The Politics of Anti-Christ

The Politics of Anti-Christ

Last week I argued the American religious right had failed in its effort to effect a more moral and Godly America. Precisely because it adopted and taken to its bosom the very materialistic and caliastic assumptions that lie at the heart of the hated and despised left. During the course of that discussion, I stated that the social and political left was fundamentally “anti-christic.” I received a very thoughtful letter from a young man that questioned this, so I thought today I would explain what I mean in a little more detail.

First of all we need to get some vocabulary out of the way. In modern American parlance, the terms liberal and conservative are used in such varied and bizarre ways, that they have lost any real significance. So, it would be helpful at the outset to try and disentangle them. To begin with liberal and conservative are not antonyms. Classically the term liberal simply means free and refers to those who want maximum human freedom. The founders of the United States in the classical sense were liberal par excel lance. The opposite of a liberal is a Statist. Someone who believes in centralized authority. These terms then are fixed upon the tension between the individual liberty and state authority. The terms conservative and progressive on the other hand are not fixed. They are relative to a given culture and a moment in time. Conservatives want to conserve or maintain the status quo, whatever that may be. Or return to the status quo, anti some recent calamity.

Progressives on the other hand want change of some sort. Now even though these terms in and of themselves are content neutral, historically we have come to associate conservativism with the political and social right and progressivism with the left. Of the terms right and left, the later is the easiest to define. Simply put the essence of the political and social left is egalitarianism.

Now some would have simply said equality here, but that is insufficient. There are many different kinds of equality. There is equality under the law or equality in the eyes of God. By egalitarianism, I mean the kind of radical equality that eradicated any meaningful differences between people, including the most fundamental difference of all, gender.

To the extent that the right is rooted in the way things actually are, it is the position of defending order, difference and even hierarchy being necessary to human life.

Now notice that the Statist can be a man of the right or the left. Historically however, absolutism has been a relatively modern reaction to social upheavals in Western Europe. In other words the old monarchial traditions in, for example England were not absolutists. They were governments of the right to be sure, but not necessarily Statist. On the contrary, statism in the modern world is almost always a tool of the political and social left. Why? This brings us back to our main topic. As I pointed out last week, the left because of its radical egalitarianism is utopian in nature. Let’s face it, people are not equal. Some are smarter then others, some are taller then others some can sing, others have athletic prows. Some on the other hand are lazy, some are shiftless, some have psychological and social pathologies that make them a danger to themselves and others. This wondrous diversity among human beings, however inevitably leads to inequalities of all sorts.

The bottom line is this, that man as he is will never be equal. Egalitarianism can only be created by changing man himself. The program of the social and political left as I said last week is precisely to change man, by changing his material circumstances. This requires a strong, no, absolute central authority.

Now here is where Christianity comes into the picture. Christ has promised to change humanity. Christ has promised a kingdom where every tear is wiped away. In a very real way, then what the left holds out as its promise to humanity is essentially the Kingdom of God. Let’s remember what I said last week. The term anti Christ does not mean against Christ, it means instead of Christ. In other words the anti Christ is not going to show up and announce that he is the incarnation of all evil in the world. On the contrary, he is going to announce that he is the incarnation of all good in the world. That he is Christ and that he has come to build the Kingdom of God on earth. That is why I have described the left as being anti christic. Just last week one of the presidential candidates, I wont say which party, not that it matters since we no longer have a real two party system, said to a church audience, “I believe we can build a kingdom.”

Well that is the promise of the left. That is also the promise of the anti Christ. Notice also however, that in offering a substitute for the Kingdom of God, the anti Christ will offer a deformed copy. Not an exact copy. For even in the Kingdom of God there will be difference and diversity. Yes God loves all equally, the sinner as much as the saint, Hitler as much as St Nicholas, but there will be differing degrees of blessedness or damnation according to our individual capacity to receive and respond to that love. Equality in the Kingdom of God does not mean that everyone will be exactly the same. Furthermore, while in Christ there is neither male nor female. And in the resurrection men will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Yet our Lord arose from the grave as what he was, a male human being. And, our Lady, who anticipated the general resurrection, is still “Our Lady”. The bottom line is that union with God our creator fulfills our personal uniqueness. It does not squash it or dilute it into and endless sea of sameness.

The left on the other had does precisely that. It strives to eliminate difference in the name of equality. As a result, the most horrific crimes have been perpetrated in the 20th century, all in the name of equality and humanity. Hitler and Nazism, contrary to what you learned in school, was a movement of the left and not of the right. Stalin and Mao all murdered 10’s and millions of people all for the sake of an idealistic version of humanity.

Dear brothers and sisters, as Orthodox Christians we must constantly be on guard against false Christ’s. There is not one single anti Christ, but many. We must constantly remind ourselves that the Kingdom of God is not of the world, that it will not be realized until the last enemy, death is defeated. And yet, we know that Christ has defeated death and offers us a fore taste of His kingdom here and now in the church. In fact I would argue that the only place on earth where people are truly equal is in front of the chalice. For there the lowliest poorest and least educated is equal of any prince or patriarchs, for all receive the whole Christ. Now, whether we receive Him worthy or not is up to us. Let us therefore implore God to make us worth.

And now may our great God and savior Jesus Christ, who alone has the power to bring about His kingdom, have mercy on us all.

By: Dr. Clark Carlton
Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Tennessee Tech University

Author: The Faith Series
Published by: Regina Orthodox Press

Ancient Faith Radio: Faith and Philosophy; Reflections on Orthodoxy and culture.