In case you missed it in Tuesday’s NYTimes, a few takeaways from David Brooks’ insightful editorial on Obama’s Christian Realism. The cultural shift he describes is particularly interesting. Speaking about the WWII generation he writes:
“[You, and others of your era] you would have had a lingering awareness of the sinfulness within yourself. As the cold war strategist George F. Kennan would put it: “The fact of the matter is that there is a little bit of the totalitarian buried somewhere, way down deep, in each and every one of us.”
So as you act to combat evil, you wouldn’t want to get carried away by your own righteousness or be seduced by the belief that you are innocent. Even fighting evil can be corrupting.
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“After Vietnam, most liberals moved on. It became unfashionable to talk about evil. Some liberals came to believe in the inherent goodness of man and the limitless possibilities of negotiation… Barack Obama never bought into these shifts. In the past few weeks, he has revived the Christian realism that undergirded cold war liberal thinking and tried to apply it to a different world.”
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6 responses to “The Inner Totalitarian”
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great post Dave!
Grace in Practice
I write in response to David Brooks (N Y Times) on the “Christian realism” of President Obama. I understand that the phrase is a historical reference to Reinhold Niebuhr serving as the nation’s de facto chaplain. But there is nothing Christian about simply acknowledging that evil exists, or even about admitting that we too are evil.
The unexamined and unrealistic assumption behind Niebuhrianism is that the only way to overcome evil is with evil. Even worse is calling this assumption Christian. Niebuhr reasons,“ I used to believe in the goodness of man ; I used to be a pacifist. Now that I now see the evil, I am no longer pacifist.” The implication is that all pacifists fail to see the evil. We are patronized: if only you would understand what I do about human depravity, then you too would no longer be pacifist.
Such an assumption cannot do justice to the history of Christians who have attempted to obey the commands of Romans 12 and 13. “Repay no one evil for evil. Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is Mine. Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Rather than becoming the governing authority, these Christians have submitted to suffering and evil, and even to evil authority, knowing that God has predestined evil things for our good and for His glory. But Niebuhr did not think this was “realistic”. Why not? 1. He did not believe in the second coming of Christ, and therefore he would not wait for the wrath of God.
2. Niebuhr did not believe in a literal incarnation, and therefore he did not take seriously Jesus the human who came and lived in an evil world. Though he said nice things about the “impossible ideal”, Niebuhr dismissed the Lord Jesus as any kind of realistic example. But I Peter 2:20-24 gives us the proper Christian response to evil. “But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you would follow in his steps. He himself bore sins in his body on the tree, so that we have died to sin….”
3. Niebuhr did not believe in a literal resurrection, and therefore his hope became to kill those who kill, and to be killed in turned for killing them. Without a resurrection hope, it makes much more sense to kill for Jesus, rather than to die for Jesus. 4. Niebuhr did not believe in regeneration by the power of the Holy Spirit. So why not pay our respects to the way Jesus did it, and then move on to what anybody would do if they saw the evil?
It is refreshing that Obama speaks of an evil that is innate within everyone rather than identifying it exclusively with a specific "axis" of nations/ideals.
Still not the least bit convinced that focusing on innate evil is any way to run a foreign policy.
great post. you have made me realize that the difference between bush talking about evil and obama is that obama seems to see the complicity of us in evil and not just them. i was not able to put my finger on that before. thanks.
matt
agreed. the proper focus is on actions and not character.
the same idea of lady justice holding a scale blindfolded would apply then to relations between nations and not just individuals. this seems right. and holds us to some standards. seeing that evil is in all of us frees us to realistically deal with actions rather than have to caracature the other side as characteristically different than us. that would open up possibilities to avoid armed conflict i would think.