The AK-47 Test
The AK-47 (Kalashnikov) is the revolutionary’s gun of choice the world over, not because it’s a particularly precise instrument, but rather because it’s unbelievably reliable in less than ideal circumstances. The AK-47 can fire when it’s wet, dirty, rusty, bent. It’s an amazing tool: one of the only guns to actually make it onto a country’s flag (Mozambique). All of the systems and institutions that govern our everyday lives should be at least as reliable as an AK-47.
I grew up hearing again and again, from all the old communists and socialists in my working-class neighborhood, how none of the communist countries were actually communist, and none of the socialist countries were actually socialist: “We’ve never really tried communism!”—they’d say, before pounding a fist into the table, and taking another swig of beer. There’s some truth to claims such as these. After all, we live in a complicated world wherein all theoretical constructs are forced to fall from grace when they’re put into practice. There has never been, nor will there ever be, a society that’s 100% communist.
But there have been plenty of societies that were predominantly communist. Just as there have been plenty of societies that were predominantly capitalist, Christian, or Muslim. These social experiments have produced a veritable mountain of useful data. Is it off limits merely because the experimental conditions were insufficiently pure? I think not. We can and should use this data. Must every system be judged only with reference to its pristine Platonic ideal? I think not. In fact, I call bullshit. Isn’t this just a convenient dodge? Isn’t this just a sneaky way of placing your proposed system beyond reproach? We have to be able to judge how things actually function in the messy world we live in. If your political ideas never seem to work, maybe there’s something inherently wrong with them. If they work but fail to make things better, maybe they suck. If they consistently make things worse, maybe they’re evil.
The same is true of religious ideas. You can’t simply wave away all of the terrible things done to minorities in Muslim-majority countries with some version of “That wasn’t real Islam!” Nor can you wave away all of the terrible things done in the name of Christianity with some version of “That wasn’t real Christianity!” If things always seem to get worse for, say, women, or Jews, whenever your religion comes to occupy a position of dominant power or influence, maybe there’s something inherently misogynistic or antisemitic about your religion. Maybe your religion is desperately in need of a reformation.
One of the things I love about my pastor is that he never shies away from difficult questions such as these. All to the contrary, he addresses them from the pulpit head-on in his sermons on a fairly regular basis. For instance, on the Sunday before Holocaust Memorial Day, he said that Christians of conscience—who wish to ensure that “Never Again!” is more than just an empty slogan—need to face up to the deeply-rooted scriptural origins of Christian antisemitism. The Gospel of John may be one of the most beautiful books in the Bible, but it’s also profoundly antisemitic (e.g., John 5:16, 5:18, 7:1, 18:31, 19:12). Design flaws must be acknowledged before they can be fixed and transcended. Acting like they don’t exist merely ensures that we will repeat the mistakes of the past in the future.
