Christian Belief and Rational Thought

Your heading 'Pie in the Sky' over the letter by Arthur McKenna in the last Salient really made me laugh. The correspondent's comment was that the hope of peace and reward in Heaven, so clearly spelt in Scripture, encourages a person to greatness.

But your little jab was comical because it came from a Marxist, one who holds to the biggest mass of wishful thinking that's around today.

Marxism may have many appealing features. But it's basic tenets have been shot full of holes too much for this doctrine to be credible to any person capable of calm thought. Let's be courageous enough to face reality.

Marx's view of history as being a continual class struggle is not held by modern historians; his historical predictions we see ourselves have not eventuated. The Marxist scorns the Christian who can however, prove the truth of his religious beliefs and their conformity to rational thought and human experience. He himself pins his hopes on what a fellow fallible 'genius' taught.

The Marxist goes into raptures over visions of the state of the world under Full Communism, when there will be an Utopia in existence, a Heaven on earth, or rather, a 'Pie on the' Earth'. The Marxist state will, they say, bring about the immediate or eventual solution to the great social problems. This ecstatic paean is far removed from the realism of Lenin or Stalin, of Russia and China today. But still the Marxist remains entranced by the beautiful vision of life, not after death but after the Revolution.

The Christian on the other hand, faces the blunt fact that there will always be someone who will betray the revolution, exert selfish independence or engage in the exploitation of others. To say conditioning governs such things makes man very much like a robot and does not explain the rise of a Baxter, the goodness of many ordinary people, the rebellion of young Soviet citizens or that of Marxists here. The Christian holds that unless there is more than a superficial change of political structure and system even the most liberated radical will have malice and selfishness to contend with in himself.

There is a pipe dream that Marxists have of 'brotherly love' spontaneously motivating members of the forthcoming Marxist state. But it is the Christian who doggedly prays and works to arouse and spread this love of one another, While the Marxist, therefore, plans the revolution which will enable him to put his science fiction into practice, the Christian faces reality and accepts the demands required of him by God and man.