We find ourselves particularly challenged in these modern times by a generally unsuspected set of idols: ideas. We are especially plagued today by our attachments to ideologies.
Idol-Worship and Slavery
When God spoke to Moses on the mount, he said, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” (Exodus 20:2) In a most profound sense, all those called by the Holy Spirit to the Body of Christ are called out of the bondage in Egypt into the desert, to become purified on the way to the Promised Land.
The call from slavery to freedom is the universal call of mankind. Those who are enslaved yearn to become free. Those who are ignorant yearn to know. Every human experience is a longing to move from the dark into the light. If darkness is bad and the light is good, every human action springs from the desire for the good, even if the good itself is imperceptible.
In the desert, we encounter many dangers and temptations that draw us away from the path to the Promised Land. Among the most difficult are our inclinations to become attached to created things. God warns us against these attachments in the first commandment; still, attachments to the things of the world, like money, possessions, and even food, compose an ever-present spiritual danger.
God clarifies the danger of idolatry when he prohibits the People of God to worship anything but Him: “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them.” (Exodus 20:3-5)
This is a clear and emphatic admonition against idolatry and worshipping false gods, but it was not enough for the Chosen People. The Old Testament is filled with examples of people succumbing to the temptations of idolatry. We learn how the Chosen People worshipped gold instead of God in the desert. Similarly, we are prone in this age to worship ideas in the form of ideology.
What Is Ideology?
Merriam Webster defines ideology as “1: visionary theorizing; 2a: a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture; 2b: a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture; 2c: the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program.”
We might be able to add to these fairly shallow definitions the fact that ideology is a rigid set of ideas that aims to perfect the temporal order. The danger of forming attachments to created things is greatly exacerbated by the attempts to perfect the temporal order.
Why Not Perfect the Temporal Order?
As Catholics, we must reject the temptation to try to perfect the temporal order by our own means. We might immediately object to the rejection of this enterprise, because to make a heaven on earth sounds like a noble endeavor. The contrary truth is that we are incapable of perfecting this vale of tears. We can and often do make the world around us a better place, but usually indirectly by our habits of good character, not by our conscious attempts to make a heaven on earth.
Since the Fall, it is our primary duty to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, that our fallen natures might be perfected by grace, and that we might be prepared and perfected for Heaven. By its nature the created order begins to decay at its inception, as do our bodies (but not our souls). It is only by our work with the graces of the Holy Spirit that we become better versions of ourselves; that is our most valuable contribution to making the world better. To focus on bettering the world while ignoring our souls is an ideological mistake that has the opposite effect: we lose both our souls and the world.
What Is Wrong With Ideology?
Ideologies seem true to us because often times there are many empirical facts embedded in them that give them the semblance of truth. The real problem is that ideologies ill-weight certain truths, contorting reality in a way that contradicts nature. For an example, the ideology of communism takes the virtue of justice and reduces it to material equality, turning an important set of truths about fairness into a deadly scheme.
Ideology causes us to invert the order of reality. It claims that the world is in us rather than that we are in the world. It leads us to make God in our image rather than to realize that we are made in the image of God. If we try to fit reality into a rigid set of ideas, we do incalculable violence to intellectual and theological truth.
A cursory look into the past bears this out. Think for a moment about Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia or Maoist China. These three states run by ideologies were/are responsible for uncountable millions of violent deaths. Their legacies continue to damage civilization to this day.
The above-mentioned ideologies embrace the necessity of violent death to propagate their ideologies. Modern ideologies of today embrace death as well. Think of the feminist movement whose primary platform is “reproductive rights,” a euphemism for the legal termination of human life in the womb, eliminating nearly 40 million lives worldwide yearly. This pleases far too many folks who ascribe to overpopulation ideology, folks who would like to see the human population reduced by billions. Many other ideologies allow for death as an appropriate means to achieve an improved temporal order, including the euthanasia movement.
All Ideologies are Idols
Ideologies become evil by becoming pseudo-religions to which we must bind ourselves with an overwhelming primary loyalty. It is in fact the worship of ideas.
Ideas are servants of the intellect meant to inform the will. When they are assembled in a rigid and arbitrary scheme, they cease to serve and become masters which usurp the authority of the objective standard of Truth we call the Logos. Ideologies necessarily reduce human persons into tools for a “greater end.” Humans should never be seen as means, but rather as ends. Humans should never be used to make the state more like a heaven on earth; for the state is for the people, but the people are not for the state.
We are made in the image and likeness of God. We are made to worship and worship we will. We will either worship God or we will worship ourselves, and in worshiping ourselves, we arrogate to ourselves the authority to choose the ideas we will worship instead of what we ought to worship.
We are Catholics and we don’t worship ideas; we worship a person, the Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ Our Savior. As He said in Matthew 4:4, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” (Cf. Deuteronomy 8:3) The precepts we are to follow don’t come from the mouths of our fellow men, as do all ideologies, but from the mouth of God.
Our concern for the state should diminish as our care for our souls and the souls of our families takes precedent. If we strive to be good citizens in the City of God, there is no better way to edify the City of Man. It is the saints who add to the goodness in this world, not the politicians. In diverting our efforts to cooperate with grace to perfect our souls to attempting to perfect the created order, we lose both our souls and the created order.
Even if we were capable of perfecting the created order, we ought to remember Christ’s warning: “ For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” (Mark 8:36) We must take concern for our immortal souls, not the temporary world around us.
Conclusion
Like the Jews in the desert worshiping the golden calf (Exodus 32), today we worship the idols of ideology. Concerning education, we have embraced the ideology of scientism. Concerning the rightly ordered polis, we have embraced the ideologies associated with social engineering. Concerning human sexuality, we have embraced the ideologies of sexual license associated with the LGBT community. Concerning the intrinsic right to life, we have embrace abortive and euthanasia ideologies.
We are in the desert. We have lost our way. We have made idols, not of gold, but of ideas. Monsignor Ronald Knox made a statement that may help some of us escape the grip of ideologies intended to make a heaven on earth: “We are here to colonize heaven, not make things better on earth.” The great irony of this profound truth is that if we let the earth take care of itself and focus all our energies on colonizing heaven, that alone will make this vale of tears exponentially better than all our ideological efforts to perfect the world combined. Let us recognize the ideologies we have erroneously embraced and abandon them for the worship of Christ our Creator.
4 thoughts on “The Idol-Worship of Ideology”
Jesus replied, “It is written in your own Scriptures that God said to certain leaders of the people, ‘I say, you are gods!’ John 10:34 ….and your screed is not an ideology that you worship?
No Adam, I worship the person Jesus Christ and every word that comes from the mouth of God- How is this a screed? And how is it an ideology to way we must worship Christ? I make no claim to being a “god” but I claim I am a creature made in the image and likeness of my Creator, just as you are. If you are able, please try to tell me what you don’t understand about this article and I can explain it to you.
Pretty much as as Maoist, Stalinist, and every other “system” …they all, including Catholics, are responsible for thousand and thousands of death and all believe that their leader is the “high.” Catholicism, Taoism, Deism, Hinduism, Muslim, etc. are ALL ideologies which claim the true God to be worshiped. I understand your screed quite well, it’s simply that it’s ill informed and biased. Worse yet, after re-reading, is the gall of a male to judge “feminism.” and plainly distort it. Feminism is not about body, but it is about equality, To maintain it’s all about abortion, etc. is reductionism.
Adam, no one will accuse you of historical accuracy- do you really compare Stalin and Mao to the Catholic Church in terms of violent death? It is a laughable comparison. Feminism is not “all about abortion” and I never said it was, but I referred to “reproductive rights” as a primary platform, please tell me that “reproductive rights” are not a top line consideration for the feminist movement and then tell me that “reproductive rights” are not a euphemism for sexual freedom and freedom from the responsibility for the primary consequence of the marital act. There is much more to the ideology of feminism and the majority of it is distorted. If you say it is not, you are judging it too and by your own silly standard you are not allowed to do so- how dare you make judgments about feminism Adam, who do you think you are? Your words demonstrate an ideologue and it is clear that you put ideas put forth from the world above self-evident truth, but who doesn’t today. Adam, Ideology is not good, Catholicism is not ideology. Turn to the Logos for Truth.