My Omnibus class has been reading The Communist Manifesto this weekend. We read it not to embrace it but to hate it with the heat of a thousand entrepreneurs. Jonathan Swift once said that truth limps and falsehood flies, which means Marx jets around on a Concorde, but built from his favorite Diversity-Equality-Inclusion wing. It’s fast, but the doors keep blowing off mid flight.
Anyway, there was a phrase I noticed this time through that apparently was big in the 19th century. Near the end, the Manifesto distinguishes “true” Communism from wanna-be Communists, and especially from those who are only “hole-and-corner reformers.”
Hole-and-corner reformers, what’s that?
It’s those who want small, even secretive changes. They don’t want to overhaul the system, they just want piecemeal fixes. If it can happen without making a big deal, even with quiet and nice and witty words, great. Don’t make a scene.
“Jesus is Lord” is not a hole-and-corner confession. The only hole that Christians should be concerned with is Jesus’ grave, and it’s empty. He rose again on the third day, just as He said, to judge the living and the dead. As for corners, every corner is Christ’s. He is the Cornerstone. All the corners in the public square are His. We’re not backing into the corner to shy away, we’re announcing to the world that the King is returning.
This communion meditation isn’t directly about undermining the Communist Manifesto, but riffing off the wrong kind of reformer. The gospel is “the word of truth…(for) the whole world…bearing fruit and increasing” (Colossians 1:5-6).