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| A tombstone is exactly where this belongs. |
Possibly Karl Marx's second most famous quote, and definitely the most popular among people who would not in any other sense consider themselves Marxists, is the closing sentence of his Theses on Feuerbach, which also serves, in English translation, as his epitaph: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." Probably most of us have at one time or another quoted this with approval, or at least internalized its message, and professed an earnest desire to "make the world a better place."
Under Marx's atheist materialist assumptions, of course, there can be no such thing as "the point," and his statement is not-even-wrong. As Christians, though, we can attempt an objective evaluation of it. Which of these possibilities do you believe?
- God, seeing that this world could be better, put us humans into it to change it and make improvements.
- God, seeing that we could be better, created this world for us, optimizing it for our spiritual needs, so that we could live in it and learn from our experience.
Jesus said, "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath" (Mark 2:27). What is true of the last day of creation is true of the other six as well. The world was made for man, and not man for the world. This world is a school. If a student has an opportunity to "make the school a better place" in some way, great -- but that is definitely not, for the student, "the point" of school.
And so I propose the following Antithesis on Feuerbach: The revolutionaries have only changed the world in various ways; the point, however, is to learn from it.
