Modern Marxism: A Guide for Christians in a Woke New World – Pt. 2
Jan. 23, 2025
Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer
Guest: Patricia Engler
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 1/2325. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
Sam Rohrer:
Hello and welcome to this Thursday edition of Stand In the Gap Today, and it’s our monthly emphasis also on creation, culture, and apologetics. Now, in this focus, which we do once a month, we present an aspect of relevant cultural consideration and intentionally intertwine it within it, a threat of apologetics or instruction in how to identify the biblical truth, which applies to it, and then how to defend truth on that issue through the lens of a biblical worldview perspective and is always the case. There’s a direct connection to creation, the God of creation, and his plan of redemption, his justice and his love. All of those things are part of a biblical worldview perspective. Now, in today’s focus, I’ve asked Patricia Engler from Answers in Genesis to join me again for one of them, actually calling part two of an emphasis that we began two months ago entitled Modern Marxism, A Guide for Christians in a Woke New World.
And within this week’s inauguration, fresh on everybody’s minds, it provides a perfect climate to consider fundamental approaches to governance and to laws and policies. The purpose for government, the role of God, morality and individual choice within our culture and all cultures. It’s a perfect time to consider the pillars which uphold a free and moral society deserving God’s national blessing, which we know from scripture arises only God’s national blessing arises only when there is a fear of God by the people and those in power, and the embracing of such facts as absolute truth, rights as coming from God. God is a judge before whom all one day all will stand a constitution as guaranteeing those rights and government under God and its role in defending those rights. All of those things are wrapped together in what we’ve come to appreciate here in our nation, but it didn’t come accidentally.
But it’s also a perfect time to consider honestly the enemies of liberty, the enemy of hostile philosophies, which attack and undermine freedom. Those termites that are out there always crouching around in the dark and eating and now collapsing pillars which have long supported America in the West. So that being the case on today, on this program, as I just mentioned, I’m going to approach all of these things from the perspective of our returning guest, Patricia Engler. And just a bit about her, she’s a Christian apologetics speaker for Anders and Genesis. She’s also a host of a new podcast, zero Compromise, and the author of at least two books here so far. One, prepare to Thrive, a Survival Guide for Christian Students, and the one we’re focusing on today, modern Marxism, A Guide for Christians in a Woke New World. She has a BS in general science, an MA in bioethics, and is currently pursuing her doctoral coursework and applied apologetics. And with that little bit of a background in mind, Patricia, thank you for being with me again on the program and welcome back.
Patricia Engler:
Thank you. Great to be back.
Sam Rohrer:
Yeah, it’s great to have you. When you were with me about two months ago, it was actually November 14th, if our listeners want to go back and look for that program, you had mentioned that you had done extensive research, you traveled throughout Europe regarding the roots and the branches of Marxism. That kind of gave a basis for what has come into your book. Most of our listeners are aware that Marxism has permeated American and western culture, but not likely, fully aware of how or sufficiently knowledgeable to identify the impacts of modern Marxism. So if you do not mind, get us started right here. What prompted you to write this book and how did your decision to research it traveling Europe, contribute to it?
Patricia Engler:
Yeah, well, I mean, growing up I read biographies of Christians like Richard Rebrand who had suffered under communism, popularized by the philosopher Carl Marx, of course, in the 18 hundreds. And I knew that Marx’s ideas have always caused destruction and put into practice, but I thought that we’ve learned from history now Western countries have moved on from all that, but now we’re just seeing this resurgence of interest in Marxism. And as it’s kind of been repackaged in these messages, we’re hearing about whether that’s critical race theory, different attacks on the family, gender, ideology, all of that is from this repackaged Marxist worldview that says society has two people, oppressors and oppressed groups based on identity traits like gender and skin tone. Society’s inherently oppressive. So we need a new social order. The oppressed groups need to wake up. That’s what becoming woke is about, and commit some sort of political or cultural revolution and take back power.
And this false religion is just wreaking havoc in society, and so many young people are being caught in schools and it’s even in the church. So I wanted to do something about all of that through the book. And then where Europe came in is I went to Europe for research purposes to go to as many locations as I could that would be relevant to the history and consequences of Marxism, whether museums, memorials, cemeteries, protest sites, a former prison talking to Christians who’d been through communism. And along the way, I also Marxism’s revival in the West. So learned a lot from that journey.
Sam Rohrer:
So that well established, you’d hear in the balance of this program, try to do this if you can. It’s a harder thing to do, but define Marxism, put a face on it and compare. Contrast it to the other isms, Nazim, communism, socialism. They’re all kind of alike, but they’re not the same either. Can you explain?
Patricia Engler:
Yeah, exactly. So Marxism of course is referring to principles and policies advocated by Carl Marks. That’s what the Merriam Webster dictionary says. And I like pointing people to that dictionary because it mentions that Marxism, his policies really revolved around e theory and practice of socialism, which it says is the system of producing or a system where the means of producing and distributing goods like food and clothes are collectively owned by the people or government group living. No private property means of production and distribution are owned and controlled by the state. And that’s almost the exact same as the dictionary definition of communism as well, where in contrast to capitalism where people can own and control their own goods in a free market society, the state controls the means of producing goods. So there’s a lot of overlap between socialism and communism. And in Marx, as original theory, socialism was a transitional stage leading up to a fully communist society where he thought that the workers of the world would have gotten together and revolted against the business owners who he thought were oppressing them.
And then the workers could create what he called this dictatorship of the proletariat, which would run society for a while until people could move past the old institutions like public property and religion and family and government. He thought that the state would wither away at that point, but that really never worked out. It’s never moved past dictatorships. And that’s one thing that sets socialism apart from Nazism. Even though the Nazis called themselves the National Socialist German Workers Party, they weren’t so much economic socialists, but in that they kept private property and so on, but they were totalitarian just like communists are in that you have something else besides God becoming the authority for truth in society. So in their case, the state was, they didn’t think it would wither away. They also wanted a very class society based on purity of race and ethnicity and so on, whereas Marxism’s wanted a classless society. But despite those differences, both of them were of course totalitarian regimes that of course persecuted the church. So some similarities there.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, that’s a very, very good overview. It was a hard question to answer, but I think you did a great job on that. Ladies and gentlemen, stay with us in the balance of the program. We’re going to build off of what Patricia and my guest has just explained, and we’re going to look back now historically at Marxism, its rise in the past and what we’re going to call patterns of persecution, things that are rise out of it past and compare it to what is happening perhaps today. If you’re just joining me today, this is our second program in a series that we started back on November 14th, modern Marxism, A Guide for Christians in a Woke New World. So this is part two, and if you go back on November 14th, you’ll be able to find the first one. My guest then and now is Patricia Engler, a Christian apologetic speaker for interest in Genesis.
She hosts her own podcast, zero Compromise and written a couple of books, one of which is that which we are focusing on now, modern Marxism, A Guide for Christians in a Woke New World. Now that being the case, let me just go right into it, Patricia, in your book, modern Marxism, A Guide for Christians in a Woke World, you give a short overview where you say this, let me just quote this, help set it up, and then we’ll go into some further history that you have put together. But you say this quote, Western civilization is rapidly changing. Hostility against Christians is escalating amidst a firestorm of social issues. Many of these issues from cancel culture to critical theories to attacks on the family arise from a false gospel rooted in Marxism. This false gospel saturates today’s culture, classrooms, and even churches. Modern Marxism helps Christians understand and respond to these reality.
This book, modern Marxism You’re writing helps Christians understand and respond to these realities from the foundation of God’s word beginning in Genesis. And then as we talked about last time, and I just rephrase here again, within that book, you’ve kind of broken it down into three parts. One introduce and you explained the problem of Marxism. Secondly, and this was our roadmap for the last program, common strategies of revolutionary agendas trying to replace Christian societies with totalitarian regimes. You explained that a little bit in the last segment. And then part three, we end up talking about and presenting practical tools for a biblical response. It’s a very, very good basic and simple approach for dealing with something of this magnitude. I want to say in here at this point, ladies and gentlemen, that Patricia, you are putting together a study guide which can be used personally or small groups or classrooms or whatever. Just briefly explain what is in that study guide and how that’s intended to accompany this because I think it’s a really good one, two combination.
Patricia Engler:
Yeah, for sure. So the study guide walks through the 11 chapters of the book and helps people not only understand them in more depth, but also apply them so you can look at the things that you’re learning about and really focus, okay, what does this mean for me where I’m at in our nation today, and how can we live that out? So great to go through individually, but also really ideal if you can go through with other Christians around you to be living out these principles in community. That’s great. So hopefully that’ll be coming out soon. You can find it on answersingenesis.org when it arrives.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, that’s excellent. And we’ll refer to that again ladies and gentlemen, but I just wanted you to be aware that there’s a book and then there’s a guide that goes along with it to make it even more practical in application. Alright, let’s go here, Patricia, in historic, an example, I’m going to have you share some things here. We’ll do as many as we can in the segment, but the rise of Marxism in various cultures around the world. That was a part of your study. I’d like you to identify an example or two. Let’s just pick one and then we’ll go down through. And then how that would relate to perhaps something that we could observe happening again in today’s culture that we can look at now.
Patricia Engler:
Yeah, so important to learn from history in that sense. So in chapter six and eight, I talked a lot about the rise of the Russian Revolution in 1917, which of course led to the Soviet Union under Lenin and then later Stalin. Now, if you want to revolutionize a society, it’s helpful to make your move during a social crisis because people are disillusioned with the government. National morale is low, and that’s what Lenin managed to do. So at that point, the first World War had just devastated Russia’s economy. There had been different problems with the way that the Russian monarchy had been exercising its absolute power, people were suffering. So meanwhile, socialists took advantage of that suffering by going into universities and recruiting young people to become Marxist activists. Something that unfortunately we see today as well. And one reason why Marxism is appealing is because Marxists point out real problems like exploitation, but then they propose faulty solutions based on their faulty worldview.
And young people, of course, want to make a difference in the world. So they’re easy targets for these types of agendas that say, oh, you can be an agent of change, but then define that in a Marxist way. And young people are also strategic targets because they’re the next future decision makers. They have a lot of energy to pour into causes. So Lennon’s followers, the Bolsheviks attracted just an intellectual army of university students that could then help stir up the working class, exacerbate these social feelings of division villainize nobles and business owners leverage people’s anger to promote revolution against some similar patterns that we want to watch out for today in terms of villainization and divisive agendas. For them to actually change the social order, Lennon’s followers had to attack the pillars of the previous society, churches and families. They scapegoated churches for different crises like famines, and then used that as excuses to start persecution. They attacked families by decriminalizing adultery, making divorce easy, assigning husbands and wives to separate factories, undercutting parental rights, legalizing abortion. Again, things we see today. So to summarize, some of those patterns we need to be aware of, we have to watch out for attacks on churches and families, movements that divide society into conflicting factions as critical race theories, do messages that leverage different crises and try to inflame people’s anger to call for a new social order. And of course, efforts that target and recruit young people as activists as we see all the time.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, I’m going to come back and ask some further breakout on that, but I think that’s a great overview. Okay, that’s one what happened in Russia and all that was taking place and you described that. Is there another example that you can point to that we can talk about as well?
Patricia Engler:
Yes, for sure. So in the book, even though this predates Marxism because it happened during the 1700, I talk a lot about patterns we need to learn during not only persecution against Christians in ancient Rome, but then also during the French Revolution. So that of course is when the middle and working class rose up against the French nobility. And Karl Marx later saw this as a stage in a series of revolutions that he thought would eventually lead to communism. And just like in Russia, the French revolutionaries couldn’t tolerate Christians that held to God’s word over the going ideology. So they started enacting laws that required clergy to sign this document that basically demanded churches to bow to the revolutionary government. So then that’s what they used to really intensify persecution. And one thing to watch out for is that persecution against Christians doesn’t tend to happen overnight.
It tends to arise through a series of steps that demand Christians to compromise on God’s word to accommodate the culture. And it also happens in the name of public safety and security. So the government body tasked with enforcing the commands of the reign of terror was called the Committee of Public Safety. And something else to notice is that people couldn’t escape just by trying to be silent. They had to do everything they could to show that they actively supported the agenda. They couldn’t even travel or conduct business without certificates of good citizenship where good had been redefined as being an agent of revolutionary change. And again, we see similar patterns today with different groups demanding that churches and individuals bow to the state, ideology, the going ideology, whatever culture says above God or peace, cancel culture getting fired and platformed and censored, redefining good in terms of conformity to woke ideology.
And in the French Revolution, you can’t just escape by being silent from this. So churches and organizations are feeling a lot of pressure to conform and they’re caving into it, but the more we compromise, the worse it gets. And it’s important I think, to remember that the cost of compromise is always greater than the price of faithfulness. The compromise might seem easy, but faithfulness is the only option that you can actually stand in the end without regret and know that it was worth it. So all things we can learn from history that are very relevant to being Christians in our modern world.
Sam Rohrer:
And we have about two minutes left and I know that you could give some additional examples as well, but let me just ask you this question. In your review and history and study of these two particular examples that you’ve given and perhaps in others, can you point to some of the earliest compromises that were made by the church, by maybe there were believers in that culture, maybe there were not, but where did the compromises first begin that helped to produce this climate where people were ready to throw off what was in hope for something new?
Patricia Engler:
Oh, that’s such a good question. It does come down to calling people to do whatever the culture happens to be saying at the time, no matter what God’s word says, and usually there’ll be some sort of excuse or reason for it. They’ll say like, oh, this is for public safety, this is for security. But then they ask the church to, for instance, in the French Revolution, effectively to worship the state to make sure that the state had the authority above the church. So things that require churches to give into state control. And again, they usually say like, oh, we have religious freedom or tolerance, but that tolerance only applies so far as Christians thou to the state. So one of the other common themes is they would take, this happened both during Russia and the Russian Revolution and French Revolution is they would come up with excuses to take over church property or to have to have more control over what pastors were saying. And then these are just ways to again, control the church and make it ultimately an organ for the state. So anytime you see things in culture like today, of course saying that, oh, if you want to love your neighbor as Megan Bastions pointed out in her book, then you have to do these things that the culture is telling you to do, which tends to be compromising on God’s word in terms of things like gender. So those are awesome things to watch out for sure.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we could go so much deeper on that, but can I suggest right now that compromise can come very easily where we put anything in front of our worship of God, anything that can become an idol, a person, a philosophy, anything that comes before God becomes idolatry and we’ve already stepped right into this mess to come back. We’ll continue our discussion. Well welcome back. We’re midway into our program here right now and talking about Marxism, modern Marxism, a Guide for Christians in a Woke New World. That’s our title. It’s also the title of Patricia Engler from Answers in Genesis, my guest today, and this is part two of a program emphasis on this book that we’ve talked about, started on November 14th and now concluding it today. So you can go back and listen to that for part one if you would like.
But as in all man-centered philosophies, and we’re talking Marxism, and I had Patricia compare contrast a little bit, what is Marxism? Communism, socialism, the various isms generally thrown into a general pot, very similar, but not the same totally either. But as in all man-centered philosophies like that and human wisdom, which is what it is, there are a couple of things in common where that is the case. God’s word is always absent. There are indeed dark roots that arise from which those efforts come. That’s also a part of it starting in the Garden of Eden with the serpent’s questioning of God’s authority where he, the serpent Satan desired to supplant the worship of God to then the Tower of Babel and the rise of human rebellion to the commands of God, where man again was deceived into giving worship to man instead of God. Even though at that time the Tower of Babel, the world had just experienced global judgment at the hands of a just God during the great flood.
It’s an amazing thing. Now today, mankind is thrown off God again, thrown off his authority. Literally every nation of the world, including here in America, we see that as the case. God is not the final authority. He is not in any way. The filter through which matters of public policy or laws or judicial judgments are made it’s man’s wisdom today in every regard. It’s like we’ve been down this road before, hasn’t it? So that being the case, we’re now finding this summation of man’s wisdom now taking gargantuan leaps forward in the form of artificial intelligence as example computer generated knowledge. No, God bless technology, but we’re seeing it a culmination. Again. It’s driving, driving, driving. And we’re going to be increasingly confronted with it, not just in form of a philosophy like Marxism, but even broader evidences of man based wisdom. Now Patricia, in your book and in your research, you’ve identified some very specific dark spiritual roots, undergirding this philosophy and worldview called Marxism. Can you share some of the important history that you found that actually gave rise to this thing that we’re focusing on today called Marxism?
Patricia Engler:
Yeah, absolutely. And the story goes back, of course, a lot further than Karl Marx ultimately to the Garden of Eden as you were talking about. But Eden before Marx was really popularized in communism, still in the 18 hundreds. There was a group, for instance called the Utopian Socialists who also promoted a type of communism. So they thought that some sort of reorganized society would create heaven on earth, utopia, forgetting of course the Genesis truth, that humans are sinful. It never works to try to make utopia by sinful means. But Marx and his co-author, Friedrich Engles would later, even though they criticized these utopian socialists for being unscientific, they admitted to owing them a great debt. And ENGs even called one of them or the utopian socialists in general, but history’s most significant minds are among them. So one of these socialists was Robert Owen, and he wrote this wild pamphlet called The Future of the Human Race.
He wrote it in 1854, and in it he called for the system of globalist socialism based on the abolition of marriage, family, home, education, and private property. So people would own nothing and be happy, which we’re hearing a lot about today. And one thing about him is he used to be an atheist, but by the time he wrote this pamphlet, he had converted to the occult and part of his pamphlet actually described communication from seance spirits who told him how to distribute the message. He thought that the task is setting up his version of global socialism required help from these spirits that told him, oh, don’t worry if people don’t believe your message, because the spirits will gradually compel humanity to accept it. Remember, this is like hundreds of years ago. And he also, what I thought was crazy said that these spirits endorsed the teachings that he’d been advocating for since his youth.
And of course he’d spent his life advocating for socialism and communism. So this document, the Future of the Human Race from the 18 hundreds is direct evidence that we have a pioneering socialist who marks a sidekick angled angles called one of his history’s most significant minds, linking his political ideas of socialism, do messages endorsed by seance spirits, which is such a red flag, but the spiritual roots don’t even end there. I write a lot about this in chapter four of the book and how there’s another occultic movement called the Odyssey, which helped to popularize Theos, which helped to popularize eastern spiritual practices and what would become the new age movement in the West. And these people wrote about this kind of coming new age, this new social order founded on more collectivism, which of course fits well with the goals of socialism. And one of them, a lady named Annie Bessant, who is the president of the Philosophical Society, for a while she was herself a committed socialist. So that’s just another example. But there’s many in history that you can look at and see how the dark spiritual roots of socialism are an agenda that stretches far back in time.
Sam Rohrer:
Absolutely. And as I’m hearing you explain that, yeah, right back to the Garden of Eden, ladies and gentlemen, I would put this in proffer this, that anything that is not of God consistent with God’s word as spoken by God is of the devil. There’s no middle ground. It’s either of God or it’s of the devil. So when you have philosophies and approaches to life and anything that God has laid out in his plan of his word, which includes matters of finance and matters of economics and matters of what we would call politics and governance and all of that, God has his approach anything other than what God says is of the devil, and you know where it is going to end up because God says how it’s going to end up. And Patricia, that’s just what you’re talking about. And I think it’s interesting you just mentioned that one phrase that was used years ago, you will own nothing and to be happy, ladies and gentlemen, I just put this before you right now today as we speak, probably having just occurred, the World Economic Forum is meeting in DeVos, Switzerland, and President Trump is addressing that August group of about 3000 people that group these self-designed kings of the earth, economic kings of the earth.
They have made it very clear that this world is in the midst of a great reset, their words. And they have said that very same thing, Patricia, you just said, you will own nothing and will be happy. So you talk about current and you talk about relevant, Patricia, what you’re saying, it’s right off the pages of today’s history. Now you can give a comment on that if you want, but then go into this other as well. You in your book also talk about certain other roots that are evident. One of them I noted talks about brainwashing as an example, techniques of brainwashing. You talk about the church’s role in the fall of communism in Germany and Czechoslovakia. Anyways, put a few things together in that to provide another evidence, if you don’t mind.
Patricia Engler:
Yeah, sure thing. So regarding brainwashing, I think it’s really important for people to know that back in the 1960s, actually there was some research on this. A psychiatrist named Robert Lifton went and studied. He interviewed survivors of communist prisons and even just universities under communist regimes. And he identified eight hallmarks of brainwashing. In other words, what he called thought reform. This idea that you need to change people’s minds to conform to this one agenda from the totalitarian regime. So the first hallmark is censoring what information people can share access and think about. Second is manipulating people’s emotions and behaviors in the name of some higher purpose. Third is redefining morality as conforming to a certain agenda or ideology. Fourth is creating a culture obsessed with confessing breaches of that morality. This is presenting human ideas as the unquestionable truth. Six is using what Lifton called loaded language, so sort of cliches that promote the ideology and silence argument.
His example from this is decades ago, is calling people who disagree, oppressive, and people who agree progressive, which of course we see a lot now. Seventh was dismissing or reinterpreting observations, which don’t fit the ideology. And fifth was redefining who counts as a real person with human rights, typically those who conform. And the more we think about today’s culture, the more we see examples of all of these classic hallmarks of communist brainwashing. But then the good news is Christians can resist brainwashing by renewing our minds with God’s word, practicing biblical critical thinking. The book talks about as well, taking care of ourselves spiritually, mentally, and physically to keep our minds alert. And then staying connected with other believers who can remind us of the truth, which is what we saw happen in the fall of communism in Germany and Czechoslovakia, where churches played this really cool role not only in helping people resist brainwashing, but in facilitating the regimes collapsed by standing up to lies and by participating in peaceful prayerful protests.
So even with the Berlin Wall that fell in 1989, but Christians had been meeting every Monday for seven years before that, since 1982 to pray for peace. And in the seventh year, this started to follow up with weekly peaceful protests that grew into hundreds of thousands of people. Similar thing in Czechoslovakia Churchgoers got together and sparked this candlelight demonstration, peaceful, prayerful protest that led to what we call the Velvet Revolution. So we see in history, the church has a profound role in helping counter the effects of brainwashing through history, and that’s what we need to do today.
Sam Rohrer:
Indeed, ladies and gentlemen, be conformed, not conformed to this world, but renewed by the renewing of our mind. That’s what Patricia you’re talking about, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll come back, we’ll give some concluding thoughts on well, as we go into our final segment here. Now, again, if you were not with us at the beginning of the program, this is what I’m terming it a part two in an emphasis here on modern Marxism, A Guide for Christians in a Woke New World. That’s the title I’ve given it, but it’s also the title of the book that my special guest today, Patricia Engler, who’s a Christian apologetic speaker for answers and Genesis has written, and she said earlier, there will be a study guide that comes out with it. There’s only like 11 chapters in this book by 360 pages approximately. So it’s not real long, but it’s very simply and logically laid out, I can say, and would be very valuable I think if you want to on this topic to understand it better, listen to these two programs and then you have that book in the study guide, and I encourage you to use it.
It’s a great way to learn more about a topic of great significance. Now, Patricia, as we close out the program today, I had you to define a little bit at the beginning, Marxism communism, socialism, and you’ve kind of put some of those pieces together In the second segment. We look back at some historical examples of how Marxism came to be and the circumstances and just briefly consider commonality to events of the day. Literally, there’s nothing new under the sun. Human nature does not change. And what we find in history past can be expected to be repeated in history, future just the way it is. That’s what scripture says because it’s the way it is. But talked about some of those examples in the segment two, and then segment three looked at some of the origins of the dark spiritual roots, really the occultic connection and many things underpin this philosophy of Marxism, which has yes, economic aspects of it and certain things, but at its heart it’s a view towards God in a rejection of what God says. So it’s very spiritual in its basic form. But here, this last segment, let’s just take a couple of what may be termed more common objections that those who are supporters of Marxism would use to attack those like us who are talking here right now and saying there are issues with this thing called Marxism, arguments that they may use to dispel and to make, like anybody who raises a question about it to look silly. What would be one of those first major objections And then refute that, if you don’t mind.
Patricia Engler:
Yes, for sure. So one common objection that I often hear is, oh, well, the Bible teaches socialism, so therefore Christians shouldn’t really oppose Marxism. So people might point out, for instance, well, the Old Testament gleaning laws required landowners to leave part of their crop for the poor. And early Christians shared goods in common and acts. That’s one we hear a lot. There’s also this kind of popular misconception that while socialism is just about helping people and doing justice and dropping oppression, which God’s word commands us to do, but one really important issue is that Marxism defines terms like justice and oppression so differently from scripture, and it teaches a completely unbiblical worldview. We know, for instance, that God’s word condemns injustice in terms of sinful actions and attitudes. But Marxism says, well, if you’re born with the wrong identity traits like light skin in a y chromosome, if you happen to be a guy, then you’re automatically an oppressor and therefore in unjust.
So social justice demands that you be disempowered, but that is not justice as God’s word teaches it. And scripture is also clear that our main problem is sin. All humans are guilty of sin. Our ultimate hope is only in Jesus Christ. But Marxism in new Marxism says, the problem is socioeconomic conditions. People are guilty or innocent based on what class they belong to. Our hope is in redistributing wealth and power even by force and violence if necessary, which is for sure not Christianity. And God said also instructs people to practice generosity by voluntarily giving of their own wealth, which belongs to God, not by confiscating other people’s wealth. So that certainly answers most of the examples that people try to point to, to say The Bible teaches socialism, things like gleaning laws actually assumed private ownership and didn’t entail equal outcomes for everyone regardless of personal responsibility and diligence. And the Christians who shared their goods in common did so voluntarily in a way that didn’t involve coercive state redistribution. So ultimately, despite some overlapping language, Marxism Christianity define words very differently. They look different in practice and they rest on incompatible worldview foundations. So being able to explain that is important for Christians refuting Marxism.
Sam Rohrer:
Yeah, it is. And you’ve really identified some key things, voluntary versus coerced private property, a function of what God has laid out and to which then stewardship to God then becomes the principle is done away with under communism or Marx, the thought that where the property, as you said, their goal is, people will own nothing and be happy. No, no, you will not. Ladies and gentlemen, if that’s the direction, you will be miserable and be a slave. And that is exactly opposite of what scripture talks about. Okay, we have a couple more minutes. Is there another argument that perhaps it’s common that you’d like to identify and then refute?
Patricia Engler:
Yeah. One you hear a lot is that, well, Marx was right, but his ideas were just misapplied. So maybe communism just hasn’t worked out wherever it’s been tried because maybe societies were immature, the leaders were flawed, the people weren’t motivated enough, the technology just wasn’t developed enough yet. But maybe now we could make communism work. And I mean, Marx did have some perceptive points highlighting the destructiveness of greed and the significance of material realities and the problem of exploitation, which God’s word actually lets us recognize as wrong. But it’s also true that communism never played out as Marks thought. It never moved past dictatorships. It led to countless deaths. So the important question is that because his ideas were misapplied or because they are inherently flawed, and I think it’s pretty easy to point out that the latter is the case. Just a couple of the main flaws were his faulty economic assumptions and his faulty worldview beliefs, which are even worse.
So regarding the first set of mistakes seemed to incorrectly think that history has to unfold a certain way, that certain problems with the industrial revolution are just inherent to capitalism. And he also overestimated how motivated real people would be to contribute to communist societies without getting much back for themselves. So these are different problems, and people who have actually lived through communism could point out other practical issues. But I think the worst set of the worst category of errors was his faulty worldview beliefs because he had unbiblical and therefore incorrect ideas about humans nature core problem and redemptive hope. He basically got all the major issues wrong, and he neglected that humans are sinners. We can never make heaven on earth for ourselves, especially by sinful, violent, and covetous means. So Marx looked at certain real problems through his faulty worldview, and he therefore proposed faulty solutions. And there’s no right way to build a society on wrong beliefs. If you’re building a building and if you use the same flawed foundation every single time, it’s going to fail every time, and people will get hurt in the process. So that’s why I need to learn from history and build on a foundation of uncompromised truth, which God’s word lets us do
Sam Rohrer:
Excellent excellently and very tightly stated. Patricia, thank you so much for being with me today, ladies and gentlemen. Again, that book that she has written that you can find@answersingenesis.org is Modern Marxism, A Guide for Christians in a Woke New World. And I’ll just leave you with this thought again on here. We talk about a biblical worldview. We talk about the dependence on the authority of scripture. When we are anchored, ladies and gentlemen, in God’s Word, we will not be moved. We will not be moved, as I mentioned yesterday, what do we need to do? We need to be very vigilant in these days of deception. We need to be sober. We need to be anchored. We need to seek God’s wisdom, not man’s wisdom. And we need to exhibit courage, truth-based courage that comes from the knowledge and confidence of God’s word and relationship with him, where he’s not given us a spirit of fear, but a power and the love and the sub mind. And when we do that, our feet will not be quickly moved. We will identify and be able to see that which is happening around us and be able to respond in a biblical fashion. Thank you so much for joining and being with us today, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you again, Patricia. God bless you and your great work.
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