Lecture III in series on “Communism and Christianity”

Dr. Paul Tudor Jones

01/25/62

There are many things about communism we don’t like. There are many things we fear. We want to fight it, yes, even to destroy it. But what makes communism so evil? Is there some central wickedness toward which we could and should direct our deepest concern?

Is it communism’s materialism — its giving priority to material things rather than to the spiritual values that makes it so evil?

Is it communism’s atheism? Its open opposition to all religion, its scornful branding of religious faith as pre-scientific superstition?

Is it communism’s opposition to the institution of private ownership of property that really makes us hate it so? When we are honest with ourselves, is it this aspect of the dreaded new, successful movement which is sweeping the earth that really makes us believe it so evil? Do we fear and fight communism because we know that if communism is successful all we own in this world; house and lands and stocks and bonds and comfortable income will be wiped out and our family and ourselves be reduced to mere subsistence level living, dependent entirely upon the state?

Or is it communism’s tyranny, its totalitarian organization, its destruction of freedom and individual liberty, that makes it so evil?

Is the real root of communist evil to be found in its moral and ethical duplicity — its cruelty in dealing with its enemies?

We can all agree that communism is very evil. It is an enormous conglomeration of a multitude of evils we greatly despise, but is there some central core of evil — some locus of infection, which if it is located and diagnosed, will help us the better to understand, deal with, and ultimately destroy this social malignancy which has been rapidly spreading its spores and tentacles through history and humanity for a hundred years?

Some of the ablest scholars, whose analysis of the nature of communism I find the most convincing, point to the idolatry of communism as the heart and core of the bundle of evils that communism is. John Hutchison writes: “the center of the conflict lies not in communism’s atheism, but in idolatry. Its professed atheism serves simply to deprive its adherents of any inhibitions against the sort of total or absolute allegiance which they give to their cause. From this absolutism flow directly most of the evils of communism, its fanaticism and cruelty, its self-righteousness, its willingness to justify every means as necessary to a ‘good’ end.” (p. 148-9, The Two Cities)

So, also, John Coleman Bennett affirms: “The great fault of communism is not its theoretical atheism, but its practical idolatry. In using the word ‘idolatry’ we are not throwing a smear word at communism, for the word can quite carefully be defined as the tendency to make absolute, to put in the place of God, any human or finite reality. This belief in communism as an absolute movement of redemption in history, in the communist society as a substitute for God, is not only false from the Christian point of view, and incompatible with the Christian understanding of man’s dependence upon God, but it has other inevitable manifestations which render it demonic and a horribly evil force in society.” (John Bennett – Christianity and Crisis – p. 50-51)

The teaching of the New Testament is clearly that God is sovereign in the affairs of man. God has ordained that states and governments should be the custodians and dispensers of temporal rule and authority. To these temporal governments, men should give a measure of allegiance and obedience.

So Jesus counseled His disciples to pay tribute to Caesar. St. Paul wrote the Christians at Rome that the state, even a pagan Roman State, was ordained of God to administer justice, and that it was due a measure of allegiance and obedience.

But the New Testament further teaches that states and nations and governments are ordained of God, hence under His rule and His authority. Therefore, even the most enlightened and beneficent of states remain under the judgment and correction of God. No state or empire can usurp the place of God — for a government or a political organization to put itself in the place of God, acknowledge no higher allegiance or authority, and make the souls and bodies of men entirely subservient to its demands, is idolatry of the worst sort.

This is what communism has done, and the horrible picture of the complete corruption of society which takes place when this idolatry is consummated is portrayed in the Apocalypse of St. John, where the false government, in the form of a hideous beast, uses another despicable beast (a false religion entirely subservient to a false government) to cause men to bow down their souls to the first beast as the ultimate reality in the universe.

As one country after another is communized, we hear an old familiar story repeated in one new setting after another. Back in 1948, the story came out of Bulgaria. A communist teacher asked her hungry pupils to say the Lord’s Prayer. This they did: “Our Father, which art in heaven; hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.” Then the teacher asked them if they were still hungry. When they said they were, she led them in a new prayer which began: “Father Stalin, give us our daily bread,” and suddenly through a hole in the ceiling, straight from the Marxist heaven, tumbled loaf after loaf of bread.

Now, in recent months, we have been hearing the Cuban version of the same educational incident with the appropriate substitution of Castro for Stalin.

The essence of communism’s evil is not simply theoretical atheism, bad as that is; the ultimate wickedness is centered in its idolatry — putting in the place of God, in the place of ultimate veneration, authority and power, the communist system.

See how all the other evils flow from this central cesspool of corruption:

First, this idolatry removes the possibility of self-criticism and improvement from the communist state. A nation, which recognizes it stands under God, is open to correction and criticism and growth. Christians believe there is always an unattained ideal of God’s perfect justice and social righteousness, which repudiates and condemns as imperfect all human societies. Since communism thinks of itself as the ultimate dream and goal of human destiny, there is no Supreme Court above to instruct and improve the communist state. Whatever it does is good in its own eyes.

Communism identifies evil with the particular institution of private property. The class of people who favor this evil institution, the owners of private capital, are the evil ones. While the industrial workers are viewed as the good class, indeed the messianic class, of society. There is no distinction between good and bad among the workers.

In the second place, this idolatry of communism blinds its faithful to the corrupting nature of all power. Communism rightly assumes that economic wealth is power. It wrongly assumes that economic wealth is the supreme and only power. The communists are so very naïve in failing to see the distinction between economic and political power.

So, when a land is communized, and the tools of industry and the wealth of the nation are all taken away from the people and put into the control and operation of the government, instead of enjoying the Utopian bliss they had expected, the people discover they are under the control of more ruthless and cruel masters than ever their capitalist bosses were. Why? Because communism, in its blind idolatry, did not foresee that there is a power of the managers which can be just as oppressive and cruel as the private owners of industry could ever be. But from the tyranny of the governmental managers, there is no escape, for they are the state, and the state can do no wrong.

The communist idolatry shows its most diabolical face in the ruthless treatment of persons. The state is the supreme reality. No human values transcend it. Everything is to be sacrificed for the welfare of and progress of the communist state.

See what this horrible belief has wrought in the world. It has resulted in the callous sacrifice of millions of people — friends and enemies — of communism, in the present, in order to move onward to the ultimate goal of world communism. (Illus. Arthur Koestler — Ivanov)

It has resulted in the systematic purges so characteristic of communist power. One scientist, who had been a loyal communist, but whose eyes were opened to the evil idolatry which communism is, wrote: “As a result of the purges, I could no longer believe that the Soviet regime really had any interest in the true welfare of humanity. I had come to understand that its primary purpose was to maintain itself in power. Theories count for nothing; only power is important. This explains the twists and turns of the party line. What is black today is white tomorrow, if it will serve the only ultimate aim — political survival.” (This Week — December 31, 1961 — Dr. Mikhail Klochko)

This communist disrespect for people as persons stands in sharp contrast with the Christian belief that every person, regardless of our human ideas and relationships, is important to God. The gospel teaches that the very hairs of our heads are numbered by God, that He is the Good Shepherd, who seeks the one lost sheep, though the fold is packed already full, and that this interest and concern of our loving Father is not dependant upon our deserving it — “While we were yet sinners,” declared the Apostle, “Christ died for us.”

So the Christian believes and teaches that even though he may have contest, struggle, and open warfare with his economic, political or class enemies, there still remains an unbroken tie between him and his most estranged fellow human beings — because both are the children of God and stand under the judgment of God, who has proclaimed that we should love even our enemies.

During World War II, some of the elders of the church I was serving in Mississippi, went with me to serve the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to some German prisoners of war in a camp nearby. Those men — some of Rommel’s crack panzer divisions — though captured enemies behind barbed wire, under armed sentry guard, were Christians, members of the Lutheran Church, and with us, a part of Christ’s universal church. Though political ties were broken and national hostility existed, yet there was an unbroken bond between us, our loyalty to Jesus Christ. As we broke the bread of the sacrament and drank the cup of His covenant, we acknowledged that, though politically we were enemies, yet were we caught up in an unbreakable bond.

After that service, one elder, who had two sons in uniform, said to me: “I’m glad we did that. I was getting too much bad feeling in my heart toward the Germans.”

Under the communist absolutist idolatry, all his opponents are: “capitalists, exploiters, reactionaries, fascists, war-mongers,” enemies to be destroyed, wiped out.

For the man under the Christian banner, every other man, be he friend or foe, believer or unbeliever, is yet another man for whom Christ died and so, not simply an obstacle to be removed, but a person to be redeemed.