Axe to the Root with Bojidar Marinov | Reconstructionist Radio Reformed Network

Welcome to Episode 42 of Axe to the Root Podcast, part of the War Room Productions, I am Bo Marinov, and for the next 20 minutes we will tackle a topic in history, namely, the period of great changes in technology which started in the mid-1700s, in a few nations in Europe, and continued through the 19thcentury in all of the West: the Industrial Revolution. And, we can say, continues throughout the world today, and doesn’t seem to have stopped. You don’t have to have been homeschooled to know this much about history: in the last 200 years, the pace of technological, industrial, and economic changes has accelerated to levels unknown in previous periods of history – and least in those periods of which we have somewhat concrete data. (We don’t know anything concrete about the technological growth and levels in the years before the Flood.) I am sure I am not the only father who has been asked by his children, “Dad, how did you all live before we had theInternet and GPS and smartphones?” The world is changing at an accelerating rate. In many ways, the Industrial Revolution hasn’t ended yet. We are living through it.

As Christians who have a covenantal view of everything, however, we should be asking ourselves the question: Did all this technological change also induce a change in culture? If it did, what are the cultural changes that came with it, or were caused by it, or were encouraged by it? Perhaps the very change in technologies and production and economic action is a cultural change in itself as well? Keep in mind, when we as Christians talk about culture, we should have in mind Henry Van Til’s dictum in his book, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture, that “Culture is religion externalized.” Culture, for us, is not in visible expressions like ballet performances, fashion, or folk festivals. We define culture ethically and judicially: the sum and system of beliefs (religion), concepts (ideology), and practices (economics, politics, education, family, etc.) in relation to the ultimate questions of good and evil, both for the individual and for his society and institutions. The focus here is on the dichotomy between good and evil.

Did the Industrial Revolution, then, produce cultural changes? Marxists believe that. Remember, when we talked about the “Oxymoron of Cultural Marxism,” we saw that in the Marxist system, culture, ethics, law – in short, concepts of good and evil – are entirely defined and determined by the economic base. The Industrial Revolution did produce gigantic economic changes; within a generation or two, the capital base of the Western societies was transformed immensely, both for what Marxists believe to be the “ruling class” and for the mass of ordinary people. Thus, since for Marxists changes in the economic base produce changes in the cultural superstructure, there was also a change in culture.

From a covenantal perspective, of course, it is the other way around: the economic changes happened because of an underlying culture which defined and determined everything, from the way people view time, labor, and material resources, to their practical applications of these beliefs. The Industrial Revolution was not really a revolution; it was only the practical outworking, the ripe fruit and visible expression of a true revolution that had happened centuries earlier, in the minds and hearts of men. It took a while for men to put their beliefs to work, but it eventually happened, and thus we had the Industrial Revolution.

This, however, is only an introduction to my real topic; my focus here is not the presuppositional differences between Marxism or any other modern version of secular humanism on one hand and Christianity on the other; we will talk about those in other episodes. Neither is my focus the underlying culture behind the Industrial Revolution; such a topic is immensely important and, again, I will talk about it in future episodes. My focus here is a bit narrower, namely, what changes did the Industrial Revolution bring to the Christian family? Did it weaken it or did it strengthen it? Did it help the Christian family fulfill its purpose in the Kingdom of God, or did it set it off its course in a direction which would eventually render it meaningless? Did it open up new horizons and new areas for growth and exploration, or did it shut the door to the future, laying the foundation for replacing the Christian family with something else? Was the Industrial Revolution a friend or a foe to the Christian family?

In the last several decades, an opinion has become popular among many Christians theologians and public speakers, and among many ordinary Christians as well, that the net effect the Industrial Revolution had on the Christian family was largely negative. That the Industrial Revolution destroyed the Christian family. That before the Industrial revolution the Christian family was OK, it was the real, true Christian family as it should be according to the Biblical standards – or at least pretty close to it – and then, when industrialization came, the Christian family disintegrated to what it is today. Quite a few Christians and groups today espouse that view. The main proponents of such view of the destructive role of the Industrial Revolution are the modern patriarchalists and agrarianists; but its influence goes beyond them. The website of Christian Assemblies International has an article about it, titled (note well), “Rebuilding the Family: Recovering from Industrialism.” Chuck Colson’s The Christian Worldview Journal had analysis by Robin Phillips back in 2012 about “Industrialization and Marriage,” repeating the same points about the destruction wrought by the Industrial Revolution. Allan Carlson, former president of the Rockford Institute and for a time, a leading voice in the paleoconservative movement together with Pat Buchanan, has several books on this or related topics, defending the same view, that the Christian family was destroyed or at least crippled by the Industrial Revolution.

The family, according to these folks, was united in fellowship and identity, because before the Industrial Revolution, most of the work happened within the home or close to the home. Robin Phillips claims that,

in pre-industrial eras, the economic life of the family was tightly bound to the home.

In fact, prior to 1800, the vast majority of people around the globe lived and worked in the same place. Whatever else a couple’s relationship may have involved, they were quite literally in business together. The home, in turn, was not a place where people “lived” as a passive activity when they were not doing other things. Rather the home was a small factory, a bustling hub of productivity. [end of quote]” (The question here is: How much of a productivity was it, given the level of poverty? Phillips has not bothered to check his claims against historical data.) Industrialization, he continues, made the home “functionless,” and thus destroyed its importance in the society. According to another author,

The same families lived in the same locales for generations, since the family was tied to the land. Mom and Dad usually came from the same community and therefore shared a common cultural background, values and sense of identity. Children were an asset; every extra pair of hands meant the farm could produce more food (or the craftsman more products). Mom’s domestic skills, baking, cooking, sewing, etc., were desperately needed in the home. Children worked closely with their parents from a young age. Dad worked with the sons in the fields (or at his craft), Mom with the daughters in the house. Children learned not only skills, but character and values at the same time.

Work, recreation, religion, and welfare were all family-orientated and contributed to a sense of identity and belonging. Children had both economic as well as social incentive to maintain close family ties. They inherited the land, expanding the family’s economic basis. The extended family assisted during emergencies. The sociological background therefore reinforced biblical family values.

Their solution to this evil, of course, is a return to agrarianism, a state of somewhat pre-industrial level of economy and production, and a re-encapsulation of the population into small, self-sufficient communities where, according to them, the importance of the family will be restored, and therefore we will have Christian culture once again. None of these guys ever says how such a culture will be able to compete economically against the industrial culture of today; they assume it will be “productive,” but I haven’t seen anything specific yet.

Either way, there is a very serious problem with this interpretation of the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the Christian family: It doesn’t correspond to the true historical facts. Yes, we all love to have this idyllic, nostalgic view of times past and idealize them; after all, the mythology of a past Golden Age is present in every society. But such Golden Age never really existed for the Christian family in the agrarian societies before the 1800s. To start with, no matter how we look at the history of Europe before the 1800s, one thing is sure: it was a time of stagnated populations. Between AD 1000 and AD 1800, a period of 800 years, it took longer than 300 years for the population to double; mathematically, this is growth of less than a quarter of a percent a year. While some of this low rate of growth can be ascribed to wars and plagues, what is seldom realized today is that the share of families to the general population was much lower than today. That is, far fewer people – as a percentage of the population – actually got married and had children. Yes, I know, we imagine that in the Middle Ages, because of arranged marriages, almost everyone got married, but this idea misses the fact that a significant part of the men were tied to the land or to feudal obligations or servanthood, which prevented them from either finding a wife or being able to afford one. Indentured servants were generally excluded from the crude censuses of those days, and thus, we don’t have data of the men and women who could never marry. The medieval family was still not fully a Christian family; it was a transition from the pagan clannish forms. Those of better social status could afford to get married and have children, but the economic conditions did not allow for all to be so.

It is important also to note that the bright picture of happy families of children working with their parents in the field or in the home has absolutely no basis in history. Those who have any familiarity with the history of European art know one really creepy and striking characteristic of it: children are almost non-existent in medieval art. There are hundreds of art pieces from before the Reformation period, and many of them depict everyday life (including peasants working in the field), and there are no children in them. The only children in these pieces are idealized cherubim and the child Jesus, and all of them are shown with face features of grown up men. It wasn’t until the Dutch period of European art that children became popular subjects of art – but then, the Netherlands in the 1500s and the 1600s was an urban, quasi-industrial society, not localized agrarian economy.

The demographic stagnation and the total cultural lack of interest in children are not an indicator of strong families during these agrarian periods. If anything, the little growth that Europe had was in the cities, which grew faster than the countryside. The idyllic agrarian family that was a big happy fellowship of stable identity simply didn’t exist. If anything, pre-industrial Europe was a place of stagnated communities where children were at best a nuisance, and the most optimistic expectations of the future were limited to the crops next year. Read Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror to get a glimpse.

The real Age of the Christian family in fact started with the Industrial Revolution. With the gathering of workers in the cities, people of lower birth were freed from the social restraints of village life, which by that time was still at least half -feudal. The population density also made matching easier; the social cohesion was much greater than in the village. Contrary to the perceptions of many today, the wages in the cities were not lower than in the countryside, nor was food scarce. To the contrary, the workers in the cities saw their incomes increase fourfold in real terms within 50 years. The cities were still crowded and hygiene and medicine lagged behind, but life was much better than anything in the countryside. This increased the share of families, and also increased the number of children to an astounding average of 6 per family. The UK conducted their first official census in 1801 – the population was about 10 million (excluding Ireland). 50 years later, it had doubled to 20 million. Another fifty years later, it doubled again to 40 million. This was a net annual growth of 1.4%, 7 times higher than the average for the previous 2,000 years.

Did industrialization lead to decline in the Christian faith in the population? Not at all. To the contrary, the 19th century will be remembered with the highest ever church attendance and participation of the working class. In England, this growth in interest to religion led to the growth of congregations both for the official Anglican church and for non-conformist movements like Baptists and Congregationalists. Same happened in the industrial centers in the United States and Germany. Charles Spurgeon’s gigantic congregation consisted almost entirely of factory workers; so popular was he among the working class, that Friedrich Engels (Karl Marx’s friend and co-author), when asked whom he hated most in life, replied curtly, “Spurgeon.” Out of these urban working classes also came the greatest impetus for the missionary movement of the 19th and the early 20th century. (Missionaries like David Livingstone started their career at very early ages, working at the textile factories.)

Ironically, during this period, the decline of interest in the Christian faith was mainly observed among the higher classes, the nobility and the bourgeois – those who could afford to work from home and have their family fellowship all the time. Where the rich never married, or experimented with debauchery, sodomy, occultism, and narcotics, the masses of factory workers married, raised children, attended churches and organized all kinds of missions, voluntary charities and mutual assistance organizations for their own – and all that while working 12 hours a day, with their children also working in the factories. If we were allowed to inspect the demographic constitution of the families who are in heaven, we may discover that the average Christian family residing in heaven at this moment has been a working family in the West in the 19th or the early 20th century. Interestingly enough, the decline of religion among the working classes came very late, and it actually coincided with the first social victories of the trade unions, namely, reduced work hours, and restrictions on hiring children in the factories. More time for the father with his family should lead to stronger families and deeper commitment, but it didn’t. If there was ever a Golden Age of the Christian family, it was the age of unimpeded capitalism of the Industrial Revolution.

Why was it so, then? And why are the modern commentators so blatantly wrong when it comes to the Industrial Revolution?

The answer must come from our understanding of the original covenant of God with man, the Dominion Covenant in the Garden, in Genesis 1:26-28: “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” The meaning of that Covenant was obviously economics: God gave man the resources of the whole earth and commanded man to use these resources to turn them into being useful for mankind. In the next chapter (2:15), we that God put man in the Garden and commanded him to work it and protect it. That covenant has never been repealed. In his sin, Adam made it harder to fulfill his obligations under the Dominion Covenant, but the obligations remained. Man is still under obligation to use the resources of God’s earth and capitalize on them, that is, turn them to productive use for mankind.

The family, thus, was not created as an independent, central, terminal institution. It was not created to be a “fellowship.” While fellowship certainly is part of the family, it is not its central characteristic and purpose. The family was created to serve man in his task of dominion; its central characteristic is supposed to be productivity and growth, growth not simply in the sense of more children – although, more children is generally part of it (but not always) – but in the sense of increasing dominion of man over the creation. The fellowship between a man and his wife must serve this purpose; it can’t be independent of it, neither can it be reduced to pure religious spirituality. The same applies in respect to the children and their function in the family: they are supposed to be the trustees of accumulated capital, used not to focus on the past but to develop the future into more productive, and therefore wealthier civilization. Children were not expected to stay with the family and continue doing the same thing their parents were doing. They were supposed to leave their parents and find their place in the greater and greater capitalization of nature. It is for this reason God speaks of the ideal wife in economic terms (Prov. 31) and of the children as slaves, an economic term, and heirs, another economic term (Gal 4:1). It is for this reason that specialization of production started from the very beginning, with the sons of Adam and Eve (Gen, 4:2), and continued developing after that. The covenant requires growth in productivity; and growth in productivity means increasing division of labor, generation after generation. The children must not remain at the level of their parents, neither in specialization nor in output.

In pre-industrial times, this function and purpose of the family could still be fulfilled, but it was greatly hampered by the scarcity of resources. Or, more precisely, by the inability of mankind to make full use of the available resources. Time was not really an important resource; the limitations were in terms of land and tools. In order to grow and prosper, a man had to have control over large masses of land; thus, it was mainly the landed gentry in Europe that could control resources. Even with a large family, the average peasant could hardly hope to be able to grow; and in fact, more children would mean more mouths to feed over the same land, which only produced limited quantities of food. In this context of subsistence agriculture, the family’s main purpose and function – economic growth – was hampered. And thus, for all the imagined fellowship and shared identity, family didn’t matter much.

The Industrial Revolution freed production from the restraint of physical resources. The same resource now could be put to productive use better than any time before. (Think of what a piece of coal could produce in an open fire and in the furnace of a steam engine.) Smaller and smaller quantities of resources could now produce larger and larger quantities of capital and consumer goods. The frontier of man’s economic endeavor suddenly shifted. Land was not an important resource. Time was. The more time he put to work, the more he could prosper – even without too much of available resources. Man could now fulfill the Dominion Covenant in ways unimaginable before. The family could finally enter into its fulfilled purpose. It had a meaning and a purpose.

That the children didn’t spend as much time with their parents as before was not a tragedy. To the contrary, in the context of the Christian family, each child now had the opportunity to find his own purpose. Under previous economies, the society seldom had accumulated resources to afford exploration and individual attention to each child concerning his true skills and gifts. A child could have been born with the gift of an engineer, or a writer; what determined his future occupation would still be the occupation of his father. It is true that this assured a certain level of stability, but this was not the stability of growth, it was the stability of stagnation. When people are prevented – whether by circumstances or by social custom – from finding their true skills and purpose, they won’t normally be interested in innovation and growth in the field they were forced to work. The Industrial Revolution, for the first time in history, freed up resources to allow children to pursue the gifts God had put in them, irrespective of their birth. This is how David Livingstone, the son of a worker in a cotton factory, could become a hero of Protestant missions later in his life. And this is how millions of others were able to go beyond their humble origins and lay the foundation of our modern middle class. The covenant required separation from the past (Phil. 3:13) and focus on the future (1 Cor. 3:22). And it was this focus on the future that made the Christian family the strongest institution among industrial workers.

That view of modern theologians, that idyllic picture of the family before the Industrial Revolution, is based on a religion of stagnation. At the bottom of this religion of stagnation is fear, fear of change, fear of the future, deep pessimism about the human race, even in its redeemed state. And it was this fear that was the real reason for the decline of Christianity in the industrial centers of the West. The Industrial Revolution didn’t destroy the Christian family; the church did. The church got scared of the visible changes in the world. The church didn’t see in these changes the fulfillment of the Dominion Covenant to a level higher than ever before. The church adopted a pessimistic eschatology which saw the modern industrialized world as the product of Satan; and therefore assumed that the only solution is a return to earlier times of more stability, which, in reality, is stagnation. God gave us a blessing in the Industrial Revolution. We, as a church, squandered it in our fear and unbelief. It’s time to reclaim it.

The assigned reading for this week will be three articles I have written on this subject, available on ChristendomRestored.com:

“Relationship vs. Purpose: How the Church Destroys the Christian Family.”

“Christian Culture vs. Clan Culture.”

“Individual Purpose and the Kingdom of God.”

As you read them, think about the true purpose of your family, and how your children should be raised in regard to their focus on the future and their expectations of their future. It is in that focus on the future where the purpose of your family lies. All your family devotions are a waste of time, unless this is cultivated in your children.

And remember in your prayers and your giving Bulgarian Reformation Ministries, a mission organization which is unique in Eastern Europe in that it preaches the comprehensive worldview of the Kingdom of God, and brings the Gospel to every area of life. Visit BulgarianReformation.com, subscribe to the newsletter, and donate.

Welcome to Episode 41 of Axe to the Root Podcast, part of the War Room Productions, I am Bo Marinov, and for the next 20 minutes we will be talking about an an issue that has become big in our days. Namely, fake news. We’ll be talking more than just about fake news, as you may have guessed, because as I said in the very first episode of Axe to the Root, we want to look at every topic from the perspective of covenantal thinking, that is, make an ethical/judicial analysis of every topic we are touching, based on the Word of God and specifically on the Law of God. Because fake news means we will be touching issues of truth and falseness, and truth is never ethically neutral; it is never just some intellectual proposition or metaphysical statement; there is always some deeper ethical/judicial reality behind everything we call “truth.”

Contrary to what many believe, the phenomenon of fake news did not appear just recently. Neither did it appear with the Internet, let alone with the social media. Fake news have always existed – especially in the 20th century, especially before the Internet. Under Communism, the media were always fake news – although, as we will see, they always reported the correct facts, and yet, they were fake news. Media in the US was a notch better in the 20thcentury, because of the greater openness of the American society. But in general, the media had a hold on the news, and there wasn’t much accountability for fake news. I have in my possession a dozen journals from the 1930s through the 1950s, called Time Capsule, each one a history of a specific year from the pages of Time Magazine for the year. Since most of them concern WWII and the period right before it, a period whose history I know in exhaustive detail (being a WWII history buff), it is interesting to me to see how the reported news at the time sometimes had very little to do with what actually happened, from our knowledge 60 or 70 years later. Much of the reporting and analyses Time Magazine did at the time were rather very closely following the official government propaganda of the FDR administration. Yes, the facts were correct, and there was a wider coverage than, for example, in the news in the Soviet Union. But in general, the slant is obvious.

Social media indeed made fake news even easier to spread, but, ironically, also made it easier to spot and refute. In general, the Internet helps more than it harms. It also made it possible to raise awareness of the existence of fake news. I know, I know, this awareness was recently popularized by politicians and media trying to smear their opponents, but now that the cat is out of the bag, no politician and no media can remain immune to scrutiny. For whatever motive they all decided to raise the issue of fake news, it is all turning on themselves now. Media on both ends of the spectrum are now thoroughly scrutinized and found guilty of fake news, whether they are FOX News and Breitbart or CNN and MSNBC. That, of course, in addition to websites that are straight committed to producing fake news for the purposes of political propaganda, like reports about mass gang rapes by Muslims in Europe (all of them factually false, not supported by any real data or statistics), or about impending coup-d’état by the military against Obama, or about ISIS members caught sneaking through the Mexican border (not a single one was even spotted). Yes, most of these sites continue spreading rumors and false news, and some of the more respected do it too, but there are checks and balances now. Much better than before.

Still, there’s much of it going around, and each one of us, once in a while, lowers their guard and allows some fake news to grab our attention and believe it. I have done it, too, and then later I look at it and I think, “What in the world have I been thinking? Such an obvious lie, I should have been able to recognize it as such on the spot, and yet I allowed to be tricked by it?” There is something in us that goads us to automatically accept fake news as legitimate, against our better judgment. In fact, it is this something in us, what produces that automatic reaction, that is the very reason fake news exist and thrive, even in a time when everything can be directly checked and verified. Fake news exist and prosper because of us, not because of the skill of their creators. And when we approach fake news from the position of covenantal thinking, our question must be: “What is it that makes us accept fake news?”

Y’all remember from our first episode that covenantal thinking is ethical/judicial thinking. Our faith produces in us certain habit of judging between good and evil. We are supposed to judge between good and evil all the time; no, scratch that, we can’t but always judge between good and evil all the time. No matter what we are engaged in, at any minute of the day, we are judging between two ethical choices. Some choices may not be fundamental and important, but only peripheral, others may be, but at any minute we decide what to do with our time and resources, and this is only because we value one thing and we devalue another. And when we are mature, Biblically-oriented, our standard for judging – and even the topics on which we meditate and make choices – are Biblical, and based on the Law of God and on His Covenant of Grace. But we are not always mature, and we are not always discerning and careful to judge between good and evil according to the Word of God – and I will be the first to admit that I am just as guilty of such lapses as anyone else – and most of the time our perceptions of reality are based on presuppositions different from what the Word of God teaches us. Our focus is on ourselves, we judge the world based on our own ego, and our verdicts just follow what our ego tells us. And when we do this, we are just eager and ready and willing to find some confirmation of our prejudice. If I am white and obsessed with my whiteness, I will be eager to hear any kind of “news” that tell me how great the white race is and how the blacks are always lower in IQ and have greater crime rate etc. Of course it’s not prejudice; it’s statistics, it’sscience right? If I am black and I am obsessed with my blackness, I will always tend to hear all kinds of news that prove that black is better. If I am anti-immigration, I will always be eager to hear and accept any news that tell me why we should close our borders, and why all Muslims are the same, rapists, low IQ, etc. Our presuppositions about the world will serve as the filter for the news we want to allow to reach our eyes and ears. Not just our intellectual presuppositions, but also our judicial presuppositions, those that help us decide between good and evil. And most of the time, as we are not still sanctified, these judicial presuppositions have a simple form: I am good, and everything related to me is good, and everyone different from me is bad. And fake news feed on this filter. It may be fake, but it fits our false system. So we accept it as valid.

And indeed, every time you read some fake news, pay attention: it is often directed towards making some people feel good about themselves; especially against other categories of people. Or, most of the time, it is directed towards making people afraid for themselves, against other categories of people. Feeling good or feeling fear, it is always about ourselves against other categories of people. But before fake news can be accepted, we have already accepted a value system that centers on ourselves, against other categories of people. And this rotten foundation is the perfect soil for the fungus of fake news. This is what makes us accept even the most bizarre and outlandish stories that have no foundation whatsoever.

Recently, I watched a video in which Paul Washer was approached by activists from AHA, Abolish Human Abortion, and watching the video, I was shocked what things Washer said he heard about AHA: that their activists were breaking into churches and tearing the place completely down and vandalizing property, etc. Joel McDurmon in his article on American Vision website ascribes it to false information (that is, fake news) that someone gave Washer, which is correct, he was a victim of deliberate misinformation. However, Joel still didn’t cover the issue, what in the world made Washer even accept such rumor as probable? I mean, I have been told the same things and yet, it didn’t even register, it was so absurd that I just laughed it off. Paul Washer in that video was, at the beginning, very seriously talking to these guys as if he was absolutely serious such an accusation was true. It was just bizarre.

The real reason is, it must have resonated with some false presuppositions Paul Washer has about the word, and about himself. I know, I know, you will tell me, he is a celebrity, I can’t judge him, etc., etc. And, to his credit, in the video he did seem to change his mind and he said he would read their literature, which is good. But no matter what you believe about him, and even with his change of mind, it is still true that initially, something made him accept obvious lies for valid truth. Why? The logical answer is: Like everyone else, Paul Washer has certain false presuppositions about the world. The fake news he was served just confirmed what he already believed, that he and his category of people are good and someone else – someone in a different category – was evil. And there, it immediately clicked, and Paul Washer was convinced that an obvious lie must be true. And it took 15 minutes of active persuasion for him to even begin – with suspicion and reluctance – to accept that he might be wrong. If a celebrity like Paul Washer can fall victim to his own false presuppositions, we know why fake news continue to thrive, even in a world of easy verification of all news.

But this is not all. When it comes to fake news, we are used to think of it as incorrect presentation of the facts. Or, presenting non-facts. Or, false reporting of true facts. When we focus on the reporting of facts, we are thinking as Greeks, imagining that the essence of truth is in the facts. “Just the facts, Ma’am.” Just give us the real, material, objective facts. Truth, however, is not purely metaphysical, objective, impersonal facts. Yes, there is such objectivity in the universe, although it is not impersonal: all objectivity is in the mind of God, so it is all personal, as Van Til taught us. When we come down to the level of human beings, truth is not in the bare facts themselves but in the ethical/judicial interpretation of the facts, in what the facts speak to our moral conscience, to social justice (no, not socialist justice but justice in the society), to the meaning and purpose of man and his institutions. We already know from Romans 1:18-22 that both we and the unbelievers look at the same facts and see the same God in them. But the same real facts turn into truth for us and error for them. The difference is in our moral commitment, in our ethical/judicial foundation, in our covenantal interpretation of the facts. The same facts are interpreted differently – without changing the facts themselves – and thus the two parties come to diametrically opposed conclusions, one true and one false. It is all in our ethical commitment: man is an ethical being first and foremost; he is defined by his ethical commitment and choices; and, take this, truth is defined by his ethical commitment and choices. Two men with two different ethical systems will come to two different conclusions from the same real facts.

Now, let me repeat this, and then we will come to a rather surprising conclusion: two men, with two different ethical systems, will come to different conclusions about truth from the same real facts. And then, logically, the same real facts will produce true understanding in one man and false understanding in another. And now, hold on to your chairs, this corollary is very important to us: Fake news can be produced even by reporting real, objective facts, provided they meet a mind committed to a false ideology, or to a false interpretation of reality. In other words, if one wanted to produce a false perception in his listeners, he doesn’t have to lie about the real facts; he needs to influence their interpretation of them.

Eugene Lyons, an American writer and journalist who was born in Russia but his parents emigrated to the US, wrote in 1967 a book titled Workers’ Paradise Lost, about the 50th anniversary of the Communist revolution in Russia, giving an account of the development of Communism, showing that the conditions of the Soviet worker haven’t improved under the Communist regime but to the contrary. In it, he gives some interesting facts of his life in Soviet Russia as a correspondent of United Press International. (He started his work there as an admirer of the Soviets, and ended up completely disappointed with them.) During the Great Depression in the US, Soviet propaganda gave detailed accounts of all the horrors of the Depression – very true, real accounts. Lyons recalls that his Russian friends, despite the fact that he confirmed to them the reality of the Great Depression, didn’t believe him that it was really happening; they thought it was some sort of a hoax. The reason? If their own Soviet media were reporting it in such detail, it must not be true. Lyons was not able to convince them.

In a more recent story, Yale Richmond, US foreign service officer for 30 years during the Cold War, tells about Soviet diplomats and officials visiting the US in the 1980s as part of exchange programs during the Gorbachevian perestroika. When those Soviet officials were taken to see American supermarkets, they were astonished at the abundance and availability of food, and most of them didn’t want to accept that this was anything more than a Potemkin village, something put up for the show, just to impress them. One wanted his hosts to drive him to different places and let him pick which store he would visit, to make sure it was all true. Another one, when their car got stuck in the traffic of Los Angeles, expressed the opinion that the American government just brought all these cars together to impress him, as a propaganda stunt. Richmond also said that for some of these officials, the realization of the truth led to some serious psychological depression. Boris Yeltsyn, when he visited Houston in 1989, also confided that he was close to depression and hopelessness about the Russian people, so shocked was he of what he saw, of the difference in living standards.

Now, think about it. In the first case, back in the 1920s and 30s, Soviet officials didn’t believe a real story, even when confirmed by an American, even though it served their own cause and their own personal and national pride, in a way. In the second case, in the 1980s, Soviet officials didn’t believe even what they saw in front of their eyes, and when they had to accept it, it led to psychological issues. In both cases, a real story was distrusted, because of pre-existing prejudice, an apriori ethical/judicial interpretation of reality. In one case, it was an ethical/judicial assessment of their own government. In the second, it was an ethical/judicial assessment of the American government – whether it was true or false is another matter, what is important is that it was accepted apriori, as the foundation for interpretation of reality. Reporting real events eventually led to fake news, only because of the frames of interpretation.

And it gets even more complicated. In our first example, where Soviet officials didn’t trust Eugene Lyons about the Great Depression, their ethical/judicial frame of interpretation was actually true and correct: the Soviet government was indeed a government of liars and lies, and its media were not to be trusted. But when real news came from a source that was not trusted, the immediate conclusion of those who had the truthful frame of interpretation was that the news was false. You see that? Even real reporting, can sometimes create fake news, and even if reflected through a somewhat correct ethical/judicial frame. Understand the complexity of the problem?

I have explained the complexity of the problem even further in an article some time ago, titled, “Ferguson: Capitalizing on the Stupidity of the Conservative Voter,”, on BojidarMarinov.com. I know, I know, the title is rather provocative, but in short, sometimes fake news can be created by a group in government by simply creating a conflict, playing both sides of the conflict, and presenting different picture of the same events to both sides of the conflict, and all this while both sides have legitimate concerns. And this is only one of many ways fake news can present itself to us, not through a direct lie, but an indirect influence on our ethical system through which we evaluate all events. We have to understand, without being conspiracy theorists, we still need to be prepared to meet fake news where we least expect it.

Our presuppositions, especially in their ethical aspect, in that aspect which determines good and evil for us, are always the product of our faith. That’s why Christianity is a creedal faith, we have to know what we believe and we have to be able to profess it, credo, in order to be able to build our understanding of the world. Our ethical/judicial system of thought must be self-consciously based on our conscious understanding of our faith and its presuppositions. We need to be able to respond to anyone who is asking us about our faith (1 Peter 3:15). Not just memorizing a creed or a catechism; we need to be able to know how the specific points in our creed translate to the specific circumstances in our society and our time in history. In order to have a solid ethical system, we need to develop – renew – our minds (Rom. 12:2). At every step, our professed faith must be professed only in ethical/judicial applications to the world outside our own heart and our church. A young friend of mine who is a Reformed Episcopalian pastor, started online videos for catechising his listeners. My advice was: Every lesson must speak practical justice and righteousness to something in the world outside. Catechism is important; but catechism without ethical/judicial application will quickly translate into dead faith. Only when his listeners have their minds prepared to meet the ethical/judicial challenges in the world outside the church, they will be capable of preserving and growing their faith.

In a very real way, this is what modern governments do to the children who enroll in their government schools. On the surface, it seems like it is an ethically neutral system. In reality, it is a system of catechizing the children. They are not even catechizing them into formal intellectual propositions about a religion; the catechizing leads directly to the ethical/judicial applications. The goal is to grow the children into minds already conditioned to interpret all the news. The goal is to make them know and judge good from evil according to the morality of the government system. In this way, the governments and their media don’t have to twist the facts for their listeners; they can just present to the the real facts, and they will expect that the children will be like the unbelievers described in Romans 1:18-22: seeing the real thing, believing and committed to a false ideology. Fake news didn’t start with facebook, it starts with your local government school.

Communist propaganda, thus, didn’t have to twist the facts. In reality, most of the time they reported the correct facts about the West. Perhaps there was a slant here and there, under-reporting some facts, over-reporting others. News about the war in Afghanistan, for example, were generally true, if incomplete. Reports about the economic data of the West were true. Even some American movies and shows were allowed on TV every once in a while. I remember when my father and I watched the TV miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man with Nick Nolte and Peter Straus. Watching most of the episodes, I couldn’t see any unusual until my father exclaimed, “Look, even the poor man has his own car.” Suddenly, I realized how different the world of the movie was from our own in Eastern Europe. But the Communists were sure that most people wouldn’t even notice the difference because most people’s presuppositions had been already shaped to see only that in the movie – even in a real American movie – which suited the Communist ideology. They could make fake news even from perfectly real facts.

The solution to fake news, therefore, won’t come from fact-checking websites. We can check all the facts in the world, and we can verify every single figure and statement and time and quote. We can report websites and we can make software that excludes those facts. Fake news will always be a plague, however, if we do not address the real covenantal source of them: our own system of presuppositions, and specifically our own system of ethics. If we have the wrong ethical commitment, if our ethics rotates around us and our group of people and automatically condemns other groups – whether on the basis of genetics, or economics, or place of birth, or denominational background, or professional or IQ status – we will inevitably create our own fake news, even if all we are served is only real, solid, proven, direct facts. Fake news is an ethical/judicial problem, not a problem of metaphysical reality. And the solution is ethical/judicial: justice and righteousness as the foundation of our whole being, and thinking, and action.

The book I will assign for reading this week is Inside the Soviet Alternate Universe by Dick Combs. Combs was a diplomat at the US Embassy in Bulgaria in the 1960s, and he had a very close perspective on the psychology of Communism. I know, it looks like I often return my readers to the experiences of Communism of the last century, but the reality is, this experience is the closest to us today in a comprehensive example of the culture created of a pagan ideology.

And please remember Bulgarian Reformation Ministries in your prayers and giving. We have tried to remain faithful to the call for preaching a comprehensive Gospel in Eastern Europe, training our listeners to develop that maturity which will allow them to judge between good and evil in everything, and thus lay the foundation for a Christian culture. Visit BulgarianReformation.com. Subscribe to the newsletter, and donate. God bless you all.

Welcome to Episode 40 of Axe to the Root Podcast, part of the War Room Productions, I am Bo Marinov, and for the next 20 minutes we will be talking about an ideology that is deeply irrational, has proven to be harmful to great masses of ordinary people, and yet continues to be popular among the same masses of people who have suffered the most from it: economic nationalism. It is known by a number of other names as well, like mercantilism, protectionism, import substitution, economic patriotism, positive trade balance, localism, domestic vertical linkages theory, etc., etc. I prefer the name economic chauvinism, for, behind the façade of all these professionally-sounding names, the essence is deeply immoral, anti-Biblical, and based on a prideful belief in the natural superiority of one’s own group over the others; and pride comes before the fall, as we all know. It is also based on a lack of understanding of the nature of man of his economy; which, in turn, stems from the loss of the concept of Dominion Mandate under God, and in a belief in the divinity of collectives of men, and especially of their political governments. What I want to do this week is take a look at this ideology, show its anti-Biblical character and therefore also its irrationality, and lay out the Biblical view of economic relations.

The essential belief of economic nationalism is that the economic growth and prosperity for a society and its individuals are best achieved when that society is as isolated and independent as possible from outside suppliers. That is, when all the goods and services a society needs are produced within the political boundaries of a nation-state, controlled by a national political and economic elite, with only domestic citizens working to produce them. In its more ambitious version, the ideology envisions also a domestic economy which is “export-oriented,” that is, not only substitutes domestic production for imports, but also tries to take over markets outside its political borders through subsidies for export. Whereas on the surface, the ideology seems to be concerned with production and profit, at its very essence, it is a socialist and statist ideology, for it always requires some form of compulsion by the state, whether in blocking imports through tariffs, or in manipulating the money supply, or in government subsidies for industries (which means higher taxes on everyone else), etc.

As a funny interlude, you know, I plan the topics for these episodes well ahead (I have a list of topics for 100 episodes ahead), and this specific episode’s topic was planned about 6 months ago. And ironically, or I should say, providentially, this last week Donald Trump provided me with a beautiful example of the folly and irrationality of economic nationalism which I can use as the main example for this episode. He engaged in a sort of twitter brawl with BMW over their decision to build a plant in Mexico for production of some of their lower-end models, with some of its production meant for import in the US. Trump demanded that BMW build their plant in the US, otherwise he would impose a 35% border tax on their imported vehicles. The idea, of course, is that by building their plant in Mexico and importing in the US, BMW somehow has wronged Americans and America: after all, what is seen on the surface is that hard-earned American dollars are leaving the US and going to Mexico. So, there, we can use the power of the Federal government to keep that money back home. Either BMW builds the plant in the US, or if their cars are more expensive, people won’t buy them, and will buy instead American-made cars, which will mean creating more jobs in the US and keeping more money in the US.

This is a classical example of things seen and things not seen; and of course, as in every case of socialist government propaganda, the things unseen – which are the more important things – are ignored in favor of the things seen, because only the things seen matter when it comes to political propaganda. There is a number of concrete facts behind the whole story which, when taken into account, clearly show the folly of Trump’s threats.

First, BMW’s sales in the US are an important part of their business but they are not that important as some may imagine. BMW’s annual sales in number of vehicles are approaching the 2.5 million mark. Less than 15% of them – about 360,000 – are sold in the US. Of those, more than 100,000 – the most expensive ones – are produced in the US (yes, BMW already has a plant here, and we will mention it later). So, Trump’s border tax will affect no more than 10% of their vehicles, and that is the cheapest models. Which means, those really affected will be rather the middle class.

Second, even if BMW loses sales of 100-200,000 vehicles a year, and these sales go to domestic automakers, this won’t affect the job market in any way. The annual production in the US is about 12 million units, but the total capacity is over 16 million. Thus, the domestic automakers can easily increase the production without hiring new people. Modern technologies can make this happen.

Third, such investment decisions are made for decades ahead, and a temporary tantrum by some political figure whose period of power will be 4 or maximum 8 years can’t affect them. For BMW, 4 years of lower sales will be preferable to an abrupt change in investment plans for $1 billion. Besides, the Mexico plant is expected to sell to more than 30 countries with whom Mexico has free trade agreements. The US had such agreements with less than 15 countries. Trump may brag about his total wealth, but as impressive as it is, it is less than BMW’s profits for one year only. BMW can weather several US Presidents without having to adjust to their stupidity and socialist propaganda.

Fourth, the plant BMW is building in Mexico is a relatively small plant, its production capacity is about 150,000 vehicles a year, and it will hire no more than 1,500 workers. It’s an assembly plant, it’s not a full production plant. In the modern world, no company has all of its production facilities in the same place. Even if that plant was moved to the US, it would still buy the bulk of its materials and parts from where it has always bought them. What would Trump do then? Impose 35% border tax on nuts and bolts? In comparison, BMW already has a plant in the US, in Greer, South Carolina. This plant hires 8,000 workers, and it is the largest BMW plant in the world, even larger than the BMW plant in Dingolfing Germany. It produced 400,000 vehicles in 2015, BMW’s higher-end models, and exports 70% of its production abroad. Which means, if economic nationalism was right, then BMW is doing America a favor. If Trump’s policies of isolationism and closed borders become the norm around the world, that plant will have to close or cut production.

And fifth, the company BMW may have to take some decrease in regional sales, but the real losers will be the hundreds specialized BMW dealerships and service centers in the US, hiring more than 100,000 people. A drop in sales will drive some of them out of business; thus, billions of investment dollars wasted. In our modern world, manufacturing takes an insignificant part of the workforce; BMW global staff is only 122,000. A punishment on the company won’t affect it but it will affect the service companies in the US – and that all for the public stunt of opening 1,500 or fewer jobs in a plant.

To these hard economic facts we need to add the equally – if not more – important moral consequences. Whenever political propaganda trumps economic realities, the result is an encouragement of dishonesty. Political slogans don’t change economic realities or decisions; they only make the economic leaders adopt the language of propaganda in order to avoid trouble. That’s what happened under Communism in Eastern Europe: directors of government plants cooked data to fit the government propaganda while their plants produced nothing. In the US, CEOs will simply adopt Trump’s socialist and populist lingo and will present glowing reports of new jobs created, while they will continue doing the same things. Such public dishonesty may have serious consequences on the society; but it is unavoidable once an administration makes everyone – including itself – a prisoner of its own false ideology and sloganism. Obamacare should have been a good warning to this effect, but I guess, we seldom learn even from our most direct experiences. Not to mention that just like with individuals, when countries are quick to change their government policies based on the personal whims or irrational ideology of this or that politician, this destroys the confidence of investors. Also, not to mention that the artificial removal of one serious player on the market – especially one like BMW who offers extremely high quality at affordable prices – will result in lower competition, and we as Americans more than anyone else should know that lower competition inevitably leads to lower quality and higher prices. In short, Trump’s rant against BMW is completely irrational. It won’t create more jobs or economic growth for America, but it certainly can create problems for the economic growth in the long term, and for the well-being of ordinary people in the short term.

I went into all these details about BMW because this example was very instructive about the irrationality of economic nationalism. Many, however, are tempted to believe that such irrationality is a side issue, that it is not characteristic to economic nationalism, that one can somehow build rational economic nationalist policy. That is, the same belief that makes many people say, “Communism is a good ideology, it just hasn’t been applied properly.” Or, “Police is good, it’s just a few bad apples.” Or, “Obamacare is good, we just need to make it work.” The truth is, however, that economic nationalism is always irrational, there is never a way to make it work. And the reason it can’t be made to work is because that irrationalism is not accidental. There is much more behind it.

We have talked before in previous episodes, and Van Til has given us even more insight in his books on what we call the “noetic effect of sin,” that is, how sin influences our ability to do logic and be rational, but I will repeat it here: irrationalism is not morally neutral. It always follows from some form of idolatry. When people are illogical, schizophrenic, when they tend to believe in contradictory things at the same time, when they tend to ignore the obvious negative consequences of their own actions and beliefs on themselves, this is because at some deep level – presuppositional level – they have adopted some false religion which has twisted and destroyed their ability to think clearly. Only a self-conscious belief in the Triune God of the Bible and His Gospel can create the foundation for rational, logical, consistent, coherent thinking not only in the theoretical disciplines but also in practical ideology. The reason socialists are so irrational and schizophrenic in the face of overwhelming evidence against socialism is not because they are stupid but because they are self-conscious idolaters. The reason conservatives defend cops even in the face of historical evidence against the existence of police, or current evidence about the corruption of police and the Democrat loyalty of the police unions is, again, because they are idolaters. And the reason why the protectionists continue defending their policies in the face of overwhelming evidence against them is, again, an idolatry at the bottom of it, a faith that denies God and His Word, and denies the meaning and the work of His Gospel in history.

What is the religion behind economic nationalism, then?

The key to understanding this religion is in the following: Economic nationalism views economy as a zero-sum game and the world as a zero-growth world.

It views the economy as a zero-sum game because, in the eyes of economic nationalists, profit for one person is by necessity loss for another. Wealth is not created, it is only transferred from one place to another, from one person’s bank account to another, from one nation to another. It is impossible for all the participants on the market to profit at the same time. When one participant makes a profit, that’s because another participant must have suffered a loss. When a company builds a plant in one nation, thus creating jobs, this must be because another nation has “lost” those jobs. A car imported in the United States must by default be a loss for the United States, because there is money going to another country. A car exported from the United States must be a profit for the United States because there is money coming in. (We will talk in a future episode about the curse of an export-oriented economy.) When a company closes its plant in one place and local people lose their jobs, it must be because someone else has won these jobs.

The reason economic nationalists view the economy as a zero-sum game is because they view the world as a stagnant, zero-growth world. There is no dynamics in history, no development in mankind – moral, technological, industrial, economic. Mankind of today can’t be better off than mankind of yesterday, at least in the larger scheme of things. Progress in one place by necessity is achieved by regress in another. Yes, yes, in theory, economic nationalists do pay lip service to some theory of progress; but when it comes to practical policies, their first instinct is to assume that growth everywhere at the same time is impossible; it is impossible to have growth in the US if there is growth in Mexico as well. Thus, economic nationalism is based on deep pessimism about the future, on a belief in the impossibility of progress. That’s where its drive to localization and encapsulation comes from; they are its defense against change, because by default, change cannot mean change to the better, it is always change to the worse. When a coal mine shuts down in Virginia, the pessimist can’t imagine that this is because better and more efficient sources of energy are available – like oil and gas from fracking – and therefore, in general, the economy is better off, and therefore the miners need to be encouraged to move to a new occupation. When taxi cabs in New York City lose business because of Uber and Lyft, the pessimist can’t imagine that this is because better and more efficient and cheaper ways of transportation are made available by new technologies, and therefore the economy is better off, and therefore taxi drivers should be encouraged to develop technologically. His only solution is to protect the coal mine, whether there is economic sense in it or not; or to ban Uber and Lyft, no matter what the millions of their customers say. Being a pessimist, the economic nationalist can only see the loss of the yesterday’s world; and the world of tomorrow is by default a worse world for him. So to protect the yesterday’s world from inevitable change, he has to encapsulate himself within borders and enforce stagnation. And since enforcing that stagnation requires enforcing his views on other people, the only logical tool for his defense against the future is the power of the state, and the borders therefore are the political borders within which that state operates. People can profit only at the expense of other people; thus, state intervention is justified to prevent people from making profit. Or to prevent other nations from making profit.

In his book, Wages of Destruction, the British historian Adam Tooze shows that this pessimism was the real reason behind the extreme political nationalism of Hitler, and behind the economic nationalism of all the Western nations at the time. He shows how Keynesianism, which was adopted by all Western nations at the time, gave no hope for the future – in fact, Keynes himself believed that long-term sustained economic growth was an illusion, and his theory was designed to be a government regulation of a world of zero-growth. Tooze shows how Hitler’s policies were entirely based on such belief in zero-sum game and zero-growth. But Hitler wasn’t the only one. Marx’s economic theory was based on the same beliefs: that profit for one person is by necessity a loss, or exploitation, for another. The policies of the Communist countries in Eastern Europe were predicated on the same beliefs: hence the closed borders, almost zero imports, and a frantic quest for self-sufficiency. (Witness modern North Korea, if you don’t remember Eastern Europe of 40 years ago.) The same faith can be seen in the remote tribes in places like the Amazon and Papua New Guinea: such tribes jealously guard their territories against any stranger, and mercilessly kill any stranger that approaches. For a stranger means something new, and anything new is danger, because nothing can be expected of change but a change to the worse.

A good example of such pessimism and fear of the future, and fear of change and growth we see in the Bible, Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel. Modern preachers, following modern political ideologies, like to interpret the Tower of Babel as some sort of globalist conspiracy. And then God’s judgment on the builders as God supposedly establishing separate isolated nation-states. But such interpretation has nothing to do with what the Bible describes. Far from being a globalist conspiracy, it was an attempt at a localized experiment in nationalism and collectivism. These were people who spoke the same language, were of the same genetic stock, who gathered in one place, under one political ruler – Nimrod (see Genesis 10:10) – and tried to build a collectivist state. What was their motivation? Pessimism and fear of development: “. . . otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” Scattering was God’s plan for mankind; scattering had to do with His Dominion Mandate to man to subdue the earth for God’s glory. God’s answer to their isolationism and nationalism was the confusion of languages. You try to build a collective because of your pessimism and fear, God will always break it down. His answer to encapsulation is making it impossible to live within your walls.

This ideology of zero-sum game and zero growth is, at its very bottom, the good old religion of death. Modern environmentalists follow that religion: for them, using natural resources means by default the “destruction of nature.” Thus, they would prefer to see the death of mankind because they can not imagine that it is possible for man to be both technologically developed and a good steward of nature. Modern advocates of abortion follow the same religion: resources spent on raising children mean by default resources taken away from personal career advancement – so let’s murder unborn children in order to have economic growth. Modern over-population alarmists follow the same religion: they can’t imagine a world where there is both demographic and economic growth. Modern socialists and government welfare advocates follow the same religion: they can’t imagine that a company and its owners can make profits without by default making other people poor; hence, it takes government force to have “social justice.” Modern war-mongers in the Republican Party follow the same religion: They can’t imagine that it is possible for one nation to prosper unless other nations are brought to ruins. Economic nationalism is just one of the expressions of the same religion of death, a religion that sees the world as a grim place of permanent stagnation, where the only hope for an individual, group, or nation is to subjugate other individuals, groups and nations, or at least cut them of from growth.

God’s answer to this religion of death is His Dominion Mandate: the covenantal obligation upon every single individual to be a faithful steward of God’s creation, and develop his part of the creation to full productivity. This obligation is of man before God, and no earthly institution is allowed to stand between man and God in the fulfillment of that Dominion Mandate. As long as an individual man is not committing crimes, he must be freed from any interference, control, regulations, or punishments. The purpose of political boundaries is to limit the jurisdiction of the state, not to limit the economic choices and decisions of individuals. Any government which uses its power to limit economic choices and decisions of individuals has practically declared itself divine, and has therefore established itself as an idol.

It is in the free pursuit of man’s calling, including in his free associations with other men – whether in trade, or business corporations and enterprises, or exploration, etc. – that prosperity is created. Free men under God work to innovate and organize production in ways to make their products cheaper and more efficient, so that they can serve their customers better, so that they can have their business. This means also division of labor: some people or groups of people will specialize in one product or service more than other people, will produce is better and cheaper, and will exchange it for other goods and services. This process benefits all of them, and all of them profit. (When a BMW is sold from the Mexico plant to the US, it is not just Mexico that profits. The US customer also profits because he gets a good car for a lower price.) In such free associations and trade, profit for one man doesn’t mean loss for another; to the contrary, the only way for one man to profit is to make other men profit too. This is the faith of life and growth of the Bible applied to the economic life of man and his society, God’s Dominion Mandate.

And when the state intervenes to control and regulate man and his economic choices, it can only destroy life and destroy growth. That’s the religious root of economic nationalism: the religion of death. The farther we stay from it, the faster we will grow our economy.

The book I will assign for reading this week is Wages for Destruction: The Making and Breaking of Nazi Economy, by Adam Tooze. The book is a delightful read for any WWII buff (and I am one of them). It looks at the Third Reich from a perspective that is rare: the economic policies of the Nazis. It shows the fatal mistake of the Nazis to view the economy as a zero-sum game and the world as a zero-growth world. The wars that followed were only the logical conclusion from these beliefs.

And I will return your attention again to my mission field, Eastern Europe, and Bulgarian Reformation Ministries. In our work, we have been active in proclaiming not only the basic of the Gospel but also its applications – especially in the areas of economics and government regulations. We have consistently defended free markets, not simply from a rationalist perspective, but from the perspective of the Biblical worldview. Help us continue the work. Go to BulgarianReformation.com. Subscribe to the newsletter, and donate. God bless you all.

Welcome to Episode 38 of Axe to the Root Podcast, part of the War Room Productions, I am Bo Marinov, and for the next 20 minutes we will be talking about a topic I shouldn’t be talking about, if I had an ounce of practical common sense – or what passes for common sense in modern day America. I will be talking about white privilege.Yes, one of those buzzwords of the modern political and social debate, and the realities behind it – because, as we will see, there is a certain reality behind it. I know, I know, from the perspective of either side of the debate – liberals or conservatives – I shouldn’t be using that word and I shouldn’t be talking about white privilege to start with. For the liberals, I am a Christian, and I am “right-wing,” and I am against socialism and government intervention, therefore I can’t possibly be speaking of white privilege the way I should, in terms of their re-defined notion of “social justice,” that is, government-mandated and enforced redistribution. Therefore, if I am not advocating for more government action, I shouldn’t be speaking on white privilege to start with. For the conservatives, “white privilege” is a no-no term, there isn’t such a thing as “white privilege,” it’s a made up notion, the only good mention of the term is to deny its reality, you don’t need a whole podcast on it, and if you are not simply denying that white privilege exists, then your true colors are showing, you are a libtard, this is where you lost me, I can’t listen to the end, etc. In other words, this episode can get me stoned (not in the good sense of the word) by both sides. However, I don’t have that much common sense – in the modern, American political meaning of the word – to worry about these reactions from both sides. I will be talking about white privilege, and that from a covenantal, that is, ethical/judicial perspective. Conservatives to the contrary, white privilege exists in this country, it is real, and for us to deny it is immature and self-defeating. Liberals to the contrary, white privilege in itself is not a problem, and their so-called “social justice” concerns are not a problem, what is a problem is the perversion of real, judicial justice, which is partly related to white privilege but is an issue of its own, and to fight against a false problem while ignoring the real problem is immature and self-defeating. There’s a Biblical view of the relation between privilege and justice, and this is what I want to talk about in this episode.

Any talk about this relation, between privilege and justice, must start with an understanding of the difference between the pagan view of justice and the Biblical view of justice. It’s not that pagan religions and philosophies have no view of justice; they do. (After all, in a world thoroughly permeated with Christian ideas and worldview, no one can afford to not have a view of justice, or they wouldn’t be able to compete on the market of ideas.) Their view of justice, however, is perfectly described by the common depiction of the goddess of justice as a blind-folded lady with scales and a sword. We don’t have much time to go deeper into the details of this symbolism, but the whole meaning of it – and especially of the blindfold – is that justice is supposed to be impersonal, that is, there should be no mindfulness of the social status or privileges of the parties in a trial. Lady Justice doesn’t need to know to the identity of the parties, she needs to know fact from fiction (that’s what that sword is for) and weigh the facts (that’s what the scales are for). The pagan ideal is a goddess of justice blindfolded to all other factors involved, declaring justice as an abstract, impersonal principle, detached from the realities of life.

In stark contrast to it is the justice of God described in the Bible. It is not a blind or impersonal justice; God doesn’t put on a blindfold when watching the judgments of men. He is deeply involved not only in the abstract application of justice across the board. To the contrary, He has a very deep bias towards certain groups and classes of people. In the courtrooms of men – and not only in their courtrooms, but in their houses, offices, vehicles, in their marketplaces, border patrol points – He has His eyes wide open to see how judges – and everyone of us, in fact – treat His special people, those that He has as His favorite, specially protected classes. He specifically warns the earthly judges about these people, and promises specific judgments if these people are denied justice. He is not a respecter of persons, He judges every wickedness and injustice; but injustice to some people He judges more severely, and He warned us about it.

In so many places in the Old Testament Law God warns against mistreating the orphan, the widow, and the stranger that if I quote all of them in a row, this episode will get a bit too long. He warns against general mistreatment of them anywhere (Ex. 22:22). He also warns against injustice against them in the court room (Deut. 27:19). He warns against mistreating them in regards to economic dealings, and specifically debt transactions (Deut. 24:17). They should have a priority in terms of charity (Deut. 24:19-21; 26:12-13). Etc., etc. But they are not the only special categories. There are other special treats for some people. A young girl raped in the field by a man was the only type of victim who could send a criminal to death without the word of a second witness (Deut. 22:25-27). We already saw in the previous episode of Axe to the Root that a concubine who was not provided for could leave her husband without guilt and without restoring the bride price to him. A poor person in Israel had a special right to zero-interest loan, and the lender had to return him his cloak every night (Ex. 22:25-27), and God specifically warned that He would be getting involved if this was violated. In addition, the lender was warned against entering the house of his poor debtor to take his pledge (Deut. 24:10-13); he had to wait outside until the man brought it to him. The wages of a poor and needy hired laborer had to be paid every day, not wait until some later date (Deut. 24:14-15). A man who was engaged or newly wed, or built or bought a new house, or planted a vineyard and hadn’t tasted its fruit, was free of the draft for one year (Deut. 20:5-7; 24:5).

All these are valid in the New Covenant as well, of course, and there are more special treatments. Older widows were more protected than younger widows (1 Tim. 5:3-15). A wife and a husband were treated unequally: the husband was not allowed to leave his wife for no reason whatsoever, while the wife was allowed to leave, even if only on the condition that she remained alone (1 Cor. 7:11). Children had special protection against deceivers (Matt. 18:6; Mark 9:42; Luke 17:2). Pure and undefiled religion is defined specifically as visiting orphans and widows in their distress (James 1:27). And of course, the ultimate list of categories of people who were to be granted special protection and care and attention, so special that the salvation of a person depends on how he treated these special categories, in Matt. 25:31-46:

Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’

In His court, obviously, God is not blindfolded. He watches carefully how we apply His justice, and he wants to know to whom we apply it, and how. And He has special favorites. He rewards all justice, but He especially rewards justice shown to His favorites. He hates and punishes all injustice, but He especially hates and punishes injustice shown to His favorites. So special are they to Him that he has included them as special cases in His Law. And even in the Final Judgment, His salvation is conditioned upon showing justice and mercy towards these special favorites.

Why would God do such a thing? Why isn’t His justice even, equal to all men, like the justice of the Greeks? Is He really a respecter of persons, or categories of persons? Why isn’t God saying that all justice matters, instead of indicating that some justice matters more than others?

Because in a world beset by sin, equal justice is an abstraction. In God’s world, there is inequality of power – not because inequality is a bad thing, far from it. In fact, inequality is a good thing, it follows from God’s unique purpose for every individual man. But when inequality of power meets the corruption of sin, the two conspire to produce inequality of justice. In a world without sin, there is no need to restrain powerful men or to place special protection around weaker people. But when sin has affected everyone, including the powerful of the day, the temptation is too strong to use their power to deny justice to the weak – and also to pretend on the surface that they are being equitable, and that they are just defending “law and order,” nothing else. Abstract, impersonal justice in a world of sin only becomes a facade for oppression. That was true in the Old Israel, where the government under the Law of God was supposed to be limited, only judiciary. How much more it is today, when the government is executive and is constantly involved in controlling resources, absorbing revenue, and distributing government contracts to private cronies. Power doesn’t corrupt, but corrupt men abuse power when they have it; and their victims are always the weaker members of the society.

For this reason God placed special boundaries of protection around the weaker members of the society – so special that even the salvation of a powerful person depends on him studiously honoring these boundaries. Which means that under the law of God, those with more power and privilege are under obligation to actively identify those weaker than them and make sure they render justice to them. Not simply render equal, abstract, impersonal justice, but justice specifically concerned with those weaker than them. A judge, a field owner, a business owner, a lender of money, a strong muscular man, a soldier in an occupying army, a rich man taking a wife, were to be very careful to identify the kind of person they were working with, and specifically go to the Law to learn the specific commands about dealing with people weaker than them, whether physically, or financially, or legally, or relationally, or in any other way.

To make it simple, when God says “Widows’ – or any other weaker persons’ – lives, liberty, property, etc. matters,” you don’t dare talk back at Him with “All lives, liberty, property, etc. matters.” Because you talk back at Him like that, you are in trouble. When God placed special protections for weaker categories of people in His Law, He did it with a purpose. And we all know it very well when it is used against us. When Soros and other liberal billionaires influence politics using their money, we all say, “our votes matter.” And if Soros replies, “All votes matter,” we wouldn’t be very convinced, would we?

This is nothing more than just a repetition of the same principle that Jesus gave in Luke 12:48: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.” Power and privilege are all given, they are all entrusted capital. Therefore, all those who have power and privilege should expect to have heavier burden of justice laid on them; this is the Biblical principle. (On a side note, it is because of the abandonment of this principle that the celebrity cult worship has emerged in the US, and why the church is in a free fall. When we as a church start applying Luke 12:48 to our pulpit celebrities, we will have some real revival.)

The question now is: Does white privilege exist at all? Is it a reality? The answers are: Yes, it certainly exists. Yes, it is a reality in America today.

Before we continue, we need to to take care of one of the numberless conservative schizophrenias in America today. When one talks about blacks, crime level in black communities, etc., conservatives have a neat source of information: “statistics shows.” That is, aggregate information matters. When the talk is about white privilege, however, suddenly the statistics means nothing and we are looking only at individuals: “Look at me, I am white. What privilege do I have?” And then, of course, the Holocaust is mentioned, or the Civil War is mentioned, or Ghengis Khan is mentioned, etc. That is, aggregate information doesn’t matter. Conservatives are just as schizophrenic as liberals, keep that in mind. Anyway, let’s move to white privilege.

In order to understand how white privilege is real, we need to return back our previous episode where we talked about the two different value systems that a man is always assessed by. One was judicial, and it had to do with his nature of being a bearer of the image of God. The other one was economic and it had to do with his gifts and calling in the fulfillment of the Dominion Mandate. His judicial status denotes his rights in relation to other people and to the society’s institutions. His economic status denotes his privileges in respect to control and management of God’s resources. The economic power of a man, therefore, is his privilege. There is nothing wrong with privileges; a number of faithful men in the Bible were fabulously rich, and therefore powerful, and their wealth and power did not lead to their demise. (Where there was a demise, as with Solomon, it was not related directly to wealth and power.) Thus, it is a mandate under the Law of God that we are all equal before the Law, that is, judicially: we all have the same right to justice. On the other hand, it is by God’s providence that we are all unequal before God’s resources, that is, economically.

Statistics shows – and one doesn’t really need statistics to know it – that if we really separate “white community” from “black community,” which people in America do without even noticing it, the “white community” really has better control over economic resources. It has more people in it, and these people are on the average wealthier than the average black American. Now, that is not to say that there is anything wrong with a group of people being wealthier than another group. Neither is this an assessment of the reasons why it is so: obviously, the white community has a longer history of capital and skill accumulation over generations, but also a higher level of work ethic. This is a good reason why there is a need for missions in the black communities – and I mean missions in the comprehensive sense, including the applications of the Gospel to personal work ethic. We must also acknowledge that there is a not so moral reason for the difference, and that is the cultural and economic leftovers from slavery; now, what share they have in the economic situation of the black community is another issue. (This is a good reason why we need to preach the applications of the Gospel to justice to the white community.) Our main thesis here, however, is that the economic status of the white community is certainly higher than the economic status of the black community; for different, mixed reasons, of course, but still higher. Some time ago I read some memoirs by a white teacher in an all-black public high school. The overall attitude was of hostility against whites (although the teacher herself was rather respected). Once she asked her students: What if all whites disappeared from America? Would y’all be better off. The students’ response was sincere, “We’d be all screwed.” In the current historical situation, there is still control of resources and productive knowledge that the white community has over the other communities. Its economic status is higher. And higher economic status means higher privilege. It’s just a fact.

Not that there is anything wrong with privilege in itself. If anything is wrong, it is in the very social perception of “communities” separated by skin color, ethnicity, or genetics. A godly society doesn’t produce such separate “communities.” Israel left Egypt, and with Israel, a mixed multitude (in Hebrew it is literally an “Arab multitude”) left Egypt, too (Ex. 12:38). We do not see the people of that mixed multitude forming their own ethnic communities. To the contrary, Israel became a homogenous nation. In fact, Caleb, the leader of Judah, the largest tribe, was himself a Kenezite, that is, from one of the tribes whose land God would later give to the descendants of Abraham (Gen. 15:19). We shouldn’t be talking about “white” and “black communities” in the first place. But because of generational sin, and the leftovers of that sin, such separation – or perception of separation – is still a reality, so the different economic status is still a reality, and therefore white privilege is still a reality. Again, nothing wrong with it, in itself. Work ethic can be acquired, economic status changes over time, eventually, this can be healed by a simple process of preaching and changing of practical ethics.

The issue comes when we understand that privilege and power, in a fallen world and in an ungodly society, can lead to abuse and denial of justice to the weaker and less-privileged groups. Or, in the more common case, silence in the face of injustice. Under the Law, when the only government agents were the judges, the temptation of favoring the rich and powerful and wronging the poor and weak members of the society was still very strong. Under the modern pagan, executive state, the temptation is even stronger: the state can choose to favor the groups that control more resources, or contribute more resources in the form of taxes, and oppress the groups who are less privileged. And in fact, this is exactly what is happening today, in almost every single policy of the modern executive state. The most obvious, of course, is the modern policy concerning abortions: The victims (the unborn children) can contribute no votes to political parties, and pay no taxes, nor do they pay lobbyist money. Thus, the legislative action of the executive state is in favor of the lobbyists who profit from abortions. As I have mentioned many times, we never see cops shutting down abortion mills; we always see them defending them. Modern “justice” is always in favor of those more powerful and privileged.

This applies to many more weaker groups. In different forms and under different kinds of disguise, oppression is practiced by the government against the poor and homeless, against poorer minorities, against strangers, against younger people, etc. This oppression, of course, is not done openly; no oppression is carried under the official title of “oppression.” It is always under some form of legitimately sounding government policy or regulation: reproductive rights, monetary policies, employment regulations, immigration control, environmental safety, “law and order in the inner cities,” drug abuse control, etc. And in the process of oppression, the state makes sure that certain groups – those with better privilege and therefore more social power – are left relatively unmolested, so that they don’t use their privilege and power to stop oppression. Thus, privilege, while not wicked in itself, can be abused – not in direct oppression, but in complacent silence about oppression.

And I have talked in a previous episode – on institutional racism and the prison-industrial complex – how that oppression is practiced by our government today. And also how we are complacently silent about it; after all, it mainly affects the blacks, not us.

Biblically, however, the groups of better privilege and more power in the culture have certain obligations under the principle of Luke 12:48: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.” According to the Law of God, we are not allowed to deny the fact of the privilege: it is there, and it is clearly seen in the greater social and economic power of the white community. Our obligation is to acknowledge the reality of that privilege, and acknowledge that under Luke 12:48we are under a greater responsibility. Part of that responsibility is to actively identify the groups and categories of people in our society who, for one reason or another, in the inherited covenantal realities of our age, are socially underprivileged and powerless. And therefore, being underprivileged and powerless, are vulnerable to injustice – injustice not necessarily by us, but by the state, with our silent permission. We are not only obligated to actively identify such groups, but also to be vigilant and identify the different forms of oppression. If under the Law of God even such seemingly innocent action of entering the house of a poor debtor to take a pledge is defined as oppression, then the same ethical principle applies to many more things that to us may look innocent, but to the weaker members of the society are oppressive and humiliating. We have relative wealth and privilege entrusted to us. Our obligation is to take up our responsibility and use our privilege to guard the weaker against oppression. Not deny our privilege. Not feel guilty for it. Not try to transfer wealth to make others as privileged as we are. Not feel responsible to change the economic status of anyone, ours or that of others. But defend and protect the judicial status of full rights of those who can’t protect it for themselves.

And it is from there that our share in the work and the process of racial reconciliation must start. And not just racial reconciliation, but also justice and liberty for all. Denying the privilege is immature, and also dangerous before God: for he may decide to take it away from us if we continue denying it in ungratefulness to Him. The black community needs to do its part, no doubt about that. But then again, Luke 12:48 must be a guiding principle for justice: “To whom much is given, much shall be required of them.” And may God give us the grace to restore that principle among us.

The book I will assign for reading this week is The Anti-Chinese Movement in California by Elmer Sandmeyer. From the perspective of time, we can see the injustice done to a weaker minority, an injustice that at the time was not obvious even to the most conscientious of Christians. We need to understand, there’s such injustice done today, and we need to be ahead of our time and stand against it.

And remember in your prayers, and in your giving, Bulgarian Reformation Ministries, a mission in Eastern Europe which has proven successful by creating a foundation for a Christian civilization by translating books and preaching a comprehensive Gospel where none has been preached before. Visit BulgarianReformation.com. Subscribe to the newsletter. And Donate.