Marx & Satan: Is Everything Permitted?

Richard Wurmbrand was a Christian Pastor who was jailed and tortured by Communist Romania security forces for 14 years because of his opposition to communism.  After his release, he wanted to better understand why those who followed communist ideals committed such evil acts.  The results can be found in his book "Marx & Satan."  I recommend that you get a copy and read it.

I will attempt to share some of his work with you in my blog.  Here is a portion where he describes how in Satanism "Nothing is true, and everything is permitted."  It sounds very much like today in our appeasement of Islam.  How can we forbid such a cruel ideology if everything is permissible and nothing is forbidden?

Is Everything Permitted?

The Satanist cult is very old, older than Christianity. The prophet Isaiah might have had it in view when he wrote, "We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him (the Savior) the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6). 

True religious feeling is at the opposite pole. Certain Hassidic rabbis never said "I," because they considered it a pronoun that belonged only to God. His will is binding on human behavior. 

By contrast, when a man or woman is initiated into the seventh degree of Satanism, he swears that his principle will be, "Nothing is true, and everything is permitted." When Marx filled out a quiz game for his daughter, he answered the question "Which is your favorite principle?" with the words, "Doubt everything.” 

Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto that his aim was the abolition not only of all religions, but also of all morals, which would make everything permissible. 

It was with a sense of horror that I read the mystery of the seventh degree of Satanism inscribed on a poster at the University of Paris during the 1968 riots. It had been simplified to the formula, "It is forbidden to forbid," which is the natural consequence of "Nothing is true, and everything is permissible." 

The youth obviously did not realize the stupidity of the formula. If it is forbidden to forbid, it must also be forbidden to forbid forbidding. If everything is permissible, forbidding is permissible, too. 

Young people think that permissiveness means liberty. Marxists know better. To them, the formula means that it is forbidden to forbid cruel dictatorships like those in Red China and the Soviet Union. 

Dostoyevski had said it already: "If there is no God, everything is permitted." If there is no God, our instincts are free. The ultimate expression of this kind of liberty is hatred. Whoever is free in this sense considers loving-kindness a weakness of the spirit. 

Engels said, "Generalized love of men is absurdity." The anarchist thinker Max Stirner, author of The I and I is Property and one of Marx's friends, wrote, "I am legitimately authorized to do everything I am capable of.” 

Communism is collective demon-possession. Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago reveals some of its horrid a results in the souls and lives of people.

(Richard Wurmbrand, Marx & Satan, pp. 107-8)

--Against All Enemies

Disclaimer: These opinions are solely my own, and do not reflect the opinions or official positions of any United States Government agency, organization or department.