Underneath the mockery of the Wolf Blitzers and The Daily Beast, I detect panic. They have always been the smartest guys in the room, and when it comes to Christian theology they have been so secularized that they literally have nothing to say. There are many people in our world who can compare the various strains of postmodernism with the philosophical nicety of third-generation Calvinists but find themselves lost when it comes to basic Christianity. They find talk of it embarrassing, at least partially, because they have never engaged the subject.
Secular people might well protest that supernaturalism went out a while ago, didn’t it? Because of Jesus’ supernatural worldview, even liberal saint Albert Schweitzer felt compelled to write his medical dissertation in defense of the Lord’s sanity. Yes, Schweitzer admitted, Jesus held a supernatural worldview—clearly, a crazy idea—but everybody at the time believed in a supernatural worldview. So when Jesus declared before the Sanhedrin that he “saw Satan fall from the sky,” he wasn’t crazy, he was just suffering from the common delusion of his age. That was in 1911—about the time the Wolf Blitzers felt they wouldn’t have to discuss Satan any more.
There are prudential reasons for the cautious use of religious concepts in political debate. Elections pit not only views but people against one another, and the faith can be profaned by being used as the instrument of a political whipping. It can also arouse emotions that spill over into violence. Most political decisions are neither good nor evil but wise or unwise. It’s best to presume goodwill on each side and focus on how a given policy comports with the natural order.
This becomes increasingly difficult and fruitless, however, when one’s opponents no longer believe in a natural order, a position of many of today’s secularists. If the world is chaos ruled by the values of the strongest—or the candidate who attracts the most votes—than the situation changes fundamentally.
The Deists and the Christians of the 18th century shared the common assumption that the natural order was God’s creation. For this reason they could largely agree about right and wrong, good and evil, even if they differed as to their eternal consequences.
In today’s America we are now in a situation where the premises upon which Americans base their arguments can be radically at odds. Many still believe in a created order; many do not. In this situation it is imperative that we open up political debate to fundamental philosophic and religious considerations. Not to do so is to hide from view the reasons religious and secular people can approach questions in diametrically opposed ways. It’s also, by default, to let the mainstream media with its unstated secularist assumptions frame every question, with the inevitable result of society becoming ever more secular and tyrannical.
So talk about evil, Rick, and even Satan. Santorum has decided to do just that, which you have to admire.
“Ronald Reagan was courageous enough to go out and speak about the forces of evil,” Santorum said yesterday. “Our president refuses to call evil – evil. He refuses to even name it, refuses to confront it.”
To this, the CNN report commented, “Such language directly appeals to Christian evangelicals and the conservative tea party movement – two groups Santorum is courting in the GOP race.”
“Such language”? Would that be Urdu or Ainu? Clearly, it’s a foreign language to the journalist.
Many of us—who are neither evangelicals nor tea party member—find it appealing, because we believe there is such a thing as good and evil. That God’s opponent is Satan. Satan acts to remain the Prince of this World by destroying the good wherever he finds it. He delights in destruction and is wily enough to use the power of poisonous ideas, including political ideas, to carry out his evil purposes. We wonder whether such journalists have any recollection of the Gulag, Pol Pot, etc.?
