SIGNALLING VIRTUE

 

As the West has rejected Christ and its Christian roots, it finds itself compelled to discover an alternative identity, which offers them a sense of worthiness, goodness, and even moral superiority. The Christian faith had once provided an identity through the sacrificial death of Jesus, proving His unending love and forgiveness for our sins. This revelation had enabled the Christian West to know that they are beloved and accepted. Knowledge of Christ’s love had paved the way to self-acceptance and even to the acceptance of others. With self-acceptance came the freedom to cast aside masks of self-deceit.

The vacuum created by the rejection of Christianity demanded a replacement, and there have been many contenders – many paths to prove our virtue and worthiness. Keri Smith had been a Social Justice Warrior (SJW) for approximately 20 years.  Her college had indoctrinated her into a matrix of ideas through which she could prove her virtue and feel that she was a good person. However, after seeing videos showing Trump supporters being attacked by fellow “virtuous” people, her eyes began to open:

·       I see increasing numbers of so-called liberals cheering censorship and defending violence as a response to speech. I see seemingly reasonable people wishing death on others and laughing at escalating suicide and addiction rates of the white working class. I see liberal think pieces written in opposition to expressing empathy or civility in interactions with those with whom we disagree. I see 63 million Trump voters written off as “nazis” who are okay to target with physical violence. I see concepts like equality and justice being used as a mask for resentful, murderous rage…When you believe you are morally superior, when you have dehumanized those you disagree with, you can justify almost anything. In a particularly vocal part of the left, justification for dehumanizing and committing violence against those on the right has already begun. https://medium.com/.../on-leaving-the-sjw-cult-and...

Smith now recognizes that she had been part of a cult. It had offered her a powerful drug – the opportunity to feel “morally superior” and to look down on others. But evidently, this drug was not sufficient to maintain their virtuous identity. It required increasingly greater doses, which turned them into the monsters, which they had hated.

Throughout the West, self-hatred has become a form of redemption. Ex-Muslim and atheist, Salmon Rushdie, wrote about self- hatred in Western culture:

• Consider the following headline: “Mississippi: Atheist faces execution for insulting Jesus on Facebook”.

• The alert reader will immediately recognize this as a piece of fake news. Which it is. I made it up myself.

• But it’s based on a real headline. The recent headline reads as follows: “Nigeria: Atheist faces execution under sharia for insulting Muhammad on Facebook.”

Rushdie reasoned:

• Now, if it was true, the first headline would elicit universal outrage. It would be front-page news in all the major Western newspapers, and the lead story on the evening news. CNN, NBC, and the BBC would spin the story as a typical example of Christian bigotry. https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/western-media-downplay-ignore-islams-violent-reactions-to-blasphemy?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com&utm_campaign=fb348b8640-Daily%2520Headlines%2520-%2520U.S._COPY_763&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_12387f0e3e-fb348b8640-401443397

Why? It has become a virtue to hate one’s own culture and even skin color, Western elites seem to hate the West, as noted by the former Pope Benedict XVI:

• “This…illustrates a peculiar western self-hatred that is nothing short of pathological. It is commendable that the West is trying to be more open, to be more understanding of the values of outsiders, but it has lost all capacity for self-love. All that it sees in its own history is the despicable and the destructive; it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure…Multiculturalism, which is so constantly and passionately promoted, can sometimes amount to an abandonment and denial, a flight from one’s own heritage.” (Quoted by Jean Bethke Elshtain, First Things, March, 2009, 36)

Our feelings of unworthiness and even self-contempt can become so intense that we resort to self-punishment (cuttings, burnings) to, at least momentarily, restore feelings of worthiness:

• The physical pain of cutting not only diffuses negative emotion, but it can also create a sense of calm and relief. Because it works almost instantly, cutting is highly reinforcing—some even say addictive. Individuals who cut describe the sensation as an escape or a release of pressure, similar to how people suffering from bulimia describe purging.  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-be-yourself/201610/self-injury-4-reasons-people-cut-and-what-do

However, these benefits are temporary and highly destructive. In White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century, Jared Taylor had written that when we turn against ourselves and even our skin color, we encourage others to participate to the detriment of all:

·       It is obviously bad for race relations for society constantly to tell one group that another group brought them low and keeps them there, but whites do not do this because they want to improve race relations. They do it because they want to prove their own virtue, even if it poisons race relations and encourages blacks—and now Hispanics—to hate whites.

It had been these observations that had led Shelby Steele to write White Guilt, showing how this guilt has led to white paternalism, and how their misdirected initiatives have wrecked more destruction upon his black community than white malevolence.

Starting in 1831, the French deist and lapsed Catholic, Alexis de Tocqueville, extensively traveled the States endeavoring to investigate the stability and monumental success of this new republic. In Democracy in America, he wrote, “The religious atmosphere was the first thing that struck me on arrival in the United States.” In God of Liberty, Historian Thomas Kidd, credits Tocqueville’s observations:

·       “The partnership of religion and liberty lay at the heart of America’s political success. To Tocqueville, the American’s Christian ethos kept democracy’s worst features in check…Freedom by itself would inexorably degenerate into rabid selfishness, but religion nurtured the purposefulness of freedom. In the American model, according to Tocqueville, ‘freedom sees religion as the companion of its struggles and triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its rights.’” (246)

As the Christian faith is rejected in the West, “democracy’s worst features [have not been held] in check.” Tocqueville had written about a time when the Church’s voice could not be ignored:

·       Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

Some SJWs have migrated back to the Church where they had once found nourishment. Keri Smith has now returned, probably to the consternation of many of her former SJW comrades, who have now de-friended her. Smith no longer has to prove herself to them. Consequently, she is trying to hold fast to her former friends.

What is it that Christianity gives us? A virtue that depends, not upon us and our performance, but upon an eternal relationship with a God who loves us so much that He has paid the ultimate price to prove His love. This has freed our minds from the need to prove our virtue so that we can be truly virtuous. It has given us the wisdom that had once built the West.