Ideology as Pathology of Soul

With the recent events in Virginia, we've all surely seen a lot of outrage. Many insist that the moral choice here is very simple: either you side with the Neo-Nazis and their allies or Antifa and those other counterprotesters. If we construe the situation this way, almost all of us would naturally want to be clear that we are against the the racism and the hatred that Neo-Nazism represents. But I must question if many on the left do not go to the other extreme and in doing so actually commit the same error as the racist. I've seen a number of postings on social media justifying violence against anyone who according to the categories of the poster could be construed as a Nazi or part of the "alt-right." I've even seen those who hold far right political views described as "sub-human."

And so the presence of the image of God is denied to a whole swath of human beings for whom Christ died. In short, this is the sickness of ideology, ideology as a kind of pathology of the soul. We become so obsessed with the rightness of our ideas and of the righteousness of our own cause that we blind ourselves to the presence of Christ in the other. Unfortunately, this is a problem shared by adherents of all ideology both from the left and the right. We place an idol of our own making on the throne of God in our hearts and God, as a jealous God, refuses to share His rightful place.

So long as the Holy Spirit does not reign over us and fill our very being, we will not see Christ in those who hate us or with whom we disagree. As St. Palamas insists over against Barlaam, the light of the Transfigured Christ is invisible to the senses and the mind and can only be seen in and through the Holy Spirit. As long as we view our neighbor through the lens of a worldly ideology we know that the Holy Spirit does not dwell in us. We know that we have made an idol out race or history (the right) or ideology and ideological purity (the left). We neglect the fight against the demonic powers at work within our own souls and remain unable to acknowledge the image of God and the beauty in each human being---whether he be communist, neonazi, immigrant, foreigner, Protestant, Roman Catholic, liberal, conservative--whatever group our pet ideology has taught us is no longer worthy of respect and love as persons of infinite worth willed into being by the Tripersonal God who loves all and calls all to communion with Him and in Him with each other.