The Folly of Good Intentions

Toward the end of his life, Malcolm Muggeridge had rather gloomy thoughts on the potential for change through politics. “The result is almost invariably the exact opposite of what’s intended,” he said. “Thus, expanding public education has served to increase illiteracy; half a century of pacifist agitation has resulted in the two most ferocious and destructive wars of history; political egalitarianism has made for a heightened class-consciousness … and sexual freedom has led to erotomania on a scale hitherto undreamed of.”

A creative theologian could use such modern examples to buttress support for the doctrine of original sin. Whatever human beings touch goes wrong. Politics, especially, runs according to the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Lyndon Johnson’s sweeping War on Poverty was supposed to bring an end to poverty in the world’s wealthiest nation. Thirty years and many billions of dollars later, we have more poor people than ever before. Sex education was supposed to reduce substantially the incidence of unwanted teenage pregnancies. Instead, a rise in the pregnancy rate was accompanied by a massive increase in the number of teenage abortions. The sexual revolution of the 1960s, which promised liberation, has resulted in a soaring divorce rate and epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases. This is liberation?

A friend of mine who works at a rescue mission in Chicago recounted some Unintended Consequences among the homeless. In a moment of compassion, policy-makers classified alcoholism and drug addiction as unemployable disabilities. When word got out, addicts and alcoholics lined up to get a doctor’s certification of their condition, and soon they received retroactive payment from the federal disability fund. “Can you guess what a drug addict does with a check for $20,000?” my friend asked.

Historians have a field day with the Law of Unintended Consequences. For example, colonial explorers sailed abroad mainly in search of spices to cloak the bad smells and tastes of food. Wildly successful, they procured so many spices as to have the inadvertent effect of poisoning much of Europe’s population, which began eating spoiled meat. (The same voyages had other side effects, such as the spread of bubonic plague and the “discovery” of America.)

I could include many other illustrations of the Law of Unintended Consequences and its proofs of human fallibility. What interests me far more, however, are examples of the opposite pattern. The Law works both ways, you see, especially for Christians. Sometimes great good results from the worst intentions.

“The blood of Christians is the seed of Christianity,” said Tertullian, in one of the clearest statements of this rule. Vigorous attempts to eliminate the faith have, ironically, led to its greatest advances.

We all know the story of Christians under Roman persecution, but recent events in China and Russia have the same drama. To the thousands of missionaries kicked out of China, it seemed the Communists had dealt a body blow to the church. How would a million Christians survive without the schools, seminaries, local churches, and publishing houses staffed by the missionaries? How would they cope under a restrictive regime that banned evangelism, the religious training of children, and unauthorized meetings? The church in China coped rather well, it turned out. In the years of Communist persecution, with no outside assistance, the church grew from one million to 30 or possibly 50 million believers.

Sometimes even bad theology can produce good results:

• At various times, nations such as Holland, England, the United States, and South Africa have seen themselves as God’s “chosen people,” despite no biblical support for such a notion. These nations with their misguided sense of manifest destiny seem to thrive, culturally, politically, and economically.

• I have observed that some Christians with the highest standards of moral purity are legalists. They obey not out of a thankful response to God’s grace, but out of fear of God’s punishment. Still, they do obey.

• Faith healers who are later exposed as frauds still manage to bring healing to individuals: it seems the self-healing properties of the body, as in the placebo effect, work whether or not the object of trust proves worthy.

• Disunity in the church is perhaps its greatest disgrace. But can anyone deny its role in evangelizing America? In almost every small town you can find a Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian church, enduring byproducts of competition.

Reflecting on all these matters, I have become stubbornly resistant to grand schemes for changing society or the world, since most of them produce the opposite results. Instead, I am concentrating on how to turn bad intentions into good.

“God uses lust to impel man to marriage, ambition to office, avarice to earning, and fear to faith,” wrote Martin Luther, who understood the Christian version of the Law of Unintended Consequences. It should never surprise us when schemes for human betterment founder against the rock of original sin. On the other hand, a sovereign God can use even bad things as the raw material for fashioning good.

The symbol of our faith, after all, which we now stamp in gold and wear around our necks or chisel in stone and place atop our churches, is a replica of a Roman execution device.

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