Love & Ingsoc

Imagine a world where your every move is monitored, your every action is scrutinised and analysed, your every thought is a potential crime, and your every friend, co-worker, or man on the street is a potential spy with no greater desire than to reveal who and what you really are. This is the world in which Winston Smith lives…and, perhaps, the one in which you live.

These are chilling words…words that either chill you to your bones indicating that you value the sanctity and privacy of your life, or words that effect little or no feeling or thought in you, indicating that it may be too late for you. These are words which Smith accepts as his life, though he does not always like them. Slowly, he began to realise that perhaps life had not always been so, and, maybe, even was not at all meant to be like this.

This was his life because, some decades earlier, there had been a revolution of some sort in which the whole world had been changed. In this revolution, one man, “Big Brother”, had risen to “absolute” power. Ever since, the world described in the opening paragraph, was the world.

As Smith began to think that this wasn’t right, his mind became more and more observant of the actual nature of the world around him. At the start of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, he sees the inconstancies, lies, and propaganda spread by the Party, but they mainly register simply as facts that somehow are unimportant and do not connect to anything, but as the story progresses, he becomes more consciously aware of them and finds it more and more maddening.

At the start of the book, he decides to commit a terrible crime: he will write down physical information that can be read and reread later…a fixed piece of knowledge. He later proceeds to buy antiques, fall in love, and, eventually, seek to work against the Party. But in the end, it is all for nothing.

So how should a Christian respond to a world like this? The response Smith gave is obviously no good, it didn’t even save him…much less save others and bring down the pretended power and restore true, just power. Hopefully, a Christian would know to, first, work to prevent a world like this.

But to respond to a world already in this state, a Christian should, as in all other things, look primarily and ultimately to God and His Word instead of looking within. THIS is what will separate a Christian from those who embrace false authority and power.

The first step after acknowledging God as your superior is to think. Think independently; think biblically; think wisely; think period. Be able to observe and analyse the world and events around you. This will protect you from propaganda, deception, and slavery. Thinking will give you the skill to see what is wrong and effectively communicate it to others and fight against that which is wrong.

A Christian should remember that peace, God’s peace, is what they are ultimately fighting to achieve. This means physical and non-physical peace. A Christian must have God’s peace in himself and be willing to, if necessary fight, spiritually and physically for peace. This may sound problematic to some, but one must understand that there are those who not only do not want peace, but will also work to prevent peace; although violence is a terrible thing, it is sometimes a necessary thing, but only when it is absolutely necessary. A believer must also remember that there will be no true, complete peace on earth until Jesus returns.

While a Christian must know how to fight for what is right, he must also know how to love. Winston and Julia, his co-worker with whom he falls in love, thought that their relationship was “love” and that it would destroy the ideology of Ingsoc ('English Socialism', the political doctrine of Big Brother). Yet what they had was not love, but was rather a combination of lust, rebellion, and hatred. This could never defeat the ideology of Ingsoc because, essentially, it is the ideology of Ingsoc! Ingsoc was founded on lust for power and having what one wants, rebellion against authority and tradition, and a hatred for anyone with more power or rival power.

A Christian must be loving because it is the opposite of Ingsoc; it focuses on something outside of and higher than self…it is the mirror of God and a relationship with God. This is why throughout history (and in 1984), false power has tried to squash marriage and family. It is why in ancient Rome, marriage was outlawed because it distracted the citizens from focusing on the empire and emperor, why communism mocks the idea of families, why Ingsoc conditions people’s minds to marry without love and love without marrying, and why marriage is under attack today. Marriage and family are to them, at most, to be an empty machine whose sole job is to procreate and produce more loyal followers. As evidenced by Hitler’s Germany and Big Brother’s Oceania, once children are born, the adults are no longer valued machines but dangerous liabilities.

False power fears marriage, family, and the Love that causes it, feeds it, and is strengthened by it. False power fears true Love in all forms because it is meant to illustrate God, TRUE power, and our relationship with Him. False power is fed and maintained only by the attention and care of those foolish enough to give into and believe it, whereas true power/Love/God (they are synonymous) is strengthened and reflected by a desire to reach out to someone and be truly united with them, devote yourself to them, and seek their good over your own. These attributes can actually, to a degree, be twisted into use by false power/love, but the difference is that true Love/power is beneficial to and builds up both sides of the relationship.

The history of man shows many Christians that have been under such false power. Many have fallen to it, and many have overcome it. The keys presented here are really quite simple once they are truly understood and thought over…which coincidentally (or not coincidentally) is the first key: thought. Thought must be followed through with actions of fighting for what is right, and showing Love to the world around you. Oppression is a terrible thing; it is grieving to God and to his believers, and is never an easy thing to deal with. But as His Word and the rich history of the West have told us, in history and in story, THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE!