Ideas on Ideology

Something with which I am playing for a class exploring sin and evil… I fully reserve the right to reverse, adapt, erase, eliminate, edit, junk, utilize, revise and or eat the following words. Thank God they are virtual as paper is hard to digest.

Religious Ideology is the reflection of our transformed experience as a result of biblical interpretation, created and understood in the context of our social world in which we were raised and now live.

I think it safe to say that the development of an ideology is always done with good intention. However, it is not always done responsibly. From “slave master theology” to “Christological enslavement”, human error in reason produces faulty results. The check and balance is done by a given community (family, church, corporation, government, academia, etc .) to ensure protection against a faulty ideology. I acknowledge that communities can error too, but that is a matter beyond the scope of this inquiry. When an ideology is adopted without critique by that community (perhaps the sin of omission), great evil can and does result (sin of commission).

Antithetically, a “good” ideology, when adopted in community, produces great fruits. Yet, the check and balance is still a necessity for two reasons. First, evaluation of ideology is a responsible discipline, valuable not just in the current moment, but in the future. “Life”, in all its challenges, pressures, socio-economic and political circumstances change, makes the necessity and or influence of an ideology in its original form, relevant or irrelevant. Secondly, a review of the belief system as it is enacted, prevents deterioration of its intention for the good or for the bad. This assumes that any ideology, or for that matter theology, can be enacted in perfection. Sadly, as fallen beings, we are not only incapable of a perfect theology, ideology or worldview, but we are also incapable of carrying it out. This again reinforces my admiration for the remarkableness that is Christ, both human and divine.