Atheism reduces human beings to cosmic junk, moist robots with no ultimate purpose or meaning. This is where my struggle came in. On atheism, nothing quenched my thirst for significance or my desire for justice. Nothing ultimately matters on atheism. This wasn’t the testimony of my soul, though. I knew life had meaning.

I’m often asked what led to my converting from atheism to Christianity. The answer sometimes surprises: reality. Reality is the way the world really is. It doesn’t change according to our likes and dislikes. Because of this, when you don’t live according to reality, you bump into it. As an atheist, when looking for answers to important questions, I bumped hard into reality.
The first bump came as I tried to explain what caused the beginning of the universe. It’s not as complicated as you might think. There are only two options: something or nothing. This put me in a tough spot as an atheist. I didn’t want to say something caused the universe because that something would have to be immensely powerful, incredibly creative, and outside its own creation (i.e., outside time and space). That something was starting to look like God, and I did not want to say God caused the universe. Instead, I wanted to say nothing caused the universe. This is unreasonable, though.
As an atheist, I believed everything that exists is the product of blind, physical processes. I couldn’t explain where the universe came from because all I had to start with was nothing. But nothing comes from nothing. To say the universe came from nothing goes against our basic intuitions about reality. However, on Christian theism, there was more than nothing to start with. There was an uncaused cause. The Christian explanation lines up perfectly with the way the world really is.
That was the first bump. The next bump was the most difficult for me.
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Written by Forrest L. Marion |
Monday, January 10, 2022
The activities of the Red Guards in the 1960’s under the auspices of the . . . Cultural Revolution had certain interesting characteristics. The major slogan these young students were acting upon was to ‘smash the old and make room for the new.’ Tens of thousands of high school and university students traveled all over China, especially to such big cities as Peking, Shanghai, Canton. . . . They stormed some of the most treasured Chinese cultural sites – Buddhist temples, Protestant and Catholic churches – invaded the libraries, and desecrated the graves of their ancestors.

Fifty years ago, a scholarly study of the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s China serves as a case study to those in America today who may remain unable to perceive or unwilling to admit the religious nature of the neo-Marxist-based movement in our own culture. In recent months, a number of articles and blogs have shed light on the secular quasi-religion currently ravaging America, some of them in the pages of The Aquila Report. Perhaps today’s neo-Marxists’ reluctance to admit the religious nature of their movement is because Marxism is supposed to be a purely secular, a-theistic, non-religious movement. Bible readers will know, however, that as God has placed eternity in man’s heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11), so must mankind in all ages be found to worship something or someone. The present writing uses several excerpts to make clear that this is no cherry-picked interpretation of past events. Some readers may even be surprised to learn that the study from 1971 that I draw from was published by the University of California Press at Berkeley – not exactly a hotbed of conservatism, then or now.
Nineteen sixty-six marked 17 years since the Communists had secured mainland China, having kicked out the Nationalists who withdrew to Taiwan where the Republic of China government was reestablished and remains to this day, albeit under increasing near-daily threats from the mainland. The year 1966 also witnessed the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s People’s Republic of China (PRC). Five years later, Asian Survey published an article entitled, “The Role of Religion in Communist Chinese Society.” The writer, Lucy Jen Huang, a sociology professor at Illinois State University, collected her materials for the article from reports, editorials, newspapers, and official documents “published in Mainland China and intended for internal Chinese consumption,” supplemented with firsthand accounts provided by emigres from China and Western visitors to the mainland.
Huang noted that beginning in 1949,
Communist leaders, via the newspapers and monthly magazines, launched a diligent campaign against religion in which it was argued that religion and superstition were similar in that all religious activities were superstitious, but that not all superstitions were religious activities. . . . As long as class and class struggle are present, the struggle against religious superstitions will always be associated with the class struggle.[1]  
While the nature of the “struggle” – in reality, one small part of the war against God described in Psalm 2 – has shifted largely from class to other concerns in contemporary America, it was clear from the founding of the PRC that religious activities were to be equated with superstition.
Referring to the start of the Cultural Revolution, Huang wrote, “Every religious revival movement requires the true believers to spread the ‘word,’ in this case mainly selection[s] from the little red book, Quotations of Mao Tse-tung. Soon after the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards [students, mainly], in the role of missionaries and disciples of the religious movement, traveled all over China.” A Canton news article recounted that the Red Guards in their missionary work, “. . . spared time every day to help the teenagers and children study quotations from Chairman Mao, teach them to sing revolutionary songs, and help the residents do household work.”
Lucy Jen Huang continued:
Maoism, by this time, had taken the form of extreme adulation of the great leader, sage, poet, philosopher, military genius, statesman, worthy successor to the mightiest of Emperors, and the great prophet of Marxist-Leninist thought. The worship of Mao could be discerned in the report on [the] Red Guards’ visit to his birthplace in Hunan Province. The house where Chairman Mao lived had been carefully preserved and an exhibition hall has been built near it. . . . Red Guards wrote the following pledges in the guest book: ‘We shall give our lives to defend Mao Tse-tung’s ideas! Henceforth, we live to implement Mao Tse-tung’s thought!’ . . . ‘Neither mountains of swords nor oceans of flame hold any fear for us as we work under your guidance. We shall follow you always. Let the seas dry up and the rocks crumble, but our hearts will never change.’
Bible readers perhaps will reflect on several passages of Scripture, of which the aforementioned is but a cheap plastic, soul-destroying imitation.
The article described activities engaged in by the young Red Guards:
. . . the heart and soul of the younger generation of Chinese was aroused by this Maoist religious experience. . . . Red Guards were set loose in the streets of Peking to demand that the traffic lights be changed so that red signaled ‘Go’ and green ‘Stop’; to rename the great Peking Square from ‘Heavenly Place’ to ‘East is Red’; to smash stamp collectors’ shops as ‘Bourgeois’; to break into people’s homes and toss out non-revolutionary pointed shoes and sport shirts. Persecution of the unbelievers can be traced in a Red Guard document entitled ‘One Hundred Examples for Breaking the Old and Establishing the New.’  
Sadly, American readers may substitute their own terms for today’s Red Guards let loose in their streets, not of Peking, Shanghai, and Canton, but Portland, Seattle, and Chicago – smashing shops, breaking the old and seeking vainly, if not hypocritically, to establish the new (utopia).
In terms frighteningly and disgustingly familiar to many Americans today, Huang summarized the devastations in China:
The activities of the Red Guards in the 1960’s under the auspices of the . . . Cultural Revolution had certain interesting characteristics. The major slogan these young students were acting upon was to ‘smash the old and make room for the new.’ Tens of thousands of high school and university students traveled all over China, especially to such big cities as Peking, Shanghai, Canton. . . . They stormed some of the most treasured Chinese cultural sites – Buddhist temples, Protestant and Catholic churches – invaded the libraries, and desecrated the graves of their ancestors. They smashed the statues and crosses, burned the Buddhas, and fed books into the flames. When they broke into Peking’s Roman Catholic Church, tore the crucifix from the altar and set up a plaster bust of Mao, the symbolism of the deification of Mao was complete. 
In conclusion, Huang pointed out part of the contradictory nature of the quasi-religion of Maoism:
The official policy of the Maoist regime has been anti-religious and anti-superstitious in nature. However, paradoxically, there are undeniably religious dimensions in the official tactics and ideology resembling the very phenomena of religion and superstition which the regime claims to oppose. Mao, as the symbol of god and prophet; Maoism the Bible, in the form of quotations of Mao Tse-tung; and the faith in Mao and his teachings, which have supposedly achieved superhuman feats and miracles, have stirred the religious zeal of Mao’s followers.
As was to be the case with the disciples of Wokeism in America fifty years later,
For many followers of Maoism they may have found in the Communist regime a seeming dedication to justice, international brotherhood . . . and tireless service to mankind. They are no longer confused and alienated. But for others who are overly idealistic and impractical, Maoism may turn out to be ‘the God that failed.’ It has challenged and fired their enthusiasm but may be unable to satisfy their cherished dreams and idealism.
One writer in 2021, questioning how “siblings, neighbors, colleagues, and classmates [could] turn on one another so viciously?” concluded that Mao’s “Cultural Revolution was fundamentally a civil war.” Perhaps 40 percent of China’s population in those days was fifteen years of age or under; nearly half were under twenty years, and they provided most of the Red Guards. Some estimates list as many as 1.5 million killed in China, 36 million persecuted, and tens of millions in addition affected “in a countryside upheaval” that lasted from 1966 to 1976, when Mao died. By 1981, the Chinese Communist Party called the Cultural Revolution an error, but deflected the blame from Mao toward his wife and his closest associates. The supposed “worthy successor to the mightiest of Emperors” could not suffer loss of reputation – at least not shortly after his death.[2]
For the student of the Bible, perhaps much of the assessment of China’s Cultural Revolution is as unsurprising as it is disheartening, except perhaps in the degree of its ruthlessness, vileness, and destructiveness. But the main point here is simply to recognize that, regardless of what Wokeism’s participants or observers may claim in 2021, it – like Maoism fifty years ago – is, in essence, a religion, and a false religion at that. But as is the case for all men in all ages, the follower of any worldly –ism – including Wokeism – is called to repent and believe the gospel of the grace of God in Jesus Christ, and he shall be saved.
And for any that have believed the gospel but have been led astray by false teachers, heed the words of John to the angel of the church in Sardis: “Remember therefore what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. If therefore you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come upon you” (Revelation 3:3).
Forrest Marion is a ruling elder in Eastwood Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Montgomery, Ala.

[1] Lucy Jen Huang, “The Role of Religion in Communist Chinese Society,” Asian Survey, vol. XI, no. 7 (Jul. 1971): 695. Unless cited otherwise, all quotations in the remainder of the present writing are taken from Huang’s article, pp. 698-701, 707-708.
[2] Pankaj Mishra, “What Are The Cultural Revolution’s Lessons For Our Current Moment? The New Yorker, Jan. 25, 2021.

Though the family is under attack in these difficult times, we have many occasions to stand up for the family by showing the beauty of marriage and children. We do not rely on the impression we make in our marriages and families, though such qualities stand out these days. We also share the Gospel, which is good and true news available for anyone who comes to Christ in faith. The choices people are making will not satisfy them. They are lonely, anxious, and confused. God the thoughtful Creator has not only given us the blessings of families, but has also provided forgiveness, guidance and love in the person of Jesus, the Son of God, the loving Redeemer, who welcomes us into the family of God.

A few years ago, a beautiful young woman named Yeonmi Park, escaped into China from North Korea, where people are arrested for religious crimes and face detention, forced labor, torture, sexual violence, and death. Eventually, she came to the United States, where she enrolled as a graduate student at Columbia University. Here are her thoughts about her graduate experience:
The things that I was learning at Columbia really shocked me because it was the exact same thing that my North Korean teachers were brainwashing me in the classroom. At Columbia University, they were literally saying that all the problems that we have is because of capitalism, because of white men, and the solution for all these problems is a communist revolution in the name of equity.[1]
She dubbed her alma mater a “pure indoctrination camp” and said that many of her classmates at New York City’s most elite school were “brainwashed like North Korean students are.”[2]
The story continues. Some students at Syracuse University objected to Yeonmi Park’s invitation to address a gathering hosted by the Syracuse College Republicans. They called Park a liar and tore up her promotional flyers.[3]
Similarly, during an April 12, 2023 meeting, the Associated Students of Whitworth University voted 9-4 against hosting Xi Van Fleet, a survivor of Maoist China, on campus, due to her anti-woke tweets.[4] Van Fleet, who immigrated from Maoist China to the U.S, draws parallels between the Chinese Cultural Revolution and what she calls the “Woke Revolution,” according to a description of her book Mao’s America: A Survivor’s Warning. The students objected to her tweets because they “were fearful of her bringing views to campus that would be hurtful or offensive.”[5]
Ironically Columbia University (see above) was home of the neo-Marxist “Frankfurt School” in the 1930s, whose mission was to end the influence of Christianity in the culture. The “long march through the institutions” includes the neo-Marxism of a modern radical Left that are transforming our universities into one-party indoctrination and recruitment centers for CRT and Wokism. Current success figures: 82% of university faculty members are leftists, 16% are moderates and only 1.4% are conservatives. “Republicans make up 4% of historians, 3% of sociologists, and a mere 2% of literature professors.”[6] It is little wonder that a majority of students dislike America and its free market system.
Have we come to the point at which American college students will not believe the impassioned warnings of those who have escaped from communism? Are our students so brainwashed that they deny history? Perhaps this is what Obama meant when he said: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America” (October 30, 2008).[7]
This popularization of Marxism has been documented by three non-Christian academics: James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghosian, two of whom co-authored the popular philosophical book, Cynical Theories. They state:
Though we didn’t understand the (Marxist) Gramscian, Maoist, Marcusian strategy of the Long March through the Institutions or its mechanisms at the time, we certainly could see the fruits of it in operation in the corner of scholarship we targeted. In short, through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the halls of academe were increasingly filled with neo-Marxist and postmodern activists who reliably place their social and political prejudices ahead of any pursuit of truth, … Our universities have become increasingly insular seminaries for a neo-Gnostic cult religion that passes itself off as social science and theory. Entire institutions, including national governments, huge mega-corporations, global NGOs, the entire establishment media apparatus, and most terribly our universities and schools are wholly in thrall to the fraudulent ideology we exposed. In our time the worst of our kind dominate and control almost every lever of authority and power in our land.”[8]
These seemingly abstract ivory tower ideas have had real and nefarious effects in our culture on a practical level, particularly in what progressivism is doing to the family. The attack on the family is not simply an expression of godless secularism. Marx and Engels argued that the nuclear family performs ideological functions for Capitalism and teaches passive acceptance of hierarchy. The family is also the institution through which the wealthy pass private property to their children, thus reproducing class inequality. According to Engels, the monogamous nuclear family only emerged with Capitalism and so must be destroyed.[9]
The debate rages in many places. Take, for example, the Republican walkout in the Oregon Senate on May 3, 2023. Floor sessions were stalled over Republican resistance to far-left legislation that would allow minors to have abortions and access transgender drugs and procedures without parental consent. The conservative author of the article states: “the normative family, the mother and father sticking together for the sake of the children, is the only possible basis for a safe and successful society.” [10] A child changing his or her gender identity has major long-term medical and psychological ramifications. Parents should know, and have an opportunity to be involved in, such an important aspect of their child’s well-being.
The progressive extremists, on the other hand, believe that the nation’s children belong to the state. Parents should just “shut up,” as a Democrat New Hampshire state legislator put it. They want to take over the impressionable minds of the parents’ kids to indoctrinate them with gender identity and critical race theory dogma. These extremists’ aim is to destroy the nuclear family.
Richard Pipes, Emeritus Professor of History at Harvard University, posits that “the totalitarian state aims at obliterating all distinctions between itself and the citizenry (society) by penetrating and controlling every aspect of organized life.”[11]  Robert Knight Senior Fellow for the American Civil Rights Union and a columnist for the Washington Times would no doubt agree with Pipes, for on April 16, 2023, Knight said, “We are, indeed, in a titanic battle of worldviews. One of them will refloat America’s economy guided by the Constitution and America’s heritage, and the other will sink it like a rock.” We see the attempt at division and even indoctrination in our schools and communities. College professor and MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry says your children are not yours—they are owned by the community. “We have to break through our private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families,” she says from her position as professor of political science at Tulane University, where she is founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South. Kids belong to whole communities, she insists, and once we realize this, we’ll make “better investments” in government indoctrination of children.[12] This same reasoning has been brewing in our culture for a long time, as we remember from Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village.
This goal is not that of secular humanism but of the specific ideology of Marxist theory. Marx and Engels were committed to the destruction of the Western family. Theologian Jerry Newcombe states that “America is a grand experiment, encapsulated by an idea which flies in the face of Marxism: self-rule under God. Remove either part, the ‘self-rule’ or the ‘under God’ (as our internal and external enemies would like to see happen) and we would no longer have America as founded…It would seem that we are faced with a choice of two options for our national future: revival or ruin.”[13]
The Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group, obtained documents showing that a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program, previously meant to fight terrorism, is now funding a group whose work has explicitly targeted Christian, conservative, and Republican organizations using federal taxpayer dollars. In his presentation, one of the leaders of this program, Dr. Michael Loadenthal, professor at Loyola University, Maryland, boasted openly that “a lot of things we’re doing are illegal” and “a lot of it involves breaking the law.”[14] Invoking Marxist and Postmodern theory, he justifies the wrong doing as necessary because “hate speech is more than speech. It’s materiality. It’s organizing. It’s mobilization. It’s not an exchange of ideas in the marketplace and the best one wins. It’s something else. It’s the strategic deployment of organizational energy and power.”[15]
With this methodology, employed in government organizations, anything, including the Marxist destruction of the family, can be justified. This is what is understood by equity.
Our children are certainly under attack from the LGBTQ ideology. Popular stores like Target and Walmart are marketing “gay clothes” to children. The “drag queen story hour” is proposed to children in many public libraries. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, friend of Jeffrey Epstein and visitor to his island, has invested tens of millions of dollars into a radical nongovernmental organization called the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). It is endorsed by the WHO that is pushing for young children to be considered “sexual beings.” “Sexual activity may be part of different types of relationships, including dating, marriage, or commercial sex work, among others,” IPPF said, concerning what children under 10 should be taught. They should also be told: “As you grow up, you might start to be interested in people with diverse gender identities.”[16] Our children are under fire from Queer theorists, who are not silent about it.
The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sings:
“We’re coming for your children…We’ll convert your childrenHappens bit by bit. Quietly and subtlyAnd you will barely notice it…”
As an example of how they “come,” organizers of a “Youth Carnival” sponsored by two Indiana LGBTQ+ associations and the Indianapolis Airport Authority will not allow parents to attend with their children. According to an Instagram post by Indiana Youth Group, it is collaborating with Indy Pride to hold the carnival for “youth” ages 12 to 20.[17] The role of parents is totally undermined.
Respected journalist Daniel Greenfield shows how the US State Department of Education conducts civil rights investigations that accuse school districts of creating “a hostile environment for students, based on sex.” How are these schools doing this? By removing books containing “graphic details of sexual acts” from school libraries. Removal, that is, not the reading of these books (like the one mentioned below) is harmful for society. This would include “All Boys Aren’t Blue.” I hesitate to type the words from this book, for I would never utter them! However, as Christians, we must realize the horrors that are foisted on our children. In the afore-mentioned book there are sections describing two young boys engaging is mutual sexual discovery, with phrases such as, “he reached his hand down and pulled out my d____. He quickly went to giving me h___” and “for the first few minutes, we dry humped and grinded.”[18] This is meant to foster homosexual desire in young boys. About the controversy over the book, our first lady (a mother herself), Jill Biden, publicly declared: “All books should be in the library. All books. This is America. We don’t ban books.”[19]Except, maybe one day, the Bible.
The goal of my text, in denouncing these policies and political tendencies, is not for the creation of a theocracy, for a Christian nation or for a rightwing political ideology. As Al Mohler says, theocracies apply the first table of the Law, which requires love for and worship of God by God’s chosen people. This cannot be a Christian goal for believers to impose on unbelievers. Christians can, however, propose legislation that upholds the second table of the law, namely inter-personal morality which applies to everyone, especially our children, living in a God-created universe, for their own good and prosperity as created beings. This certainly applies to the family, which is so deconstructed that young people either reject marriage or, if married, refuse to have children. Even the Supreme Court is involved in undermining the family, declaring same-sex marriage in 2015 to be a legal marital structure, but thereby destroying the family as God intended it at the beginning.[20] When God says “It is not good for man to be alone” that could well be understood to say, “It is not good that there be men alone,” which is clearly true of marriage, which the Supreme Court failed to maintain. The civilization and the family declared by the Creator, required women, who would be mothers. Two married men, claiming to be fathers, do not make a family or a civilization, as God intended.
See how the Creator and marriage are joined in Scripture: “For your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called” (Isa 54:5). This text presupposes a wife, namely Israel.
Though the family is under attack in these difficult times, we have many occasions to stand up for the family by showing the beauty of marriage and children. We do not rely on the impression we make in our marriages and families, though such qualities stand out these days. We also share the Gospel, which is good and true news available for anyone who comes to Christ in faith. The choices people are making will not satisfy them. They are lonely, anxious, and confused. God the thoughtful Creator has not only given us the blessings of families, but has also provided forgiveness, guidance and love in the person of Jesus, the Son of God, the loving Redeemer, who welcomes us into the family of God.
Dr. Peter Jones is scholar in residence at Westminster Seminary California and associate pastor at New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, Calif. He is director of truthXchange, a communications center aimed at equipping the Christian community to recognize and effectively respond to the rise of paganism. This article is used with permission.

[1] https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/02/north-korea-defector-compares-woke-education-in-america-to-regime-she-escaped/
[2] Ibid.
[3] Syracuse U. Students Object to Talk by North Korea Defector Yeonmi Park, Calling Her a Liar, Legal Insurrection, 04/27/2023, Mike LaChance.
[4] What are they afraid of?, Student govt. rejects hosting anti-woke survivor of Maoist China, Campus Reform, 21 Apr 2023, Thomas Stevenson
[5] Graham J Noble Liberty Nation, May 13, 2023
[6] https://www.frontpagemag.com/americas-crisis-is-the-universities/
[7] https://www.timesrepublican.com/opinion/columnists/2022/06/biden-continues-obamas-fundamental-transformation/
[8] Woke Identity Marxism Video: The Reformers: A New Film About the Grievance Studies Affair:
James Lindsay, Corruption, Evil, Hatred of God, Ideology, Marxism, Other Writers, New Discourses, May 7, 2023.
[9] https://revisesociology.com/2014/02/10/marxist-perspective-family/#:~:text=Marxists%20argue%20that%20the%20nuclear,children%2C%20thus%20reproducing%20class%20inequality.
[10] Katherine Hamilton, Oregon GOP Continues Walkout as Democrats Push Anti-Parent Abortion, Trans Bills, ChicagoConservative27, 05/26/2023
[11] Richard Pipes, Communism: A History (Random House), 105.
[12] Kurt Nimmo, MSNBC Host Harris Perry: Your Kids Belong to the Collective; Infowars.com, April 6, 2013. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrxTeM9r9ak.
[13] https://new.americanprophet.org/is-america-still-worth-fighting-for/
[14] https://researchdirectory.uc.edu/p/loadenml
[15] Luis Cornelio and Tim Kilcullen, “How Biden’s DHS Is Weaponizing an Anti-Terror Program Against Christians, Conservatives & the GOP,” (May 25th, 2023), MRC NEWSBUSTERS.
[16] Frank Bergman Bill Gates Plows Millions into Group Claiming Kids Are “Sexual Beings,” SLAY News, April 17, 2023.
[17] https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/05/24/indiana-pride-group-hosts-carnival-banning-parents/?fbclid=IwAR2m_C2cirDotaI83H6BknCSrRI-ICdoSP72OVGasCgXEgTYsJsvQMYzCxs
[18] https://www.frontpagemag.com/department-of-education-investigates-schools-for-not-sexualizing-kids/
[19] https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/09/13/jill-biden-dismisses-parental-control-of-books-in-school-libraries-this-is-america-we-dont-ban-books/
[20] The Respect for Marriage Act. 2022, repeals the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). DOMA barred the federal government from respecting the marriages of same-sex couples who were married under state law, which excluded them from federal recognition, such as with Social Security benefits, tax benefits, and more. The Respect for Marriage Act extends the act of the Supreme Court and received bipartisan support in Congress and signals how far public support is now given to same sex marriage.
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