The Theology of Marxism

By Al Benson Jr.

In the Holy Scriptures, Jesus Christ speaks in John 14:6  and says “I am the way; the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” That’s a pretty straight forward statement. He is saying that no man ever gets to God, except through Him. Down through the centuries people, not willing to come to Christ, have continued to try other ways. There is a reluctance in men, because of their sin, to accept the truth. They always want to do it “their way.” And often to do it “their way” they will invent new ideologies (which they claim are not religious, but really are) which ultimately destroy the lives of millions. Marxism is one such ideology. Most naïve folks today think that because the Berlin Wall was torn down that communism is dead. I hate to disappoint you, but it ain’t so Marxist ideology (theology) is alive and well on many college campuses in this country and lots of other places and it has a pretty good toe hold in Washington. But, then, that is nothing new.

I read an interesting and penetrating article recently on http://www.americandailyherald.com written by Christopher C. M. Warren and published on Friday, June 8, 2012 called Karl Marx and the Communist Religion of Hate.. In part Mr. Warren stated: “The thesis of this short paper is that Karl Marx, the founder of communism, was a man of profound religious beliefs who formed what basically amounts to an ‘anti-Christian religion’. Why he became anti-Christian is the central mystery of his life. Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the founders of Communism, grew up in wealthy families far removed from a life of poverty and is one of the contradictions to be found in the lives of communist leaders. Their successors—Lenin, Trotsky and the others who led the Bolshevik Revolution in Russian in 1917—became multi-millionaires…As one historical commentator notes: ‘Running left-wing movements has always been the prerogative of spoiled rich kids. This pattern goes all the way back to the days when an over-indulged and affluent young man named Karl Marx combined with another over-indulged youth from a wealthy family named Friedrich Engels to create the Communist ideology.” There is some doubt as to who actually created the Communist ideology and if you look at the people who hired Marx to write The Communist Manifesto you have to conclude the ideas were not totally his but he shared their worldview.

The historical commentator’s quote continued: “The phoniness of the claim to be a movement of the working class was blatant from the beginning. When Engels was elected as a delegate to the Communist League in 1847, in his own words, ‘a working man was proposed for appearances sake, but those who proposed him voted for me.’ It may have been the first rigged ‘election’ of the Communist movement but it was certainly not  the last…”

Mr. Warren has noted: “Marx’s followers pursued an anti-Christian Utopia that—from the beginning—focused on political power, not on meeting the needs of the poor. Like today’s seductive vision of change, their socialist/communist transformation required a ‘crisis’ and a ‘purpose’  that would capture public attention.” Almost sounds as if he is referring to our current “hope and change” fantasy.

In regard to a poem Marx wrote, Mr. Warren said: “Marx was 18 when he wrote these things. His life’s program had already been established. There was no word about serving mankind, the proletariat, or socialism. He wished to bring the world to ruin. He wished to build for himself a throne whose bulwark should be human fodder.” So Marx’s anti-Christian religion was built on the misery of others and on his own personal selfishness. Marx and Engels were, basically, spoiled brats who should have been taken to the woodshed when they were young enough for it to have done some good.

Whittaker Chambers in his informative book Witness  has observed that Communism and Christianity are two “irreconcilable faiths.” On page 712 he gives a quote from someone else—“The problem of Communism is not an economic problem. The problem of Communism is the problem of atheism.” Upon reading that many will think that atheists have no religion, which is not accurate. Their guiding theology is that Jesus is not the Christ, is not Lord. And it would seem that this is the theology that holds sway in Washington, regardless of who we elect to any office. That tells you something. It tells you that even if you vote and elect “conservatives” they will have no influence over the direction the government goes in.

A European Mr. Chambers referred to as “Smetana” once told him “You don’t understand the structure of American society or you would not ask such a question. In the United States the working class are Democrats. The middle class are Republicans. The upper class are Communists.” If you understand those constituting the “upper class” to be members of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission then you are not far off the mark. This is not to say that all wealthy people are CFR members, but the ones with real influence mostly are.

I think, from reading his book, there were a lot of things Mr. Chambers did not realize. He found that, when he tried to expose the Communists he had worked with for years, the government in Washington, as a whole, was not interested. Chambers was horribly smeared by the media, who always defended the Communists and were merciless against any anti-Communist and especially against those who exposed what the Reds were doing in the US government. Communist espionage in the US government was the sacred cow—it was not to be touched and when you started to expose Communists like Alger Hiss or Harry Dexter White and some others then you had to be stopped at any cost. Chambers clearly saw the struggle against communism as a battle between “two irreconcilable faiths” and I can not disagree with him. The Communists today still continue to attack anything they perceive as Christian. In that they carry out the agenda of those in back of them as well as their own. As the Scripture truthfully states that Jesus is Lord so the ruling elite in this country and others will oppose that truth because what they really want is a world that  worships them and their authority. They want to be gods and to accomplish that they must remove God from his throne so there will be room for them on it.

Their only problem is that it will never work,  yet they  have ruined millions of lives and will ruin millions more  in their attempts, both their own disciples and those who dared to oppose them.

I recall talking to a man, probably 30 years ago now, as we sat in my living room over coffee. I told him of my Christian understanding of Communism and that, because of that, I had to oppose it in any lawful way I could. I never forgot his comment to me. He said “ You are going to lose, you know that don’t you?” To which I replied “Whether I win or lose is not the point. It’s a matter of doing what’s right.” He seemed to accept that answer.

Whittaker Chambers felt the same way. He felt that, in the end, he would lose, that, looking at the country as it was in his day, the Communists would win. Yet he decided to expose them anyway—because it was the right thing to do.

You cannot compromise with an anti-Christian faith. You cannot just sit it out and hope it will go away, or just sit it out because to expose it is a “negative” reaction and you don’t want to deal in negatives. Anti-Christianity needs to be exposed. Just possibly in the exposure, some of those who are anti-Christian may be led to repentance and thereby get their lives straightened out. But in all of it we must point to the fact that Jesus IS the way to God and so, in God’s time all the schemes of the Communists and One World crowd will fail and maybe the Lord will exercise His sovereign control by using His people to expose the evil.