Long ago, humans thought they could provide free, high-quality health care to everyone who wanted it. Actually, they thought they could build a tower to heaven.

Robert Cheeks recently wrote a piece on the prevalence of Gnosticism in current American politics. His basic argument is that our society has recently been energized and engaged by utopian heaven-on-earth fantasies, particularly those promoted by Obama’s administration.

The following excerpt sums up the piece most succinctly:

The Obama regime proffers on the basis of the immanetization of human existence, a false representation of concrete society as an eschaton, the fallacious Utopian dreamworld of a madman.

Cheeks borrows the “immanentizing the eschaton” phrase from political philosopher Eric Voegelin, who spent much of his career emphasizing the dangers of widespread Gnosticism (as manifested by Nazism and communism). Voegelin claimed that such a philosophical framework represented a “theoretical fallacy.”

Indeed, if we are trying to create heaven on earth, and we are trying to do so precisely on those terms, what exactly do we think “heaven” is in the first place?

The Gnostic mindset is founded on the premise that evil in the world is not a result of sin, but rather of our disconnectedness with nature and the cosmos. Such a worldview omits the need for a Savior or Messiah, and thus the Resurrection becomes all but irrelevant.

Cheeks notes the threat Gnosticism poses to Christianity and laments that modern Christianity is not nearly as influential as it needs to be. I disagree with him on some of these points (particularly that the Protestant Reformation was a manifestation of Gnosticism), but he’s right that Christianity could be doing more to combat Gnosticism. With “mainstream” Christians obsessing over everything from Avatar to The Secret, it’s pretty clear that Gnosticism isn’t even on the radar for most Christians.

However, Cheeks’ description of the struggle goes further when he quotes Voegelin as saying this:

…the likeliness of a fall from faith will increase when civilizational progress of education, literacy, and intellectual debate will bring the full seriousness of Christianity to the understanding of ever more individuals.

At first this caught me off guard. I have long believed that if Christianity were executed on a level-playing field (i.e. in a free market), it would easily win the day. However, what Cheeks and Voegelin seem to be saying is that the more advanced our society becomes, the higher the likelihood of a “fall from faith,” simply because people will really know what Christianity is all about. What does he mean by this?

I found the full context of the quote here, and after reading it, it seems that by “fall of faith” Voegelin means a dilution or a perversion of faith. In other words, Voegelin is saying that as humans we are prone to “imanentize” heavenly things because it’s easy. If Christians are to reject Gnosticm, it means they must embrace a pursuit far more daring.  Voegelin sums up this pursuit as follows:

Uncertainty is the very essence of Christianity. The feeling of security in a “world full of gods” [i.e. Gnosticism] is lost with the gods themselves; when the world is de-divinized, communication with the world-transcendent God is reduced to the tenuous bond of faith, in the sense of Heb. 11:1, as the substance of things hoped for and the proof of things unseen.

And thus, if we are to have a sincere, tried-and-true faith, progress in a free society could indeed lead to the same minority of true Christians. Voegelin imagines the regression occurring as follows:

The danger of a breakdown of faith to a socially relevant degree, now, will increase in the measure in which Christianity is a worldly success…The more people are drawn or pressured into the Christian orbit, the greater will be the number among them who do not have the spiritual stamina for the heroic adventure of the soul that is Christianity.

I sincerely hope that Voegelin is wrong, but Jesus Himself said that the road is narrow and “only a few find it.” Again, I have long believed that the Gospel message could be spread most efficiently in a free society, and I still believe that. However, whether people actually decide to follow that message is another matter.

But Cheeks ends on a lighter note by pointing to the Tea Party Movement (TPM), which he believes is a positive sign that Americans may be waking up to the implications of our society’s revived Gnosticsm:

Here it is plainly visible that the TPM represents an opposition to a rising state repressiveness and while we may criticize the planning, execution, and indeed effectiveness of the TPM, at least to date, we should realize that these people represent the initial cadre of free citizens who are seeking redress of grievance from a regime that is more than willing to resort to violence.

I think he exaggerates the potential for violence (at least as of now), but he’s right to say that the TPM is an encouraging sign.

Remember, it was only a little over a year ago that the masses were sobbing and trembling as they ushered in the transcendent Age of Obama. There is now a significant portion of the citizenry who have lost faith in Obama’s Gnostic myth.

As Cheeks ended his piece: “Indeed, we are living in truly interesting times.”

Click here to read Cheeks’ full article.

Click here to read a related Remnant Culture article, “Kingdoms of Heaven and Earth: An Introduction.”