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by David Odegard

Every utopia seeks to create an unchanging, ideal life or society in which persons are the happiest they could be. A utopia seeks to create a static life. Change, dynamic surges of thought or progress aren’t welcome because they upset the status quo. The problem with utopia is that it destroys innovation and freedom. The utopia destroys what it means to be human; instead of making me a slave, it ultimately seeks to make me a robot. Just a little gear in someone else’s great big machine. No thanks!

Alexander the Great was totally enamored with the teachings of Aristotle. He saw himself as a liberator of the barbarian world, bringing them the gift of Greek culture. He brought with him the Polis, a square city plan with a road (called kardia, meaning “heart”) running north and south, an avenue that was three times as wide running east and west, and a giant square in the center where these two roads met. The shops would run along the kardia, and just off the square would be the temple to the principle god. There would be a theatre, a hippodrome (horse racing), public baths (with male and female prostitutes), a gymnasium, etc. It represented a perfectly ordered existence.

Alexander’s idea was that to be fully Greek meant to wake up in the morning and get the blood pumping at the gym—a good workout, then to the baths. After the baths, a vigorous meal and perhaps some spirited public debate at the forum or listening to a lecture. Then on to the theatre or the hippodrome for a little night life, where wine, women, and song was the order of worship.

Ah hedonism, ah Hellenism, ah the good life of being truly Greek. But, if this is the daily routine in utopia, who was planting and reaping the crops, ferrying goods back and forth, providing security, watching the children, or cooking the meals? Alexander had an answer for that too: the slaves. Yes, Alexandrian Hellenism was dependent upon slave labor so it could not be the ideal for all. Every utopian scheme must erase the individual in order to exalt the society in which all the humans must fit. The scheme must whittle all those square pegs to fit into its round society.

There have been Christian models of utopia as well. Some of them have been absolute, Jew-killing nightmares. Others have been fine. There are basically two kinds of attempted Christian utopia: voluntary and involuntary.

Voluntary associations are no problem, even those that wholly embrace socialism or communism. If you don’t like it, you can leave. The Amish, the Hutterites, the Mennonites, and the Quakers, just to name a few, all began as Anabaptist communities that wanted to live out the Christian life in a deliberate way. They voluntarily surrendered their own rights and freedoms in order to live in a way that they felt was consistent with the Bible. Those members, or children of members, who did not wish to live according to the established norm of the community were allowed to leave. They were never killed or jailed; forget the modern depiction of all of these communities as witch burners, it just wasn’t the case.

Another example of this type are the monasteries which are designed to enable the Christians who live in them to pray and meditate in order to draw nearer to God. The Dominican order was established for that reason, but they also had the vision of preaching to the world. It seemed like a utopian ideal. As long as it remained uninfused with secular power, it remained true to its founding vision.

But on April 20, 1233, the Dominican order was tapped by Pope Gregory to enforce orthodoxy on Christians. Hence the Inquisition was born. To be sure, the Inquisition was an illegitimate outgrowth of the Dominican order, which sought to employ reason in defense of the gospel towards pagan and others. Forced conversions were something not intended by the founder. Nevertheless, when the idea utopia gets into the minds of powerful people, it always engenders dehumanization by necessity. Those square pegs ain’t gonna whittle themselves, are they. The difference? The use of force.

Ludwig Von Mises wrote, “In human life there is never calm and repose. Life is a process, not a perseverance in a status quo. Yet the human mind has always been deluded by the image of an unchangeable existence. The avowed aim of all utopian movements is to put an end to history and to establish a final and permanent calm.”

The 1800’s were filled with many competing utopian models. Marx, Darwin, Bacon, the Republic of France, the frenzy of post-millennialism in the United States, not to mention all the utopias dreamed up by authors, both religious and secular. It seemed that everyone had an ideal shape that human society could be hammered into. The builders of the Tower of Babel would have been proud. Man’s will must be overcome by human force and effort. All of the humanistic ideals that have arisen since the Fall of Man have believed in the perfectibility of man. Religions, Christian denominations, and secularists embraced the ideal of utopia even if they couldn’t agree what exactly the perfect society should be.

The 1900’s became the battleground for all of these ideals. The 20th century was a bloodbath, but the blood was spilled in the name of utopia. Karl Marx’s view of the perfect world started the Russian Revolution—Red over White. Millions dead! Later it would be Chairman Mao, Pol-Pot, and many others filling the killing fields with the bodies of those square pegs who refused to be whittled in the Marx’s perfect socialist order.

Hitler and Mussolini had their own ideas of utopia and they brought all the power of Italy and Germany to bring about a worldwide Pax Germana. Millions more dead. In the United States, the social gospel and the progressive movement completely reordered society with the help of Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Lyndon Johnson vastly undermining traditional American values and freedom. The “experts” were in control building a New America. They were taking their cues from secular idealists who had so much in common with the National Socialist Party of Germany. I could go on for a thousand pages!

How is the Kingdom of God different? Isn’t heaven the ideal of the ideals? YES! But God is the one who does the whittling of the pegs to fit them into His Kingdom. He does it with perfect love and ability. Humans can only PLAY God, they can’t BE God; therefore, their efforts to recreate the Garden of Eden always fall short. They always dehumanize and enslave. They try to make a human being into an unthinking machine—a robot, a cog in someone else’s machine.

But God works differently. He works through love not power. He works through self-sacrifice not coercion.

1 Peter 2:1-5, 11-12 says, “Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander. Like newborn infants, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, since you have tasted that the Lord is good. As you come to Him, the living stone, rejected by men, but chosen and precious in God’s sight, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Beloved, I urge you as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from the desires of the flesh, which war against your soul. Conduct yourselves with such honor among the Gentiles that, though they slander you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us."

Sinful human beings simply cannot be made into a perfect society. It will always fail. God has chosen the way of regeneration. So must you.

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