Not a Nice Place to Be

Its Doom is Sure

Every so often, when we are feeling particularly charitable, we spare a thought for the hopeless ironies constantly eating away at Progressivism like 12 molar hydrochloric acid.  It's not a nice place to be.

Let's begin by defining Progressivism. It is the attempt to secularise the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.  It looks to the power and authority of the State to build God's Kingdom on earth.  It is a utopian attempt to legislate, via administrative law, the thoughts and intentions of the human heart.  It is doomed to failure.  Every Progressive advance ultimately falls prey to a withering blight.  Its unintended consequences leave a trail of devastation in the Progressive wake.

It may come as a surprise to some when we pronounce that Progressivism does not rule the cosmos.  The molecules and atoms and sub-atomic particles do not dance to the tune of  "It's a lovely world".  The invisible powers are not captive to Progressive idealism.  In fact, all of creation is held captive by One, and One only--the risen Lord, Jesus Christ.  Consequently, since Progressivism has set itself up as a rival messianic kingdom, it is doomed to failure, confusion, and self-implosion.

This is a real problem for Progressives.
  They look to the future for vindication.  They talk a lot about legacy.  Sure there is opposition to what we want to do, but in the long run of history we will be proved right.  The State will indeed prove to be messianic; it will bring about the future kingdom of human blessedness--you know, the state where the lion lies down with the lamb, there is no more war, and blood is never shed.  Since these things are spoken of in the Bible (with reference to God's Kingdom), Progressives easily fall prey to the notion that they are the real article when it comes to the Christian Gospel.  "What Christians speak of as a distant hope, we are bringing into existence now, by the iron fist of the State."

The early Progressives of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were self-consciously Christian.  Woodrow Wilson, for example, was overtly attempting to bring peace on earth, via the machinations of law, in the name of Christ.  His was a bitter failure.  In our day, President Obama identifies himself as Christian, but his faith is not a biblical faith.  His faith is Progressivism 101, where the Kingdom is thoroughly secularised, and the State is the messiah. Obama is an ardent believer in such nonsense.

Obama's tenure in the White House has not gone so well.  His signature health care legislation (the Affordable Care Act) has proved to be a disaster for many.  His dalliances in foreign policy have not turned out well (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, ISIS, Ukraine).  History has not been kind--so far.  But Obama believes that in the end he will be vindicated by subsequent history, and his legacy will be assured, and the multitudes will acknowledge him as a great man and a great world leader, because history itself is Progressive.  All the forces of creation are aligned in a Progressive direction.

Except that they are not.  There is one God.  One Lord.  One Spirit.  One Messiah.  And the State is not God, not the Lord, not the Spirit, and not the Messiah.  Worse, God will not share His glory with another.  So, God is opposed to the Progressive utopia, which denies the universal sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ and seeks to cast it off, and He has promised to destroy it (Psalm 2).

Now Obama has narrowed down.  His remaining days are focused (he says) upon climate change, and his "deal" with Iran.  The future will not be kind to the proponents of  "climate change as the most serious threat facing mankind" brigade.  We are confident that subsequent generations will look back and see it as a kind of madness.

As to his deal with Iran, we are also confident that subsequent history will expose it as a mad folly.  Henry Kissinger describes the farcical descent of the Iran negotiations into a fabulous attempt to ensure Obama's legacy, whereby the future would vindicate his Progressive faith.

At a time when prospects of an unvarnished domestic policy triumph have dimmed, and after his ambitious effort to jump-start Israeli-Palestinian talks went nowhere, the Iran negotiations were his last chance to do something big.

Whatever his reasons, Obama's approach has been to extract as many concessions from Iran as possible before he leaves office, but not leave the table without an agreement. Unfortunately, the Iranians correctly ascertained that he could not afford to take no for an answer, and that standing firm on unreasonable demands would bring American flexibility. The end result is that an "international effort, buttressed by six UN resolutions, to deny Iran the capability to develop a military nuclear option," former secretary of state Henry Kissinger explained in congressional testimony early this year, soon became "an essentially bilateral negotiation over the scope of that capability," with the scope of capability acceptable to the administration widening dramatically as the negotiations wore on. [Gary C. Gambill]

History is not, and will not be, kind to Progressivism--not because of occasional mistakes--but because it represents a fundamental idolatry.  Progressivism is a Satanic perversion of the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.  It's doom is, therefore, sure (to paraphrase Martin Luther).  Progressivism is not a nice place to be.