Ideology vs Theology
Back to the Bible Part 3
To get back to the Bible is to get back to God. Global culture has drifted far from God by exalting ideology, the study of ideas, over theology, the study of God. The term “ideology” was coined by Antoine Destutt de Tracy, a French Enlightenment aristocrat and philosopher, who conceived it in 1796 as the “science of ideas.” During the French Reign of Terror, Antoine tried to develop a rational system of ideas to oppose the irrational impulses of the mob.
Now this creation of the “science of ideas” was a direct result of rejecting the Bible and it’s superintending God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. If you know anything about the French Enlightenment it was a time when, for good reasons, there was disillusionment with religion by the intellectuals of the day. They deduced that religion, like a parent, wasn’t really needed anymore now that humanity had come of age. Of course as de Tracy realized, humans needed some system of restraining their impulses to keep us from descending into chaos, so orthodoxy and theology was replaced with ideology.
The Judeo Christian faith may look and sound like an ideology at times but faith is not merely supreme confidence in a worldview. Faith is engagement with the mind, the wisdom and the will of the Almighty. God doesn’t just hand us an idea and say, “here humans, go make this happen.” God said to Israel in Exodus 33:14, “my presence will go with you.” In the famous “divide the baby in half” story where Solomon skillfully reveals the true mother when two Jewish women were both claiming the same child was theirs, illustrates the serious limitations of an ideology. A Marxist would have said, “the poorest or most oppressed of the two women should have the child because favor must always go to the powerless.” A capitalist would have said, “the woman with the greatest economic opportunity should have the child for obvious material reasons.” But a man with God given wisdom wasn’t dedicated to an ideology, he was committed to truth. Truth is the cornerstone of theology. I’ve never known of an ideology to care one bit about truth, it’s always obsessed with the advancement of the idea. Pilate, the world’s first recorded Postmodernist asked, “what is truth?” Men and women of God have the courage to ask, “what is right?” Others ask, “what will move us toward our goals.”
Religion, especially the Christian religion, has often foolishly allowed itself to be hijacked by ideologies. Someone has truthfully said, “ideology is a parasite on religions;” they come in glom onto a few Bible verses but resist Paul’s words to the elders in Ephesus, in Acts 20:17 “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” The ideologically possessed cut anything out of scripture that doesn’t further their narrow agenda; they politicize the church, they deny the eternal by insisting that all ultimate goodness will manifest in the temporal, they mock us for believing that populating heaven is connected with improving things on earth. These false prophets ridicule any spiritual revival that doesn’t revolutionize current social order. By the way, the ideologically possessed can be anywhere to the extreme of either right or left on the political spectrum. Also, don’t judge everybody who’s politically active as an ideologue. God has some good servants in politics.
Let me be very clear here about our call to social action. We are clearly called by the word of God to care about justice in our temporal world but two things can be true at once. We can believe that the Kingdom of God is both now, and not yet. We do everything humanly possible to bring about Biblical justice without connecting our passion to a political machine or a social media mob that frantically goes about crushing anyone with a different idea. It’s okay to rest in the assurance that some promises to humanity will be fulfilled for us in eternity.
When we become infected with a utopian promising ideology we automatically stop trusting the infallible word of God. Why? Because the word of God cannot be contained in a single ideology. To the collectivist everything is a class struggle and group identity defines us; to the Capitalist it’s all about profit and loss and individuality defines us; the hedonist measures all their decision with the yardstick of pleasure but to those who yield to the authority of Scripture we have a living relationship with a “greater than Solomon.”
Now, I know my audience and while some of you are infected with one of the predominant world views in vogue, your way of seeing the world is more basic than the kinds that create a million person march or spark a military revolution. An ideology is when an idea becomes an idol. I know people who have “my family ideology,” “my town ideology,” “my sports teams ideology,” and even “my church ideology.” These ideas that have become mental strongholds for you are no longer open to any truth outside of what you have determined to be true about your ideas. Everything in your life, your happiness, your sense of well being and your life’s choices depend on how well they serve your idea idol. You don’t realize it but your idea has replaced the sovereign Lord and your religion is caricature of true faith in God.
Ideas that become idols are always clothed in virtue. So, this begs the question, why can’t we make a fine religion out of love of country, love of family, or helping hurting people? The problem is not with the ideas, the problem is you and me. We are a complicated mixture of goodness, evil, wisdom, foolishness, vision and blindness. We are not equipped to be the virtue police without being grounded in the very words of God and the community of saints. Moses announced to Israelites on the trek to their destiny and Jesus repeated it on the trek to his, “God humbled you… to teach you… that man lives on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” (Dt. 8:3 paraphrased)
God didn’t give Israel a virtuous idea and say, “ok Israel, you are on your own, go build your nation on these virtuous ideas I am going to give you.” God said in Joshua 1:8, “this book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shall meditate therein day and night, for then thou shall make thy way prosperous and thou shall have good success.” The fact is you often do not know how to love your family, your nation or the poor. Furthermore, there’s not only one way for how to help your family, your nation or the marginalized. You need the wisdom, the balance, the restraint, the truth and the energy of a higher power.
The Jury is in folks, people who put their hope in God and lovingly go out living the Gospel, helping the poor, and speaking up for the voiceless do immense earthly good without the carnage consistently realized by those who say, “okay God, get out of my way while I go make the world right without your advice.”
