The radical declares,
“Everyone belongs to all, and all belongs to everyone. All are slaves and equal in their slavery… Slaves are bound to be equal. Without despotism there has never been either freedom or equality, but in the herd there is bound to be equality…. The moment you have family ties or love you get the desire for property. We will destroy that desire; we’ll make use of drunkenness, slander, spying; we’ll make use of incredible corruption; we’ll stifle every genius in its infancy. We’ll reduce all to a common denominator! Complete equality!”
The Possessed
Fydor Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky was a 19th century Russian writer who explored the human psyche, particularly as that psyche was conditioned by ideology and religion. In the quote above we find that Dostoevsky understood the nascent proto-Marxist type ideology which he believed were Demon like ideas from Western Europe that were possessing Russia.
It is interesting that even in 1873 Russia, Dostoevsky could identify the heart of collectivism that remains with us yet today. Dostoevsky understood that the end of equality, absolutized, is slavery….
Without Biblical distinctions regarding gender, roles, ethnic groups, and authority structure, we will be amalgamated into the herd reality that Dostoevsky warns about. It will be a herd reality where a few elite are, in essence, the Farmers over the undistinguished and undifferentiated mass herd. Those who advocate complete equality in terms of “equality of identity” are the enemy and they are the enemy because Scripture identifies them as such. They are the enemy who overthrow the 5th commandment where a distinction and hierarchy of parents is required before they can be honored. They are the enemy who overthrow the great commission where a distinction of nations is required before those nations can be baptized, discipled and taught to observe all things taught by Christ. They are the enemy who overthrow Galatians 3:28 where a existing distinction between Jews and Gentiles, Slave and Free, Men and Women, must exist before there can be comfort that all can be justified in Christ. They are the enemy who overthrow the 8th commandment where a distinction must exist between what is my property and what is not my property before any forbidding of theft can make sense. Egalitarianism is the enemy and egalitarians are the enemy precisely because their egalitarianism strikes at the heart of God’s revelation. Keep in mind that the ultimate goal of the Father of egalitarianism is to erase the distinction and hierarchy between the Creator and the creature. He desires to make God and man a common denominator. That is the ultimate distinction that is under attack in all of these penultimate battles.