By Marvin Olasky,  Editor, World magazine

September 1995 – The debate at big university was ostensibly about welfare reform, but the real subject for the professor of social work and his coterie of students was capitalist exploitation. Professor: “Some of us fight against exploitation [students hooray] and some of us join in [students hiss].”

Predictable rhetoric and response, and it was hard for me to get too irritated – because 25 years ago I had been a student member of the hooray-and-hiss drill team. But then the professor went too far: “And the immigrants at the beginning of this century, whom Olasky claims were helped by the provision of effective compassion, were even more ruthlessly exploited.”

HARD-WORKING IMMIGRANTS NOT EXPLOITED BY CAPITALISTS
That was too much for me. Insult me, insult my intellectual and political teammates who are working to replace welfare, but don’t insult my grandparents by saying they were exploited and too dumb to notice. They all came from the Russian empire shortly before World War I and found the streets paved not with gold but with liberty – which, in the hands of people who wanted to work hard and were encouraged to do so, amounted to virtually the same thing.

My father’s father had the wisdom to desert from the Russian army and make his way to Boston, where he became a boilermaker. Louis Olasky worked for a capitalist so exploitative he was able to save money, buy a home, go to the synagogue regularly, and otherwise prosper without running afoul of the government – an amazing prospect for someone used to the czar’s tender mercies. My mother’s father was also terribly exploited: Robert Green drove a horse and wagon through the streets of Malden, Massachusetts, picking up used mattresses that he could recondition and sell for a profit.

My grandparents were able to build a better material life for their children, and they for their children, and they for their children. The spiritual side was to be taken care of by Hebrew school, which I attended after public school for seven years. But when I was 14, the rituals that were at the heart of my family’s practice seemed inadequate. More fundamental was my desire not to think about sin, or even limitations. I excelled in school and became used to receiving praise for “creative thinking...independent analysis... questioning dogmas.” There were no moral boundaries, and the intellectual arrogance that won praise from liberal teachers prepared me well to gain scholarships and enter Yale, where I was ripe for further training by professors and graduate students who relished the radical.

What I remember most about college is that I could do and write the silliest things and receive plaudits as long as my lunacy was leftward.

HUBRIS INTENSIFIES AMID STINTS WITH LIBERAL MEDIA
Journalism also fanned my pride. As a 20-year-old intern on the liberal Boston Globe I could go into a suburban Boston community, spend a day talking to people about a complicated issue, write an article fi lled with gross misunderstandings that was nevertheless correctly progressive and the Globe would print it unquestioningly. My self-esteem increased further when the day after graduation, I headed west from Boston on a bicycle and pedaled to Oregon where I became a reporter on a small-town newspaper. With some physical toughness now to go along with my intellectual superiority, I would proceed to educate the residents of Deschutes County on the way things ought to be. I wrote snotty articles and was surprised when the bourgeoisie took umbrage. My publisher tried to explain to me that I was not the center of the world, but I was quick to speak and slow to listen, so I grandiosely resigned and pushed further left: I had become a soft-core Marxist in college but I spent six months in 1972 writing a draft of the great proletarian novel and reading Marx and Lenin, and then joined the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).

In 1973 I worked at the Boston Globe again, with my Marxist perspective fitting right in, and then went on to graduate school at the University of Michigan, where professors were so impressed by my party-line theorizing that they wrote recommendations citing my “brilliance” and “genius” and upped my fellowship.

The party people I knew were like me: full of themselves and their own wisdom, and vindictive concerning anyone who might get in our way. Once, when I sneered to comrades that my Russian language instructor, a morose escapee from Moscow, had said that he would cut his throat if Communists ever came to power in the United States, one sweet young Party lady said, “That old fool. He won’t have to cut his throat – we’ll do it for him.” And I wanted to be there at least, holding the coats of those who wielded long knives.

God had other plans, however. One day near the end of 1973 I was reading Lenin’s famous essay, “Socialism and Religion,” in which he wrote, “We must combat religion –this is the ABC of all materialism and consequently Marxism.” A small whisper that became a repeated, resounding question then appeared in my brain: “What if Lenin is wrong? What if there is a God?”

CONVERSION INEVITABLE ONCE ATHEISM DENIED
My communism was based on atheism, and when I was no longer an atheist I quickly resigned from the Party, but not until 1976 did I become a Christian. The steps down that path were hesitant; two in particular were crucial. In 1974 with the original goal to merely satisfy a Ph.D. language requirement by improving my reading knowledge of Russian, I plucked from my bookcase a copy of the New Testament in Russian that I had been given as a novelty two years before. To my surprise what had seemed like superstition now had the ring of truth. (It helped that I had to read it very slowly and puzzle over many words.) In 1975 when I was assigned as a graduate assistant to teach a course in early American literature, my preparation involved reading Puritan sermons. Those dead white males also made great sense to me.

Fighting and kicking much of the way during the mid-1970s – I did not want to give up absolute freedom – I went through an intellectual change. But the transformation also went deeper. When I was a Communist I believed that man’s problems were external, with revolution as the solution. Reading the Bible and sermons pushed me to see that the problem was internal and the only cure personal. God in a sense reconfigured my psychology so that the utter arrogance that had previously characterized me was gone. I remained a sinner and still have periods of rotten self-centeredness, but ego normally does not control me as it used to. Reading the whole Bible helped me to confess sin, because apart from the New Testament, neither the full gravity of man’s problem nor the full opportunity for redemption is clear. When I was baptized and joined a church in 1976, I did not agonize about leaving Judaism to accept Christ, because I had left Judaism a long time before; joining a church seemed like a coming home to the Bible, but this time the whole Bible.

Changes in my political philosophy were a subset of theological change. Freed from thinking of man as naturally good but held down by a bad environment, I began to see family and business as God-given aids toward the pursuit of true happiness. I became a partisan of governmental decentralization, for an understanding of original sin suggests that those who gain godlike power act like the devil.

At the same time, because people – including myself – are prone to sin, creation of a social environment that does not foster depravity is vital; American history is a story of striving for liberty and virtue. Furthermore, even in the face of social collapse there is reason to be optimistic. God can change people, no matter how messed up, as He changed me. One-by-one personal transformation leading to social transformation is a realistic goal if we will pursue it not just by passing legislation or writing checks, but by serving one another directly, following Christ’s example.

SMALL CHANGES IGNITE FLAMES THAT GROW
As my wife Susan and I put our faith into action by volunteering in various ways, I came to believe that mustard-seed-sized groups can grow and change America, because I have seen efforts that began at my kitchen table affect for the better a little piece of our country. For example, Susan started a crisis pregnancy center in Austin shortly after we arrived and over the years that center has resulted in hundreds of lives saved or changed as women discovered alternatives to abortion. I believe to this day that the need for the center, and not anything in my own career, was the real reason God put us in Austin.

The criticism I sometimes receive about proposals I’ve put forward for welfare replacement and social reform is that they are overly optimistic about what volunteers who offer personal help and spiritual challenge can accomplish. But my own experiences have left me convinced of the broad capacity of individuals, and by extension whole societies, to remake themselves.

The great hope for our society lies with the millions of ordinary people who in quiet ways do heroic things every day. If challenged, such individuals can do even more. People like my grandparents should not be underestimated or condescended to. They certainly don’t need a political system that tells them what they must do for their nation. Rather, they need one that stays out of their way and encourages them as they daily go about caring for their families, their neighbors, and others in need.