Impartiality and Marxist Envy

One of my professors in graduate school was an accomplished scholar whose books could fill a shelf. He was well revered by his students. But our admiration kept us from getting close to him, let alone interacting with him on friendly terms.

During one seminar he mentioned his neighbor, a middle-aged lady who had limited education but got along very well with him. He described her as kind, never reluctant to give him practical advice, and always eager to fill his refrigerator with the goodies she made. He told us with tears in his eyes, “She’s my best friend!” I got the impression that she felt comfortable with him, and that seemed very important to him.

This story puzzled me. Certainly, my professor had many colleagues and friends who shared his academic interests and intellectual caliber. How could he form a genuine and lasting friendship with an uneducated lady? I’ve been mulling it over for many years, and only now do I think I begin to understand.

In a society where underdogs receive more compassion, success does not necessarily create genuine attraction. Quite the opposite: It may create distance between the renowned and others, especially in their immediate environment. Within my professor’s academic circle, his success might have evoked envy. Even those who admired him chose to stay at a respectful distance.

Success comes with a price tag. Unlike physical suffering, it’s a silent anguish. I’ve noticed that highly accomplished people often are the loneliest ones.

True Friendship

However, my professor’s neighbor — who lacked interest in education — could care less about his high academic achievements. She was not intimidated by them; she was blind to them. Consequently, she was able to treat him as an ordinary person. My professor must have longed for that kind of genuine affection. Who doesn’t crave amiability without strings attached?

Scripture talks a lot about impartiality, which is based on God’s nature. According to Deuteronomy 10:17, God does not show partiality and favoritism, but treats everyone — rich, poor, smart, slow, accomplished, unskilled — equally. Impartiality does not just apply to the underdogs. If we treat an accomplished person differently — whether better or worse — because of his or her success, we’re guilty of the sin of partiality.

But committing this kind of sin is all too easy, because Marxist envy seems to reside in all of us.

Generally speaking, showing kindness to the poor and disadvantaged is relatively easy. But it’s harder to treat the privileged and the accomplished that way. This sin is often overlooked because it’s committed unconsciously and, compared to other sins, seems innocuous. However, partiality based on envy is no small matter; it could lead to severe consequences. In the past few decades, the Left has tapped into our inner Marxism and channeled it to support their ideology, drastically changing our cultural landscape.

If certain a group, such as black people, was historically mistreated, the proper steps to correct this problem would be to restore the rights due to that group. However, Marxists are not interested in restoring impartiality because their intention has never been restoration, reconciliation, or peace. Instead, they replace one kind of partiality with a worse kind, creating chaos, division, and hatred in the process. For instance, affirmative action and DEI programs deny white college students equal access, demanding that they meet much tougher requirements in order to be admitted into prominent schools. This is based on the notion that they are privileged, and thus, deserve cold treatment. For me this sounds more like jealousy and revenge than anything else. Now, Asian students are the New Whites whose high academic achievements are tangible evidence of their “whiteness,” and thus suffer from greater discrimination.

When we view things through this kind of lens, we turn a blind eye to other important moral teachings in the Bible, such as impartiality, not coveting, and mercy. We’re prone to being manipulated by progressive Marxists and their ideology, accepting their claims that our nation is plagued by systemic white supremacy, racism and so forth. This is how Marxism works.

To stop its spread in our society, we must first recognize our inherent Marxist envy and take active steps to arrest it. True impartiality means it applies both to underdogs and the successful.

Chenyuan Snider was raised in Communist China and majored in Chinese language and literature in college. After immigrating to the U.S. and studying at Assemblies of God Theological Seminary and Duke Divinity School, she became a professor at Christian colleges and seminary. She and her husband live in northern California and have two grown children.