How I discovered the Five Pillars of Tyranny
I grew up in church. Well, let me amend.
I grew up with parents seeking truth so we tried pretty much every flavor of spirituality/religion known to 20th century Americans. Then when I was 15, for no apparent reason my parents said we were going to church. I rolled my eyes and prepared to wait out this fad.
The “fad” lasted almost 30 years, because during those early years I became a true believer.
As anyone from my hometown can attest, I took it seriously. I went to college and got a degree in Church history and a minor in the Old Testament. After I graduated, I kept studying, even though I wasn’t in college. I even got a Georgetown University theological library card. The priests were thrilled to have someone roaming the stacks. I was thrilled to have access to a world class theological library.
Why did I do this?
I loved the ideas and even though I don’t have a pastoral bone in my body, I did think I was headed into the ministry, somewhere and somehow. For lots of reasons entering “the ministry” never happened.
The micro evolutions of my church experience are tedious so I’ll merely note that attended many churches and denominational flavors. Some were good; some where awful, and some where . . . meh, but they all had a common theme.
Of course, every church thinks it is the world’s beacon of love and hope, peace and salvation, with the most brotherly and sisterly community toiling together in the name of God, His kingdom, and His righteousness.
Every church thinks this, but underneath the glossy brochure is an ugly reality—pride, indolence, ignorance, servility, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.
And the typical response is: “But what can you expect from a group of sinners?”
How does the trope go? “The Church is a whore, but she is our mother.”
Why of course the Church does bad things; it’s full of sinners. How else could it act?
Like all true believers I accepted the premise: we are all sinners, therefore sinners sin against each other. The solution is to accept the sinfulness of man and then accept God’s grace. Or said another way: “Move on because there is nothing to see here.”
This explanation works as long as one is willing to ignore the brazen moral equivalency. It works if one is willing to accept (and tell) the requisite lie about the underlying evil: everyone sins and no one can demand better.
Eventually I was unwilling to turn a blind eye because it wasn’t merely stray sins from imperfect people stumbling about, but rather oppressive systems and tyrannical actions that persisted from church to church, denomination to denomination. The social dynamic was far too consistent to be accidental.
Then from my systematic and historical theology—a degree that I’d loved but found totally useless—helped me see the even bigger picture. The patterns of behavior weren’t merely contemporary flaws attributed to the vague boogieman of 21st century culture, but the same systems and actions that persisted from the first century forward.
The pattern coalesced and inspired this fundamental question: how was it possible that throughout history, the Church was either the primary force of tyranny or aided and abetted tyrants?
It turned out I wasn’t alone in this observation. James Madison made a similar remark in Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments:
“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial.”
. . .
“What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries.”
“But John, that isn’t my church! And those bad churches just have their doctrine wrong.”
Everyone insists their church is the outlier and every other church just has bad doctrine. As if their experience is the only pure expression of Christianity ever.
This attitude represents a profound conceit but I do understand from where it originates. Human’s need their existence, their lives to matter. They need Epic Meaning and Calling. It is easier to barrow that meaning and calling than it is to create it.
Alakazam poof! “My church is the bestest.”
But when someone borrows their purpose they can’t help but perpetuate the errors deeply imbedded in the group.
Sunday to Sunday Christian practice varies throughout American piety, and even a few of those organizations are filled with pleasant people going about their lives. But to the degree a church takes seriously root orthodox doctrines the threads, themes, and outcomes are available to anyone with the courage to look.
But let’s pretend for a moment that your church is the one church that is the poster child for the glossy brochure. The question remains: how was it possible that throughout history, the Church was either the primary force of tyranny or aided and abetted tyrants?
If Christianity’s ostensible goal is what’s on the glossy brochure, then why is the reality so very, very destructive?
How can a religion that makes a claim to the highest moral good so consistently perform or condone the greatest despotism?
In 2007 I set out to understand this profound inconsistency.
It took years of research, thinking, and writing to come to a conclusion, and I won’t detail that evolution here, except to say it wasn’t sinners being sinners at the core of the Church’s misdeeds, but rather something else: Ideas.
Once I understood that ideas were the driving force of human action (and because I had a detailed understanding of the history of Christian thought), it was easy to see how the Church so consistently erected spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority or upheld the thrones of despotism.
Man is insatiably philosophical. He can’t help but to organize his ideas into a coherent whole. I explore this in greater detail throughout Spiritual Tyranny, but the sum of this truth is captured here:
The Gospel according to John “Immel” Chapter 3: 1-3.
1) All people act logically from their assumptions. 2) It does not matter how inconsistent the ideas or insane the rationale, they will act until the logic is fulfilled. 3) Therefore, when you see masses of people taking the same destructive actions, find the assumptions and you will find the cause.
Let’s break this down:
- Verse 1) Assumptions + “logic” = action.
- Verse 2) faulty logic, erroneous rationalizations are still ideas that flow from one to the next, to the next, to an outcome.
- Verse 3) Mass action + destructive outcomes = common premise.
Once I understood what I was looking for it was simple to identify how the systems were built and why the actions were so consistent. I identified the five pillars of tyranny. And not just Christian tyranny, but all tyrannical ideologies are founded on the same five pillars.
ALL tyrannies:
Islamic Jihad
Marxism in all its variations.
- National socialism
- Soviet Socialist Republic
- Khmer Rouge
- The Modern Environmental Movement
Absolute monarchies
This chart captures my contribution to philosophy. It is rendered as a web to represent the interrelated/dynamic tension between the pillars.
I’ll explain this in greater detail in coming articles and courses (coming soon) but Spiritual Tyranny revolves around unpacking and addressing these five pillars.
- Incompetent Masses: Man is existentially flawed and therefore incapable of managing his own life.
- Universal Guilt: Man is morally corrupt and therefore his every action and judgment is worthy of condemnation.
- Dictated Good: Because man is existentially corrupt and incompetent someone must compel him to right action.
- Abolition of Ambition: Man must never take an individual action. His every drive for self-improvement must be eradicated to compel him to join the collective.
- Collective Conformity: Man must be forced into the collective and government exists for the sole purpose of creating a neutered humanity, without complexion, or variation, or distinction.
Man is a spiritual being, but not in the “saved from eternal torment to live in a utopian afterlife” sense. But rather, man’s spiritual nature is his whole integrated existence: his reasoning mind, his individual life force, his determination to produce meaningful work, his body and the pleasures thereof. A man or woman living this fully integrated life cannot be tyrannized . . . which is why all tyrannies set out to destroy this integrated existence.
Spiritual Tyranny is my effort to unravel the ideas and arguments designed to enslave man, and destroy his existence.
