Why Marxism Misses The Mark

    In a recent sermon I made the unconventional comment that Marxism may have been the best system of organizing a society without reference to God.   Let me quickly say I am 180 degrees opposite from a Marxist.  Karl Marx was a brilliant thinker but he got it 180 degrees wrong.  He managed to think about the deep yearning within every human heart for justice, fairness, security and safety.  He managed to think about equality in a society.  He struggled to eliminate poverty.  But he ignored God, or perhaps more accurately, dismissed God as a projection of human needs, by people, onto a fictional external 'big man in the sky'.  Many fashionable 'new atheists' have taken this thinking right from Marx and still try it out today.
    It think it is fair to say that Marx was really a social theorist.  Marxism thing well in theory, but doesn't live well in practice.  Soviet style Marxism lasted from 1922 to 1989.  In China the same theories are still being worked and reworked, although they bear little resemblance to Das Capital today.  North Korea and Cuba are still Marxists states.  By and large however, Marxism fails every time, because it is a flawed theory.  It's flawed in that God does, in fact, exist.  Additionally, God has made man in His image, and not the other way around.
   It is remarkable to note in every society, in every age, in every culture, in every stripe and shade of human, that people are both moral and spiritual.  There has never been a non-religious society. That should tell us something.  It tells me that people are wired, designed, in their DNA to worship God.  Left without  clear vision of God, we will fall back to worshiping God substitutes.  These are things that we try to use to fill the void in our hearts and minds that should be filled with God.  God-substitutes might be sex, power, money, careers (another version of power), distraction, toys and entertainment (versions of distraction) etc etc.  In other words, if we don't worship God, we worship something else...idols. Everybody worships.  A review of your calendar and bank account spending patterns will help you to identify your idols.
    Eliminating idols is a two fold process.  First, identify the idols and dethrone them, de-sacrilize them, debunk them.  Second, build a real relationship with God.
   
    Karl Marx understood the darkness within human nature, at least to some extent.  He didn't understand the depth of darkness within the human heart.  Any Marxist society ends up being run by a despot.  Ironically, communist societies in practice are little different from fascist societies. Marx also didn't understand much at all about the light in the human soul - the gentle wakings of the Holy Spirit, who can lift a person, any person, from blindness to spiritual daylight.

I believe in the Holy Trinity.  I believe in the cross of the Jesus Christ - fully God, fully human, who died to remove the guilt and punishment for my blindness, my darkness.  I believe in the empty tomb that promises God's victory over my death.  I believe in the Holy Spirit who leads me into all truth. I observe the truth of God in my heart, my mind, my life, and yours, in our lives together.