Egalitarianism in the Post-Christian World

 I continue to use this term, “post—Christian" to illustrate what some scholars, postmodern progressive academic elitists, and certain politicians believe the world to be.

We Christians will always know better.

Egalitarianism is the belief that all people are equal, especially in social, political, and economic life.  In modern terms this definition is fundamentally a political doctrine and from the social philosophy standpoint, the advocating of the removal of these things as obstacles is the prevailing thought.

In either case, both are secular in nature, dealing with social, political, and economic forces and, with Ratzinger’s, “Dictatorship of Relativism”, along with the other postmodern elements: secularism, delivered irrationality, subjective emotionalism, reductionism, and narcissism, the quest for secular social justice is served perfectly by progressivism, that resurrected political movement that claims government is the only agency capable of perfecting human beings and their actions, i.e. to dictate egalitarianism by force.

The problem becomes one of the equality of outcomes in which things like work, determination, and even luck are ignored. The view is narrow-minded and punitive, while failing to recognize an essential element of our Republic – individualism. The progressive approach can only work among the likes of other totalitarian regimes, like socialism or communism.

If we look to the foundational basis of our human identity – the imago Dei – the fact that we are created in the image of God, and derive our dignity from him, we have a model and mechanism by which to reimagine equality in a truly just way.

First of all, the fact of our creation is done with perfect equality, attributes of the divine person given to us all, despite any and all future differences which develop among different people.

How do we enfold such affective things as work and determination?

We bring these things back to life through our personal reflections on Church teaching given to our children. We insist upon it in our schools. We teach what God says versus what the world says. We strike down the fallacy of progressive egalitarianism while working for the equality of dignity, and work to provide equal opportunity. Preach this good news to everyone we come in contact with, whenever possible. Most of all, we must show reverence for the imago Dei and treasure the sanctity of work, and the virtue of proper determination to succeed for our own good – we are all imago Dei – in the service of others.