government

Thoughts on Orwell’s 1984

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IMG_1995This week I read George Orwell’s 1984. Published in 1949, the close of WWII was less than four years prior. Unimaginable horrors were replete: Hitler and the Third Reich; Nazis; the slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews; President Truman’s authorizing the dropping of atomic bombs upon Japan four years after Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was attacked by Japanese kamikazes; Mussolini’s fellow fascists in Italy; Franco’s fellow fascists in Spain; Lenin and later Stalin in the USSR; Mao in China … the list of totalitarian/socialist/communist tyrants in the 20th century alone staggers the mind. And Orwell’s 1984 still retains cogent warnings.

Published in the middle of the 20th century, 1984 imaginatively concretizes the horrors of tyranny, big government, and totalitarianism/socialism/communism by focusing on an ordinary man (Winston Smith).

How will Winston (a type of Everyman) endure when oligarchy replaces republicanism? Can the human soul endure when God is jettisoned and secular power replaces him? And what of beauty? Is literature possible in a world when bureaucrats determine the curricula? Will Shakespeare and Dickens survive in 1984’s world of Telescreens and Newspeak? Short answer: no.

Governments don’t stir the soul; reading Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, however, does. When the media are merely arms of the government, and the masses (what Orwell terms the “proles” for proletariat) know only what government wants them to know, wisdom goes underground. And so do truth, goodness, and beauty.

The terms Orwell coined in 1984 endure. Big Brother, Thought Police, and Newspeak are just some of the examples. If you control the language, you control the message. And today, look at college and university campuses where Leftists demand “safe spaces,” and being called by pronouns that are in contradiction to their gender. Professing themselves to be wise, they’re fools. And it is shameful.

These examples from our day illustrate what happens when a culture abandons God, abandons reason, and abandons self-discipline. Orwell’s 1984 is still important.

First, are you paying attention to phrases en vogue today? Ever heard the phrase “safe spaces”? A couple of years ago, I was at military training with my unit and a female officer asked me if I would step out of the auditorium because she wished to speak to only female soldiers. That seemed understandable to me. But what caught my attention was when she said, “We are creating a safe space.” Huh? A space is now safe when any and all potentially dissenting views are prohibited. Verboten. Forbidden. Not tolerated. What is demanded is conformity.

Second, there is a loud and mean push in contemporary politics and discourse that demands—instead of reasons. Leftists demand a Christian baker, for example, go against his deeply held religious beliefs. If he won’t, they smear him as a bigoted moral monster. If he won’t contradict biblical morality, they set out to destroy him. So much for their so-called tolerance. In 1984, the individual is crushed by Big Brother and oligarchy. Power is stolen from the individual and reserved only for the all-powerful State. If the individual dissents, he/she is crushed via torture and/or indoctrination.

Third, Orwell dramatizes in 1984 what happens when people don’t know history. What they know is what the media have force-fed them. Instead of wisdom with regard to historical understanding, they have platitudes and bromides: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, for example. Clichés are not arguments; assertions are not arguments; platitudes are not arguments. But if the masses only parrot the media they ingest, shibboleths and slogans are what we get.

In 1984, a novel now 70 years old, I encountered a warning we should heed. We are drowning in information rather than standing upon wisdom.

We would do well to read deeply, to think through Orwell’s warnings from decades ago. We would do well to actually know and understand history. We might discover how we got to such a sorry place with regard to our conversations with one another. We might rediscover that masterpieces like Romeo and Juliet, David Copperfield, and 1984 were not produced by bureaucrats or governmental committees.

A New Civil War

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I heard someone say recently that the West is in a civil war. But this civil war is not over states’ rights or slavery, he said. It is a war of worldviews, and at stake is the human soul. That sounds overstated, doesn’t it? A war of worldviews, and at stake is the human soul. But I wonder if he may be right.

This morning at work, a friend and I were talking over breakfast. He’d stopped on his way into work and bought us both breakfast. When we were together a few minutes later at a table in the office, he flicked on a nearby TV and we began eating our biscuits and taking in some of the day’s news. Today’s news included three main issues: 1) violence at our schools as recently evidenced in Parkland, FL; 2) another Islamic attack, this one in Montenegro; and 3) the death of Rev. Billy Graham.

My friend and I ate our biscuits and shook our heads at the state of events we saw splashed across the screen: 17 dead and 14 injured in Parkland, FL, and the community and nation reel; another Islamist hurls a grenade into the U.S. Embassy in Podgorica, Montenegro, then blows himself up; and 99-year-old Reverend Billy Graham, arguably the most effective Christian evangelist since the apostle Paul, has died. All three stories shared at least one theme: death. Death by violence in FL; death by suicide with the Islamist; and the death of Reverend Billy Graham, and how some secularists rage against his message of the Christian gospel—that Christ has come for sinners.

But how different are the worldviews? Strikingly. The young man who murdered his classmates and teachers in FL ripped life away from Cara, Chris, Gina, Alex, Joaquin, and more than a dozen others. Violence, death, suffering, and lots and lots of finger-pointing. I cannot read the soul of the murderer in FL. I cannot read the soul of the Islamist who threw a grenade into the American Embassy in Montenegro. I cannot read the soul of Rev. Billy Graham. But is the West in a type of civil war? Is there not a war of worldviews for the human soul?

Will more government intervention in our lives prevent murders like in Parkland, FL? Many on the political left emote that America needs more laws, more restrictions on guns, and some even argue for relinquishing American’s Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Many on the political right point out that thugs don’t obey laws; hence, more laws and restrictions would not have prevented this. It’s not the millions of Americans who own guns, and who are law-abiding citizens, that we need worry about. Instead, we should enforce the laws we have, screen people for psychological health, and possibly arm some government school employees. But AR-15s (originally named for the ArmaLite-15) don’t discharge on their own. Human will is involved. Human responsibility is involved. I, for example, own several weapons; they don’t own me. Human volition and responsibility are always involved. What worldview better assesses what we are witnessing? Is more government the answer? The political left wants bigger government and more laws. The political right wants smaller government, enforcement of current laws, and personal responsibility.

What if one proposed that there is a worldview out there that assesses this, and that man’s problem is not a primarily political one, but a moral and theological one? The biblical worldview posits that men and women are created in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27), that we are fallen creatures (Gen 3) because we chose (and continue to choose) to trust ourselves rather than God’s revealed will, and that we suppress the truth that God graciously gives us (Rom 1:18). The NT puts it this way:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools (Rom 1:18-22 ESV).

In short, the biblical worldview diagnoses man’s root problem: he is a sinner. We are rebels against holy God. And our behavior is that characteristic of fools. We won’t prevent murder by banning AR-15s. We won’t prevent Islamic terrorists from murdering civilians by failing to call the reality of evil what it is. We won’t stop the raging mouths of secularists who inveigh against Rev. Billy Graham and his Christian message by forfeiting free speech.

I think what I overheard was right: there is a civil war in the West. I even think he may be right that there’s a war of worldviews over the human soul, and what it means to be human. We see what happens when we reject the biblical worldview. Names of victims scroll across our screens. Pundits point fingers. People bypass civility and rage at one another instead of reason. We prey instead of pray. We become, in short, darkened and increasingly foolish. Might we consider the biblical worldview? Rev. Graham was not a perfect man, to be sure, but he faithfully brought a message that not only assesses man’s problem but also includes God’s solution: the Christ.