It’s the Great Delusion: the idea that if everyone on the whole world can come together as one, we will build a grand, global utopia. The cost may be high: we would have to lay down our individual rights, our national and ethnic preferences, our lifestyles, and liberties we have taken for granted. But the outcome would be so glorious, it will be worth it all!
It’s all built on a strong idealogical bias: that a “good entropy” is at work in the human experience. The second law of thermododynamics be damned! Things are getting better by osmosis! We are evolving ever upward.
Former President Barack Obama’s favorite quote came from a speech by Martin Luther King: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Obama was so in love with the quote that he had it woven into the carpet in the Oval Office.
The quote was, in fact, taken out of context by the 44th president. He took it to mean that, regardless of the political processes involved, things would turn out OK over time.
If there ever was a president who believed the end justifies the means, it was Obama. He learned his craft in the street politics of Chicago, and his studies of Saul Alinsky. Advancement of one’s political agenda is a no-holds-barred exercise if it is to succeed. Means, regardless of what we think of them, will be justified by the end. Perhaps this is why the person who presided over and orchestrated what was arguably the most corrupt administration in US history, still managed to speak in moralistic platitudes all the while.
Michael Wear, who directed the faith outreach for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign and authored the book “Re-claiming Hope,” 
protested that Dr. King’s quote, which was spiritual in nature and context, had often been taken out of context by Obama and others and used to “bless a whole range of political solutions.” In an interview, Wear said:
“It’s very clear that, apart from Jesus Christ, the idea of a moral arc of the universe was inconceivable to King. It only made sense within the context of a declarative statement.”
In other words, Martin Luther King never intended to endorse some sort of historical determinism. Obama did. King was not a Progressive; Obama was.
Today the Great Delusion of Global Utopianism has found a welcome home in the hearts of many, thanks to the influence of media and college education, which are both by and large permeated by “progressive” thinkers who have concluded that man is basically good, religion is a source of division and evil, and the Judeo-Christian ethic is a relic of the past that must be swept aside so that the new global community can emerge. This Judeo-Christian heritage, after all, did build the world we live in now. This world falls far short of being a utopia. So it is only logical that we must re-tool the human race and begin anew.
The Great Delusion may have a ring of truth to it were it not for one thing: the warped DNA code of the human race, also known as sin. Sure, Darwin would have called it a bad mutation, but Martin Luther King would have called it a spiritual disease. This malady, which permeates every layer of human existence, requires a spiritual solution. Fallen man, unable to heal himself, can only be healed by the Creator. This is why Jesus came. As E. Stanley Jones so eloquently writes:
“God has stepped out of the frame of the universe, and we see Him in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Charles Darwin gave Progressives an “out” from what they saw as the constricting box of Judeo-Christian thinking. His “Origin of Species” has become the new Gospel of the left, summing up the nature of man as being biological and material, not spiritual. Always improving over millions of years, man is on the ascent upward. A million years from now he may be a completely different type of being as the arc of history takes its course. And of course, it will all be good.
Modern-day Progressives have one trait in common: seeking for sweeping, costly solutions to the challenges that are right before us while philosophically remaining committed to a future unfolding of the utopian dream. Obama lived by that philosophy. As president, rather than tackling problems that lay before him in ways that would bring lasting change, he opted for superficial short-cuts to attain his radical goals, “pen and phone in hand.” The fact that he was not in sync with the people was beside the point. The arc of future history, after all, was calling. Now, four years later, Obama’s legacy is in ashes.
The Progressive’s penchant for forcing change is akin to a student cheating his way through school and college. The end, it might be reasoned, justifies the means. But once attained, that long-cherished end turns out to be a huge disappointment. The utopia sought by the left looks so good from a distance but invariably turns ugly once experienced.
Christians and Jews have spent millennia tackling problems, building businesses, erecting cathedrals, establishing universities, founding and staffing hospitals, launching non-profit organizations to help the underprivileged, and training their children the value of working with their hands, and loving people as individuals. Progressives, on the other hand, tend to love “humanity” while ignoring the plight of the individual, They are in love with the idea of bringing in a new world order but look down on the blue-collar workers who sustain the present world order through hard work. They are religiously committed to their ideals, yet reject traditional values as being too “religious.”
The progressives of every generation insist that Christianity and Judaism will soon find themselves in the ash-heap of history. But if history has taught us anything, it has taught us that the arc of history bends toward the Redeemer, and history is, in fact, His Story.
