Karl Marx’s Unwise Definition of Religion

Jul 25th, 2007 by Bro. Eli

Good evening Bro. Eli,

I have read this blog and is consistently watching your “Ang Dating Daan” (The Old Path)
program. I am a Protestant and is currently a member of the opposition in the Philippines,
“Bayan Muna” (County First). I am an activist studying in University of the Philippines (UP)
Diliman.

I believe in God. However, when a person gets so much involved with activism, they believe in
Marxism (Karl Marx) which then believes in materialism and that there is no God.

I am confused. I would like to continue

being a leader of mass organization
which caters for the poor. I would like
to deliver the wrongdoings of this
administration in rallies. I would like
to help the workers attain their P125
increase in salary and to defend the
farmers from the greed landlords in our
country. I know you share the same
loving mercy for the poor. But I don’t
want to give up my faith in Christ. I
know there is God, but I don’t want to
stop myself from shouting for justice
and peace in our country.

I want to ask you Bro Eli, what is your

stand regarding New People’s Army? I
know its wrong to kill, but if they kill because of their belief, would it be right? What does your
religion say about rallies and demonstrations? If I join your religion, can I still fight for these
people’s right: An advocate of God and yet in a leftist group? What is your stand regarding
opposition and their programs for the poor.
Please help me Bro Eli, I am confused. My pastor tells me my question is hard and he can’t
answer me. I don’t want to trust that pastor anymore, if he can’t answer a simple question, how
can I trust him my very own salvation! I trust you Bro. Eli to answer my question. And if I have
follow up question, how can we reach you?

Thanks be to God.

Pamela

Dear Pamela,

I respect the idea of the name of your group “Bayan Muna” (Country First). For me, it sounds
very patriotic, compassionate, and caring. How I wish someday I will know your organization
not just by name, but by principles.

I admire your frankness and appreciate the doubts that springs within you; being caught between
two conflicting ideologies. I also respect the rights and freedom of those people who believe in
Marxism because my Bible tells me so.

(1Peter 2:17) “Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God,
honor the king.” NIV
I am happy to hear from you that, in spite of your leaning to the ideas of Karl Marx, you said you
believe in God.

In this life we have to believe in things beyond the material reality that our material eyes can see.
As the saying goes, “there is more than meets the eye”. The material universe is up to now
unfathomable and beyond human understanding. There are scientific guesses which are still to be
investigated and proven; but humanity, in its long history of existence, even the most intelligent
persons who ever lived on earth failed to understand the totality of existing realities.
(Ecclesiastes 8:17) “Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work
that is done under the sun: because though a man labor to seek it out, yet he shall not find it;
yea further; though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.”

If you have noticed the verse, it speaks of the work of God, which can not be totally understood
by man. Our failure to discern and to discover every reality that exists proves the existence of
God that Marxism denies. God has a signature authenticating his words in the Bible.

(Isaiah 55:8-9) “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than
your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than
your thoughts.”

If the preceding statement came from an ordinary human being that

was said and written almost three millennia ago, it should have
been proven false by the advancement of human knowledge in
every field of science. But advancement in science, like the putting
up of the Hubble telescope in space, proves further the vastness of
the universe and the heavens confirming what God has said, that
His ways and thoughts is higher than ours as the heavens is higher
than the earth. This is God’s authenticating signature over His
words in the Bible.

If we can find wisdom in simple and small realities in life, and at

the same instance there are small things we can not comprehend, everything unexplained by
human mind and understanding, confirms the existence of that Someone who created such things
and made them existing realities.

(Romans 1:19-20) “Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has
made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal
power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made,
so that men are without excuse.”

There is no excuse for those who will not acknowledge the existence of a Creator or God. If you
are certain that there really is a God who created everything and every human person, you must
consult Him if, within you, there is a desire to care for the humblest and the poorest of His
creations. The Creator is the absolute authority over His creation. He knows the capabilities and
the infirmities of every created being just like the manufacturer of a diesel engine that knows the
powers and the limitations of their product. Nobody that exists can be more compassionate and
caring for humans than the Creator Himself.

(Psalms 103:14) “For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.”

If your organization really care for the poor and the less fortunate, it is not God’s will to be an
activist —which sometimes indulge in violent actions — that sometimes harm the poor
policemen whose only perceived fault is to maintain peace and order in society.
I will not argue with you if you believe that there are corruptions in the government. Although
being denied, irrefutable informations like, news of journalists disappearing without traces, a
host of political detainees, and news about innumerable human rights violations (of which I am
also a victim) clearly testify to the fact that there are corruptions and misdeeds in the
government; but I have to emphasize that if we believe in God, violence and activism is not the
solution to this social ill in our country. Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred.
Unrighteousness can be conquered by righteousness. Evil can be conquered by good — and not
by another evil. If the efforts and the money being spent by activist to voice out their grievances
that will only fall on deaf ears, were used to feed the hungry, at least their grief was alleviated for
a given hour. Whatever you do, and whatever you say will not be heard by those who are hungry
and greedy for power and money; and on situations like these, God, the Creator of the poor, can
make an intervention if we trust in what He can peacefully do — sparing the lives of innocent
people.

(Daniel 2:21) “And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up
kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding…”

(Proverbs 8:14-16) “Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom: I am understanding; I have

strength. By me kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, even
all the judges of the earth.”

If any ruler or government does not rule with sound wisdom and understanding, God, by the
strike of a virus or bacteria, freed His people from the hands of the cruel pharaoh in Egypt — by
the death of the king’s first born son: successor to his throne… meaning, the fall of his
government.

There is time for every purpose. God is never late. If He allows iniquity and evil to be
perpetuated by the evildoers, it does not mean that He is pleased in tolerating them, but is giving
them ample time to repent or, if they will not, to satisfy the justice and punishment reserved for
them.

(Ecclesiastes 3:1) “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the
heaven…”

(Ecclesiastes 8:11) “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore
the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.”

(2 Peter 3:9) “The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is
forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach
repentance.”

Karl Marx’s belief about God and religion is not even fit to sound materialism. Sound and sane
materialism does not require total equity in volume on everything or on every individual. A
‘material fly’ feeds and enjoy filth, but is hated by a ‘material mosquito’. Mosquitoes sip the
priceless blood of a monarch or a royalty; but the bees are content in collecting very small
amount of sweet available in every small flower, but they all survive equally. If Marxism is sane
materialism, leaders of communist countries should not enjoy the luxuries which their subjects or
the common people are deprived of. Thus, a Christian leader said:
(2 Corinthians 12:14-15) “Behold, the third time I am ready to come to you; and I will not be
burdensome to you: for I seek not yours, but you: for the children ought not to lay up for the
parents, but the parents for the children. And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you;
though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved.”

(1 Corinthians 4:8, 11-13) “Now ye are full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without
us: and I would to God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you…”

“…Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted,
and have no certain dwelling place; And labor, working with our own hands: being reviled, we
bless; being persecuted, we suffer it: Being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of
the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day.”

If you have noticed in the verses above, the leaders of the Christian faith experienced hunger,
while the members are full — the latter are rich, but the former were filth and were like garbage;
while in Marxism, leaders enjoy all the luxuries in life at the sufferings of their subjects.

Karl Marx’s definition of religion is unwise and uncalled for; although in some aspects, I do not
fully blame him because, maybe, the religions that he has known in his lifetime are false
religions and not true Christianity.

Many pretending religions and monstrous religious leaders really take advantage of the
ignorance of their subjects. This was prophesied in the Bible.

(Micah 3:11) “The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and
the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the
LORD among us? None evil can come upon us.”

No wonder, these are the kind of religious leaders that he observed which made him conclude
“that religion is an expression of material realities and economic injustice”. I am very much sorry
for him — and his believers. If he said “that religion was used by oppressors to make people feel
better the distress they experience due to being poor and exploited”, and concluded “that religion
is the opium of the people”, I sympathize with him and with you, because I know that this was
due to his ignorance of true religion in the Bible.

True religion cares — especially for the less fortunate.

(James 1:27) “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the
fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”

In the practice of true religion, nobody will die of hunger and disease being left uncared for.

(1 John 3:17) “But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and
shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?”

True Christians do not kill — even the most bitter of their enemies.
(Matthew 5:44-45) “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good
to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That
ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the
evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

Christians feed and not kill their enemies.

(Romans 12:20) “Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for
in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.”

Karl Marx said that, “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature” — to this, I vehemently
disagree!

I am not oppressed when I embraced Christianity. It is not because of hunger that I believed in
God. I am not exploited when I joined the Church of God. I am in control of all my faculties
when I received the Christian doctrine. Christianity is the religion of my choice. It is the wisest
thing I believe I have ever done. And for these things, I praise and thank God. In my religion, I
have learned to care for others — whether rich or poor. I have learned the virtue of self-sacrifice
and control. I have learned compassion and pity; and I have accepted to be defrauded and
deceived by the opportunistic people of society. Belief in God and His doctrines made me a
better person than I was before.

I will suggest something which I think sounds better, “Dios muna bago ang lahat” (God first
before everything).

May my God bless you.