How To Be More Affirming
Looking for the image of God in our neighbors
I know a guy who’s really intolerant. He went to church and said the rainbow flag was all about pleasing the world rather than God. They kicked him out.
Then his friends saw him hanging out with a hooker. He said, “Sick people need help.”
The hooker was like, “Who you callin’ sick?”
“You,” he said. “But there’s a cure.”
She didn’t like that. But I affirmed her. “Sex work is work! You don’t have to buy into this misogynistic, patriarchal BS!”
You know what he said to me? “You’re like a nice shiny Yeti, but half of what’s in it is backwash.” Rude. Okay, I admit I should wash my cup more often. But still.
Yet, this intolerant guy claims to be the Saviour of the world. Is this what we really want?
The original meaning of toleration is “to bear something without being affected.” That’s great if you’re a cinder block. But being unaffected seems to lack any feeling. Maybe that’s why we’ve moved beyond tolerance and toward affirmation. In Latin, ad firmare means “to make firm, to strengthen.”
But just as calls for tolerance led to intolerance, affirmation and inclusion have a way of excluding. This is not by accident. In 1965, critical theorist Herbert Marcuse wrote Repressive Tolerance. He urged the left to push for tolerance of their views while being intolerant of the right. They could justify this by saying the right is repressive.
We often think of corruption as a matter of virtue and vice. And sometimes that’s true. But vice is too obvious. Let’s say you want to pull a fast one and fool unsuspecting people. Choosing random children to be gladiators like in The Hunger Games wouldn’t fool anyone in real life. You’ve got to be smarter than that. G.K. Chesterton noticed that focusing on one virtue absent corresponding virtues is a more subtle way to snooker people. And to deceive ourselves.
Today, we’re told that nationalism is a bad thing because Hitler was a nationalist, and look how he turned out. That’s why globalism is good. Please don’t point out that international socialism is a globalist ideology, and that communists have also killed tens of millions of people while maintaining concentration camps even today.
Ideologues think they can design an ideal society, but they create the opposite. The larger problem isn’t nationalism or globalism. Underlying utopian dreams, left or right, is an optimistic view that we can reform human nature. But this denies that we are fallen.
Likewise, it’s not that affirmation, diversity, and inclusion are necessarily bad things. They can serve the good in conjunction with other virtues such as responsibility, discernment, and boundaries. And, of course, this must stay grounded in the seven cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, faith, hope, and love (caritas). But today’s inclusion and affirmation are unmoored from the cardinal virtues.
I can fool myself into thinking I’m one of the good guys if I’m against nationalism, and if I’m inclusive and affirming of all the right people and none of the wrong people. I’ll be okay if I don’t let self-awareness lead to the insight that I’ve replicated the same problem I accuse my opponents of, but in a different context.
In pushing our idealism, we frame our selfish interests as virtue. We treat pursuit of the good like a trip to the cafeteria. Do I really have to eat my carrots? We all complain about this. One of the hardest things about being a Christian is having to constantly question myself, knowing that self-deceit is subtle and unrelenting.
We are often reminded that Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, which He says is the second greatest commandment. But why are we less often reminded of the first, greatest commandment? We distort the second greatest commandment when we separate it from the first and greatest commandment.
Loving our neighbors is all about loving God with all our heart, mind, and soul. It’s not about what our neighbors want. It’s not about what we want. It’s about what God wants. It may not be my place to tell my neighbor what to do, but it is my place to point out that Christ includes me and my neighbor—all of us— in putting aside what we want and sincerely seeking to do God’s will.
That’s why the worst leaders are convinced they are doing God’s will. The best leaders pray they are doing God’s will; and walking penitentially, constantly ask God to convict them of their failings.