Preaching What You Practice
Christians and other people who embrace certain well-defined traditional moral standards, religious or otherwise, are often accused of being "hypocrites." The accusers often point out to the many failings that Christians have had, both in their personal lives as well as in the spheres of public morality. And sadly, their criticism oftentimes has some merit to it. However, the most cases of purported "hypocrisy" are nothing more than the instances where our frail human nature has failed us in a ways that we did not intend. Our frailty is in fact one of the central core beliefs of Christianity, as is the belief that on our own we'll never be able to achieve complete and total sanctity. A story that I once heard has a young man encounter a monk and ask him what do the monks do all day long in the monetary. The monk answered him: "We fall, and we get up. We fall, and we get up." This is not substantively different from what all of us do in our daily lives. We fall short of the expectations that we and others have of us, and then, oftentimes with a lot of help, we pull ourselves together and get up. One thing that we should never do, however, is to deny that we've fallen in the first place. You can't get up if you think you are already standing.
I just finished reading Charles Murray's latest book, Coming Apart. Like all other Murray's books, it is brilliantly written and insightful, and already causing a lot of controversy. Murray has an uncanny knack for teasing apart even the most subtle and non-obvious social relations and trends, and presenting his results in a way that makes you scream "of course, how could it have been otherwise." In this latest book he focuses with a laser like precision on one topic which has played a role in much of his work and writing: the increasing social stratification in America and its deleterious consequences. Much ink has been spilled on this topic over the years, but most of the discussions have always focused on income inequality. In this line of thought income inequality is both the root cause and the most salient manifestation of the increasingly prominent social dissolution and polarization. However, in Murray's analysis the increasing disparities in wealth of the top classes and those at the bottom don't tell the whole story. In fact, they don't even tell most of the story, and are in fact the red herring. What truly distinguishes the most well-off Americans and those at the bottom is the disparity in their social capital. A half a century ago this disparity was relatively negligible, but in the ensuing decades it has grown beyond the recognition. While those at the top have largely stuck to the traditional values and standards – stable marriages, low rates of illegitimacy and single parenthood, nearly universal participation in the workforce, high rate of civic involvement, high rate of church attendance, etc. – all of those standards have experienced a body blow in the poorest strata of the society. This is particularly troublesome because a lot of solid research has consistently shown that it is precisely those standards and values that contribute both to the increase of personal and social wealth, as well as to the subjective sense of well being and happiness. Majority of those at the top have made it there because they stuck to those standards and invested heavily in acquiring the concomitant social capital. Unfortunately, while doing so they almost completely abandoned any desire to preach those virtues to the rest of the society. In Murray's words, they stopped "preaching what they practice." The only virtues that they publicly promote are those of "acceptance" and "nonjudgmentalism."
Over the years of observing college faculty I've seen this kind of behavior a lot. As a group they are the most vocal, and sometimes vicious, proponents of all sorts of "transgressive" behaviors. They indulge their sense of moral superiority over their white, middle-class, all-American students, and reserve special disdain for the "red state" America. And yet many of them, especially the more successful ones, lead lives of probity and staid conventionality that would make Norman Rockwell hang his head in shame. There are very few of them who lead the kinds of dysfunctional, to-heck-with-all-morality, lives that they often tout as yet another "lifestyle choice" and hold in the highest esteem. (Although from the top of my head I can think of at least one such person.)
Criticizing others, especially in very personal matters of morality and values, is never easy and it's often bound to backfire. This is especially true today in the age of pervasive online social networks. It's all too easy to surround yourself with a coterie of yes-sayers and enablers that will lend support to your every move, no matter how self-defeating it may be. And when you do say something, you expose yourself to criticism, and, of course, charges of "hypocrisy." Nonetheless, if you truly care about someone's well being you will not refrain from being honest with them and telling them what you really think. Not wanting to upset your own cushy life with "unnecessary" antagonism is ultimately very selfish. In words of Thomas Sowell, "When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear." It is time for all of us to stop worrying about being deemed judgmental, and start helping those around us. With words, and not just deeds.