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To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, our current road to “progress” is the wrong road, and so the quickest and best way our society can avoid the progressive hellscape we’re heading towards is to turn back and get on the road that leads to Christ.
One of the greatest lies that humanity has ever been told is that “progress is always good.” This idea, this myth, of the desirability of interminable human progress has greased the skids for manmade horrors beyond our wildest comprehension that are sold to the public as simply “the next stage in human evolution.”
The animating principle behind progressive philosophy is a dark amalgamation of atheism (there is no God), rational humanism (man is God), and materialism (nothing exists except matter). Under the banner of progress, all of creation becomes putty to be molded by the hands of the most enlightened among us. Man becomes the master of his own fate, the captain of his soul, and the future is whatever we want it to be — and whatever we have the technological capability to make it.
Abortion? Progress. Gay “marriage”? Progress. “Gender reassignment” surgeries? Progress. The destruction of the nuclear family? Progress. The decline of religion in general, and Christianity in particular, in American life? Progress. Living in the pod, eating the bugs, and doing the will of our coming techno-totalitarian overlords? Progress.
Gone is the Creator God. Gone is the doctrine of original sin. Gone is our heritage, history, and traditions. They must all be placed on the funeral pyre of the past and consumed by the eternal flame of a brighter future, one unshackled from any antiquated notions about God, man, duty, virtue, and timeless truths.
In the march of progress, morality is whatever we say it is at any given moment. One day it might be moral to defend the idea that every child deserves a mother and a father. Tomorrow, that might be an outdated and discriminatory belief that society has progressed beyond — and now the most moral position you can adopt is that of a proud cheerleader for abortion and rent-a-womb surrogacy arrangements that treat children as consumer products.
As G.K. Chesterton once put it,
“Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle.”
If our modern times are anything, they are progressive. It’s the air we breathe and the water we swim in. Even conservative Christians fall prey to the false promises of infinite progress; after all, fish don’t know they’re wet.
But to be a Christian is to be a perpetual rebel against this philosophy. We believe that Genesis 1 is more than a moving piece of Ancient Near Eastern mythology — rather, it is the true history of the universe. It is our birthright and birth story. We are no mere products of chance but children of God, sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. And we believe in Genesis 3 and the tragic fall of man, the curse of sin for Adam’s disobedience which corrupted the earth, yes, but also our hearts.
No progress can atone for sin or raise a man from spiritual death to new life in Christ — but a promise can. That promise was not that man would muddle along in the dark until he managed to raise himself up, but that God would send His Son, fully human and fully divine, to be lifted up on a cross in an act of propitiation for the sins of all who repent and believe.
Ever since man was exiled east of Eden, we have been trying to rebuild paradise here on earth through progress. But we cannot outrun the shadow of the cross. It stands, between Genesis 1 and Revelation 22, as an immovable reminder that mankind’s greatest obstacles lay not in the external world, to be overcome with technology, philosophy, and personal enlightenment, but that our greatest enemy lies within our very own chest — in darkened hearts that can only be overcome by the light of the Gospel.
The inbreaking of salvation into the world was no mere act of chance, no next stage in the evolutionary process. No, it was the divinely purposed and perfect plan of God, determined from eternity past and executed at the ordained moment: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6).
The progressives can’t bear to hear this. Because to harken to the Gospel means forsaking the illusion of man’s mastery of this world. It means accepting our limitations. It means submitting to God’s good creation order and falling on our faces in worship. It means that man comes off the throne and King Jesus goes back on (as if He ever left).
C.S. Lewis understood this. In his famous apologetic for the faith, Mere Christianity, Lewis exposed the myth of inevitable progress and explained how what matters far more than the simple fact that we are “progressing” is where we are progressing to — that is, in what direction? And to what end?
He writes:
“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”
There is no question that America is on the wrong road. We have forgotten God. We are moving closer to Hell, not Heaven, no matter how much we are told otherwise.
We have, as Lewis points out, made a big mistake.
“We have all seen this when doing arithmetic. When I have started a sum the wrong way, the sooner I admit this and go back and start again, the faster I shall get on. There is nothing progressive about being pigheaded and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world, it is pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We are on the wrong road. And if that is so, we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.”
As soon as progressive man decided he could take God out of the equation, we started the sum in the wrong way, and catastrophically so. So, if we want to make any kind of progress worth celebrating, we must indeed turn back.
We must go back to the cross. Back to the Bible. Back to our God. Back…to our Father.
The antidote to progress isn’t just conservatism, it is repentance. America is the prodigal son, wallowing in the pigsty of the sexual revolution, consumerism, cheap thrills, and technological stupor. We must remember where we went wrong, and repent.
The path forward is the path back. Mankind, America, and the world won’t magically matriculate to utopia, no matter how hard the progressives try, no matter how many millions the communists kill, and no matter how many schools replace public prayer with drag queen story hours.
Our only hope is to run back into the arms of our Father and swear off the madness of sin. We must repent of cowardice, immorality, and atheism, both real and functional, and commit to loving the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We must smash the idols of critical theory, envy, greed, homosexuality, transgenderism, abortion, and pride.
If we did that, it would be the most progressive thing our nation has done in generations. But that, like all true progress, will require the power of the Holy Spirit to prevail in the hearts and minds of man. That road is one that we can only travel by the grace of God. Sadly, there are few things that modern progressives hate more than grace because only sinners need grace. And the progressivism man knows nothing of sin, only systems to be improved by his own ingenuity.
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