumental religion that we have constructed.


This is the third of 4 posts on Merold Westphal's Suspicion & Faith.

1 comment:

  1. again, I agree with the statements of Westphal. Where I am hung up is how now shall we live? (apologies to Chuck Colson) I, too, sanction bad behavior because it is easier to do than to work toward what God desires. And then, the specific way I interpret what He desires to see in the world is tied directly with the things I'm most passionate about.. and end to poverty and illiteracy. Is this a function of my own personal gifts/talents and then do I band together with others in my "tribe" that are equally passionate about those things? Where then is the balance for eradicating other forms of evil in the world? If I am simply working toward those things that I'm passionate about, then do I trust that others are do the same in their areas? Or do I spread myself thin and try to do little in a lot of areas?

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