We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Ephesians 6:12
What is Critical Theory and should Christians care about it?
First and foremost Critical Theory is, as its name implies, critical of something. But before we get into all of the details we need a little history.
Karl Marx, in his 1848 book, The Communist Manifesto, was critical of the social, political, and economic systems in his day. He simplistically divided the world into two artificial categories. The oppressors were the wealthy people who owned factories and businesses, in other words they owned the capital. The oppressed were the poorer people who worked for the oppressors in the factories and businesses. Marx envisioned a world where the oppressed would rise up in rebellion and take over the factories and businesses so that both groups would be socially, politically, and economically equal.
In addition to his writings on economics Marx was openly a disciple of Lucifer, writing many works in his praise.
“Heaven I’ve forfeited, I know full well My soul once true to God, Is chosen for hell” (“The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long march of Death, Deception, and Infiltration”, Paul Kengor, Saint Benedictine Press, August 18, 2020)
Marx taught that because economic and political systems were flawed they needed to be torn down. He believed that these systems were rigged by the powerful and wealthy to their advantage, keeping the underclasses in subjugation. His solution was to stir up disunity and resentment in the oppressed so that they would rise up and tear down the existing system. The old system would then be replaced with a less flawed system called Communism.
Marx’ society did not value freedom or equal opportunity, rather he envisioned a society of equal outcomes. No matter where you started out in life and no matter how much effort you put into your life, everyone ended up with the same amount of money, possessions, education, freedom, etc. To make this possible the Communists would establish an all-powerful government to redistribute all the resources necessary for life equally to everyone; taking from some and giving to others. Marx postulated a succession of communist governments, each which, over time, would have to be dismantled. After a succession of governments, once the flaws had been worked out, society would reach a state of Utopia: perfection.
The problem that the Communists faced was that everywhere Communism was tried it was discredited as a violent, nonfunctioning, failed economic system, that brought the world nothing but servitude, genocide, and crushing poverty. And this makes sense because God designed man to be free and God designed an industrious and entrepreneurial economic system that included private property rights. As a result, the masses of people that Marx identified as oppressed never rose up, as he envisioned, against the people and systems that he identified as oppressors.
To make Communism more acceptable it was repackaged in the 1930’s as Critical Theory. Like Marxism before it, the Neo-Marxists, teaching Critical Theory, seek to deconstruct and tear down all of the traditions and norms of society including systems of power: government, courts, family, religion, individual ownership, and private business. This time, instead of violent revolution, Marxist Philosopher, Antonio Gramsci planned for “a long march through the institutions… Socialism is the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of school, universities, churches, and the media to transform the consciousness of society.” (See Here for more details on this.)
In other words Critical Theorists set out to teach the concepts of Critical Theory in colleges, universities, teachers colleges, and eventually in the public schools. They believed that the graduates of these institutions would take these concepts out into the corporate world, government, churches, etc. so that the ideas of Critical Theory could be accepted everywhere. They believed that after Critical Theory was universally accepted, the revolution would have enough grassroots support to successfully tear down the existing systems paving the way for a rebirth of Communism.
This process was helped along by Saul Alinsky. In his book, “Rules for Radicals”, Alinsky, a Marxist community organizer, laid out the steps necessary to successfully dismantle competing social and economic systems, making way for the Marxist system to be built in its place. This would be accomplished through the use of community organizers. He wrote, “In the beginning the organizers job is to create the issues or problems.” In other words, to dismantle a functioning but flawed system the organizer must sow disunity. Perhaps you have heard the Critical Theorist’s political maxim, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” The organizer, seeking to “create issues or problems” is taught to seize upon any crisis that can be used in disrupting the existing system. The goal is to create a class of people who see themselves as victims. The victims are taught to fiercely covet whatever their “oppressors” have: wealth, power, privilege, property, education, freedom, etc. so that they will tear the existing system down.
Critical Theorists are currently seeking to divide and exploit people by dividing them into many different victim groups. Perhaps you have heard of Critical Race Theory, or Queer Theory, or Post Colonial Theory, or Fat Studies, or Disability
Studies, or Gender Studies, or ageism, or economic justice, or racial justice, or environmental justice. I could go on but though their speech is as smooth as butter, there is war in their hearts. Psalm 55:21 The point is that they want to dismantle the foundations that society rests upon, including the concept of truth.
Interestingly, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer, “the first radical… who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he won his own kingdom.” Lucifer rebelled against the God of truth, and Lucifer’s followers, Marx, Gramsci, and Alinsky, have continued in that rebellion. Followers of Gramsci and Alinsky believe objective truth does not exist and, in fact, truth is defined as an artificial system, put in place by the oppressors, to keep the oppressed in line.
Per Critical Theorists, the new subjective “truth” is whatever advances the Critical Theory narrative. Perhaps you have begun to notice this double standard in regard to truth. When Critical Theorists riot, loot, occupy buildings, and burn, “creating issues and problems” their actions are reported as peaceful speech. In contrast, those who speak up against such behavior are condemned for hate speech and de-platformed from popular social media sites. Or perhaps you have heard that gender is just a social construct, meaning that you may choose your own gender. Or perhaps you have heard that both the family and marriage are social constructs, meaning that anyone or anything can be married; two men, two women, two men four women, a woman and a horse, or any other combination that you may want. Or perhaps you have heard that punctuality, knowledge, reason, loyalty, reliability, science, facts, math, evidence, productivity, virtue, freedom of speech and Christianity are all inventions of the oppressor class and must, therefore, be overthrown.
You don’t believe this? While I could show you many examples, because this is the subject of an ongoing national debate that is infiltrating the church, the following is taken directly from the official Black Lives Matter website:
“We do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege
(misguided people who believe that their gender corresponds
with the sex they were born with) … Everybody has the right to
choose their own gender by listening to their own heart and
mind. Everyone gets to choose if they are a girl or a boy or both
or neither or something else, and no one else gets to choose
for them. We dismantle patriarchal practices… when a system
is controlled by men… when culture is dominated by the voices
and perspectives of men. We disrupt the Western-prescribed
nuclear family structure,.. There are lots of different kinds of
families; what makes a family is that it’s people who take care
of each other. We foster a queer-affirming network with the
intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of
heteronormative thinking. Heterosexism is assuming everyone
is straight (heterosexual) without asking. For instance, asking a
woman, ‘Do you have a boyfriend or husband?’ when you don’t
know her sexuality…. [We] demand the defunding of law
enforcement.”
Because the Critical Theorists in the leadership of Black Lives Matter have a catch phrase that everyone can agree with (of course black lives matter!) and because they cleverly claim that they are seeking Social Justice, many Christians are deceived. Social Justice sounds good but because it is really a Marxist term (see Social Justice) it is counterfeit justice. It opposes God’s true justice at every step, preaching a gospel of hatred against marriage, family, private property, free speech, binary genders, and much more, opposing truth and God’s created order. This amounts to reimagining the world in the image of the father of lies, Lucifer. See John 8:44.
Alinsky was correct in connecting Lucifer’s rebellion and the necessity for sowing division in bringing down a society. Lucifer sowed rebellion, convincing Eve, “You shall be like God.” Genesis 3:5. Covetousness is breaking the Tenth Commandment of God. Desiring what you don’t have and feeling like a victim is the path to resentment; the perfect emotion to use in building the angry mob necessary for revolution.
Christians must never make common cause with Marxist organizations seeking to sow division. In ‘Strength to Love’ Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” And what does that look like in practice? Forgiveness. As Christ taught and as James urged his congregation, we must forgive others as God has forgiven us. Matthew 6:12 Christians must never harbor resentment or nurture hatred because of wrongs suffered. 1 Corinthians 13:5.
God gives us an unexpected example of this in the Bible. The Israelites were enslaved by the Egyptians. Exodus 1:11 After a period of 400 years God powerfully freed the slaves. Exodus 12 However, after they were freed from their captors God gave Israel a difficult command: You are to love those who are foreigners because you were sojourners in Egypt. Deuteronomy 10:19 See also: Exodus 22:21, Leviticus 19:34 Sojourners? They had been slaves. They had been cruelly mistreated and yet God forbid them to hate. Instead, remembering their treatment, they were to love even those who had been their enemies, as Christ would teach millennia later in Matthew 5:44.
Forgiveness is the path to freedom and true unity.
Sowing disunity cannot bring unity. Dwelling on hate will only produce hate. But remember, Critical Theory is all about criticism. The Social Justice that the official BLM organization seeks can never produce unity. They intentionally and deceptively use great sounding catch phrases like social justice, racial justice, and black lives matter to gain support for their cause. But they have redefined the meaning of these phrases. Their paths are crooked, they are devious in their ways. Proverbs 2:15
In reality, they don’t want solutions. The Critical Theory end game is tearing down society so that another can be built on the ashes. If they have to foment a race war, recounting past sins and present failures to reach their goal they are willing to do so. They depend on the historical fallacy, re-litigating the historical sins of the past. They do this, not to build unity but rather to destroy. Remember; “The organizers job is to create problems.” They are not reformers seeking to “strengthen what remains” Revelation 3:2, they are revolutionaries seeking to “destroy even the foundations.” Psalm 11:3
And not surprisingly, like both Marx and Alinsky before her, BLM founder and avowed Marxist community organizer, Patrisse Cullors, worships Lucifer. Further, contrary to Deuteronomy 18:11, she has stated that she calls on the spirits of the dead victims of racism to give her supernatural guidance in tearing down the system. She reports that she has developed close relationships with the spirits of these people that she “never knew in this life.” She has gone so far as to admit that the chants, “Say her name” and “Say their names” are acts of worship. She stated that when she is able to coerce people to chant the names of her spirit guides she “pours out libations in the street” in worship, to gain “spiritual power and guidance.” (CrisisMagazine.com, 9-8-20, The Occult Spirituality of BLM. Including video interviews of Patrisse Cullors, Melina Abdullah, BLM cofounder, and Nissy Tee.)
In contrast, Christians, because we are unified in Christ, are instructed how to work together for true justice, seeing to it that racism and injustice of all kinds come to an end in our lives, in our churches, and in the world. As Paul explained:
“Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility… His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household…” Ephesians 1:12-19
Through his sacrifice Christ brought the offer of reconciliation to the world, tearing down the dividing wall of hostility. Christ appointed his children as peacemakers, Romans 14:19: His children have now put to death their hostility. Despite our many blind spots, faults, and failings, it has been Christians, the new humanity, 2 Corinthians 5:17, who have fought to end racism, slavery, inequality, and every kind of injustice throughout the world for the past 2,000 years. (See the book, “Dominion, How the Christian Revolution Remade the World” on page 31. A fascinating perspective on Christianity from the perspective of an atheist.)
Christians should continue to follow the teaching of Christ, who entered into our world showing us the way to life; forgiveness, mercy, reconciliation, and peace. We should pursue Christ’s path of love rather than joining with Critical Theorists whose goals include destroying Christ’s church. Christians, of all peoples and nations, are no longer strangers but are fellow citizens, members of the same household. As such, Christians should build up instead of seeking to tear down by embracing guilt and victimhood based on the Satanic Marxist lies of Critical Theory. To make common cause with Critical Theorists is to throw fuel on an arsonists fire; exactly what they want.
I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 2 Corinthians 11:3
Return to “And Justice for All”