If there is one thing that any society cannot afford to lose, it is faith, and people of faith. Faith is the glue that holds together a free and safe society. Without faith, there cannot be freedom.
What is it that all communist and extremist socialist societies need, more than anything else?
They need a citizenry that will comply and conform to cultural conventions set by the state apparatus. They need a robotic, workaday citizenry, who are willing to silently and internally groan at the authoritarian government structure, but hold back on outrage, on rebellion, on putting their lives at risk in order to bring change.
Years ago, there was a horrific story that came out of Communist, authoritarian China. An infant had crawled out from the sidewalk and into the road and had subsequently been struck by a car.
Video shows one good citizen after another walk by the dying, injured infant, stop and look, and then push on. Cars slowed down and people gawked, but nobody stopped, nobody helped.
The fact is, that once you can successfully remove religious faith from a society, and replace it with servile obedience to the god-like state, you won’t have to worry about the people stepping out of line. There will be no bravery. There will only be cowed drones.
You see, the thing about faith in God, or even in what is right and what is wrong, is that it becomes more important than yourself, and your own well-being. You begin to realize, as a man or woman of faith, that doing what is right is more important than preserving one’s body and health and life.
In fact, the older that you get, as you look back on your life and the decisions made in it, you begin to realize that doing the right thing was the only thing that mattered. You realize that you are not defined by your gender, your race, your culture, your relationships, or anything else but your sense of right and wrong. In fact, I will go so far as to say that being a man is just being a person who knows what is right, and puts that above all else.
You cannot have a safe and free society without people willing to die for what is right. You cannot have freedom from tyranny and authoritarianism without a populace that is willing to die for what is right.
This is the rather obvious reason, historically, that communist and socialist countries crack down on the church as their first order of business. It is not religion that they are afraid of, per se, but faith. They know that to accomplish their social objectives by force, they cannot have people willing to put their own lives and social standing in jeopardy for what is right. They cannot have a society of do-gooders; the kind of people who will see a bleeding, dying, mortally-injured child in the street and stop to help, despite the social risk, because they that is the right thing to do, persecution be damned.
No. ‘The good’ must be viewed as a distribution from the government. The government must be seen as the source of distributed goodness, as it were. Individual, personal charity must replaced by a willingness to pay higher taxes, to sacrifice their lot for the greater societal good.
Conform. Pay your dues. Don’t make a stir. Be a good citizen by viewing yourself, not as an independent agent of goodness, but merely as a small contributor to the overall ocean of positive change enacted by the authorities.
Faith in God, and especially a God that is always watching, is replaced by a constant surveillance by your fellow citizens, neighbor, police and digital overlords.
Therefore, faith in a personal God, and His watchful eye, must be replaced by obedience to the equally ever present observation station of the supreme authority of the government. That is how it works.
It is not faith that they are after, even, but a belief that if you resist, if you step out of line, you will be caught, and ostracized, exiled, and punished in this present time. You will be canceled, shut up, censored, banned from communal activities, even re-educated.
Faith is the driver of freedom. A self-determinate person, who is willing to do good, or do the right thing, is the greatest danger to authoritarianism. Faith is more than just the glue, but the very fabric of freedom woven into a free societal superstructure. Without freedom, faith is replaced by cowardice, by fear, by fretful conformity to societal rules and obligations. True faith is a personal commitment to risk in the face of overwhelming societal dangers. It always was, and always will be– just that.