A recent email discussion between a theologically diverse group of right-of-center friends\u2014Christians, Jews, agnostics, and atheists\u2014provided much food for thought.<\/p>\n
Is Christianity the main culprit for what one interlocutor aptly referred to as \u201cwhite guilt\u201d and all of the cultural and political degeneracy by which this phenomenon has been attended?\u00a0 This person and another\u2014both non-Christians\u2014agreed that White Guilt is \u201ca Christian affliction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two Roman Catholic Christians took exception to this analysis, with one expressing their position that while \u201cwhite race guilt may be a Christian heresy\u2026it is not endemic to orthodox traditional Christianity, but a gross distortion of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still someone else maintained that even if it\u2019s the case that our reigning secular ideology is but a corruption of \u201corthodox traditional [read: true] Christianity,\u201d this begs the question as to why<\/em> and how<\/em> it is that Christianity lends itself to such perverse readings.<\/p>\n The interlocutors were arguing pass one another.<\/p>\n It is indeed difficult to imagine the mental and moral perversion that my friends were calling White Guilt taking flight from any soil other than that of Euro-Christian civilization.\u00a0 Thus, it\u2019s by and large accurate (if an oversimplification) to characterize it as \u201ca Christian affliction.\u201d\u00a0 So too are Secular Humanism, Liberalism, Socialism, Communism, Marxism, Egalitarianism, Democracy, and, in fact, atheism itself\u2014in short, of every post-Christian ideology that has originated and exerted any significant influence within the Western world\u2014cheap knock-offs of Christianity.<\/p>\n To concede this, though, is hardly equivalent to conceding that there\u2019s anything sociologically dubious about Christianity, the historically \u201cmixed bag\u201d that one discussant referred to it as. Quite the contrary, this concession amounts to nothing more or less than the concession that, first, Western civilization itself is inseparable from the faith that served as its soul for the better part of the last two millennia, the thing without which there would have been no Western civilization<\/em> and, second, Christianity is that<\/em> rich, that<\/em> valuable, that even its staunchest enemies are just as staunchly determined to insure that they preserve some of its unique insights after they have wrenched those insights from the Christocentric context from which they derive their intelligibility.<\/p>\n That Christianity has proven susceptible to exploitation by the indiscriminate and the opportunistic serves to underscore its unique strengths.\u00a0 This is a paradox, it\u2019s true, but it is no mystery.\u00a0 In fact, it is no less paradoxical than myriad of mundane paradoxes that we encounter on a daily basis.\u00a0 That which is of value is always that much more susceptible to abuse than that which is of no value, and that which is most valuable is more prone to abuse than that which is of less value.\u00a0 Anyone who fails to discern this and who instead suggests that Christianity\u2019s vulnerability to being perverted by unscrupulous and ignorant people somehow diminishes its value needs to answer the following questions:<\/p>\n Is truth <\/em>of diminished value because it lends itself so readily to abuse by liars, the ignorant, and the cruel?<\/p>\n Is individuality <\/em>of diminished value because it so readily lends itself to abuse by individuals?<\/p>\n Is science <\/em>of diminished value because of its vulnerability to being abused at the hands of activists, pseudo-scientists, totalitarians, \u201chumanitarians,\u201d and, yes, scientists themselves?<\/p>\n Are liberty <\/em>and freedom <\/em>are of diminished value because of the ease with which the undisciplined, the weak, the stupid, and the evil have abused them?<\/p>\n Are intelligence <\/em>and rationality <\/em>of diminished value because of the abuses to which they have been subjected?<\/p>\n Is self-consciousness <\/em>of diminished value because of its susceptibility to abuse?<\/p>\n Is virtue <\/em>of diminished value because it has been conscripted into the service of authoritarianism and totalitarianism?<\/p>\n Are compassion<\/em>, empathy<\/em>, mercy<\/em>, decency<\/em>, justice<\/em>, and love <\/em>of diminished value because the compassionate, the empathetic, the merciful, the decent, the just, and the loving are inherently at risk of being taken advantage of by the selfish, the indecent, the merciless, the unjust, the hateful, and the indifferent?<\/p>\n It is not for nothing that Glaucon long ago made his case to Socrates that the unjust, inasmuch as they are liberated from the constraints to which the just subject themselves, are better off than the latter.<\/p>\n To reiterate the point made above, only that which is good can be exploited and abused, and only that which is really <\/em>good is that much more prone to exploitation and abuse.<\/p>\n It\u2019s eminently plausible that, given its injunction to love and care for the stranger and its offer of universal salvation to all who accept the atoning work of Christ, Christianity\u2019s is an historically unique affirmation of individuality that has supplied both the conceptual resource and the pretext for White Guilt.\u00a0 Yet, as I\u2019ve been at pains to show, this invalidates Christianity no more than the fact that an acute conscience is more prone than a dull one to experience unwarranted guilt (whether of the racial or non-racial varieties) invalidates conscience <\/em>per se.<\/p>\n John S. Mill, the famous 19th<\/sup> century philosopher of utilitarianism (and hardly any kind of traditional Christian), noted that the capacity of human beings to enjoy the uniquely human, \u201chigher\u201d pleasures of the intellect, imagination, and character is necessarily inseparable from that person\u2019s capacity to suffer proportionate pain.\u00a0 The capacity for great pleasure is one and the same as the capacity for great pain. \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Moreover, that White Guilt is a phenomenon of recent vintage, and that its most zealous (though not sole) proponents\u2014i.e. such professional \u201canti-racists\u201d as the mask-wearing punks of \u201cAntifa\u201d\u2014are, far from being Godly, adamantly, militantly Godless,<\/em> suggests compellingly that Christianity, which has been around for thousands of years, can hardly be the sole, or even the primary, culprit behind it.\u00a0 Rather, these last considerations point to the danger of dislodging the noblest of human sentiments (compassion, empathy, a sense of justice), ideals (individuality, inviolable human dignity), and capacities (conscience) from the theocentric, Christocentric tradition of thought within which they emerged and courtesy of which they found their greatest expression, a tradition that for the better part of the last two millennia has been synonymous with what we now refer to as \u201cWestern civilization\u201d but which earlier generations knew simply as \u201cChristendom<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n