Pelagianism and the Placebo of Liberal Solutions to the Problem of Evil

It is interesting to see who theological presuppositions come into play even in a political world that often pretends to be void of religious mandates. I personally think that there is more secularism in play in conservative politics than in liberal politics. Liberalism is basically a religious cult with its own advancement of theological and ethical ideas that are pushed on others like a new Spanish Inquisition.

One of these theological ideas, however, is present, not explicitly, but implicitly presupposed in liberal solutions to problems concerning crime, and that is Pelagian anthropology.

In Pelagian thought, humans are basically a blank slate when they are born. There is no disposition of their spiritual nature that hinders them from achieving goodness. It is merely the choices them make.

Hence, in the Pelagian paradigm, if there are bad choices being made, it is merely because the person chooses them. So the liberal concludes that if man is basically a blank slate, and he is choosing wrong, it is because his environment has convinced him to choose wrong. Ergo, the environment is the problem. It must be changed.

If bad choices, therefore, come from an environment of poverty, then everyone should be given the same amount of money and some of those bad choices will go away. If bad choices come from a lack of education, then giving people the best education possible will cause some of those bad choices to go away. If the presence of guns causes people to make bad choices, then getting rid of guns will cause some of those bad choices to go away.

It is never considered whether the reason why people make bad choices is because they love evil, and would make those choices regardless of whether they were privileged with wealth, education, a non-violent environment, etc. This is the Augustinian, i.e., orthodox and biblical view concerning why man makes bad choices.

It is not his environment. It is his nature that must be changed.

This is not to say that environment does not direct one's nature to a particular expression of his love for evil, but that the problem of man's evil cannot be solved by a change of environment. This is a lesson that the Bible teaches in a few places, but particularly with the flood narrative, where Noah and his family are placed in an environment now free from the evils of the world, and yet, fall into sin because "man is evil from his earliest existence."

The problem isn't guns. It's man who wants to murder when he's angry or apathetic toward others. The problem isn't poverty. It's man who is lazy or who wants to oppress others even when they are not lazy. The problem isn't lack of education. If you educate a theif, as the saying goes, he'll become a better thief. The problem is man.

As such, the only solution can be found in what changes man's nature, and the only thing that changes man's nature is the gospel and the Word of God that builds upon the regeneration found therein. Apart from this, everything else is a band-aid put on a wound created by cancerous cells. It may cover up the problem to where it looks like it was a good solution, but in the end, the cancer continues to grow unchecked. It will consume the body because the right remedy requires the right diagnosis. The nations that have come before, and continue to fall because of their theological malpractice are the corpses of the mistreated.

As such social reform is futile. Our culture is just as immoral, if not more so, as it was before all of this activity of social reform. Social justice is nothing more than the administration of a placebo to calm those who are dying.