Mar. 16, 2019

Subject: American Leftism Part 2: Radically Transform America, or a Search for Ultimate Meaning?

John 10:10 “I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.”

This week is our spring break for most universities. The very word “university” is Latin for “Unity in Diversity”, but celebrating our differences is no longer the university goal. Our young people are being fed leftist ideology, which is so far away from truth it is mystifying how anyone can embrace it.

Here are the top 8 leftist indoctrinations on our campuses: 1) there is nothing exceptional about America. In fact, America must apologize for its past sins; 2) there is no difference between men and women – gender identity has no basis on physiology; 3) the greatest threat to America today is climate change; 4) white privilege is a cancer in American culture and must be eradicated; 5) police are racist, 6) conservative Christian views are “hate speech” and must be shut down; 7) the Bible is fiction and contains dangerous ideas; and 8) anyone who supports the President of the United States is, like him, either a fascist or a Nazi.

While many of us are shocked by this, leftism didn’t spring up overnight. Decades of indoctrination have produced current leaders like New York City mayor Bill De Blasio, whose latest campaign to ‘save the earth’ is his 2019-2020 school lunch program called “Meatless Mondays”, where only vegetarian meals will be served to the city’s 1.1 million students. The reason given? The mayor believes this will have a positive impact on climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions (reduce cow methane gases).

This follows on the heels of the ‘Green New Deal’ by Socialist representative Alexandria Ocazio-Cortez (NY), where an unprecedented expansion of government regulation is aimed at attacking the greatest enemy facing America. Who is this enemy? Russia? China? Radical Islamic terrorism? Climate change.

Jonathan Lesser, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, responded to this ‘Green New Deal’ by first explaining the goal of the Leftist movement is to radically transform the economy through total government control. Here are two of his points: “#1: Moving to a greenhouse-gas free economy by 2030 is impossible, barring Star-Trek like discoveries of new energy technologies. #2: Promising everyone a high-paying job, free health care, free education, a guaranteed income, and guaranteed vacations is a fairy tale.” Sounds a lot like Venezuela, where once one of the world’s wealthiest countries is now ruled by a leftist government that is starving its citizens, because they can’t pay for these same programs.

If you are like me, trying to find reasons behind leftist ideology, you can only speculate since they won’t tell us why they bet their careers, their futures, on such foolishness. But we can turn to the one source of true wisdom to find some answers: the Bible. It provides coherent answers to the stark contrasts between the Christian and the Secular, or Leftist, worldview. Here are just two of many examples.

1) The Bible teaches that every person is a special creation of a good and all-powerful God, created in His image, with capacities to think, feel, and worship that set us above all other life forms. The universities teach that every person is a descendant of a tiny cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach 3.5 billion years ago – we are the blind and arbitrary product of time, chance, and natural forces.

2) The Bible teaches that God created every person unique from every other person, and so deeply loves us that He desires each person’s companionship and has a perfect plan for each of our lives. The universities teach that we all exist on a tiny planet in a minute solar system in an empty corner of a meaningless universe, and at death we cease to exist. We came from nothing and we are going nowhere

If we want to study true “unity in diversity”, look at the unlikely assembly of Jesus’s disciples: John, a fisherman by trade, was more sensitive than his brother James, also a fisherman, who was brazen and outspoken. Matthew was a tax collector, hated as a traitor. Philip was shrewd. Andrew was a pleaser. Simon was a religious zealot. Thomas and Bartholomew were skeptics. Peter, another fisherman, was impulsive. James and Thaddeus were quiet. Yet, they were united in their devotion to Jesus Christ.

The disciples did bet their careers, their futures, on the truth that only Jesus brought ultimate meaning to their lives. They observed Jesus’s virtuous life, they came to understand His vicarious death, and they were eyewitnesses to His victorious resurrection. It was Jesus Christ who fulfilled the words that He spoke in our verse for this week: He came to give abundant, ultimate meaning to their lives. It is this same Jesus who lives today, who continues to give meaning to millions around the world. He can do the same for you.

Ed Croteau is a resident of Lee’s Summit and hosts a weekly study in Lees Summit called “Faith: Substance and Evidence.” He can be reached with your questions through the Lee’s Summit Tribune at [email protected].