Lessons for today from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
by David Robertson, Christian Today:
What is happening in the world? Sometimes we stand so close that we cannot see the bigger picture. In today’s world of Covid, vaccine passports, police raiding churches, endemic sexual abuse, gender confusion, disillusionment with government, there can be a temptation for the Christian to either despair and retreat, or despair and end up fighting the wrong battles.
We need to constantly remind ourselves that the Lord is sovereign and can even use what men meant for ill, to bring about good (as we see for example with Joseph’s brothers). He is also able to teach us through those who are not his people. I am amazed that it is secular commentators like Jordan Peterson and Doug Murray who seem to have a better grasp of the bigger picture than many Christian ones.
Looking back, I see CS Lewis, Francis Schaeffer and today, Os Guinness, as Christian prophets who saw where we were going and accurately predicted the state we have now found ourselves in. But there is another secular ‘prophet’ who in my view was astonishingly prescient and that is Aldous Huxley, the author of amongst other books, Brave New World.
This book, written in 1932, foresaw a ‘soft totalitarianism’ of absolute government where conformity was enforced, as Margaret Attwood summarises it, by bio-engineering, hypnotic persuasion, endless consumption, state encouraged sexual promiscuity, drugs and a caste ‘class’ system where everyone fulfils their pre-ordained function.
Recently I came across Huxley’s 1946 introductory essay to his book. It is a revealing and astounding addition because much of what he shares in it we can see happening today – 85 years later.
Here are some quotes and lessons I hope we can learn for the church.
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