Wrong Righteousness

It is difficult to observe our society in any depth without noticing that there is an abundance of individuals and groups that identify themselves, to one degree or another, as victims of some other group. Many people of color have certainly been victims of white bigotry, many women have certainly been victims of an oppressively patriarchal society, many people of low income have certainly been victims of corporate greed.

It is all so tragically true; the facts are clear. But now what? Traditional Capitalism - that is, economic competition - is being replaced by a kind of victim capitalism: a competition, based on the saddest story possible, to receive the most special treatment. The handicapped, single mothers, homosexuals, the homeless, native Americans, sufferers of certain diseases, undocumented immigrants, even witches - they all have champions or advocacy groups that press their interests against oppressors.

It is assumed by some that the only people who are not victimized are healthy, wealthy, politically conservative heterosexual white males – especially if they are members of the Religious Right. But some members even of these categories are now feeling unjustly attacked – even if we limit the discussion to so-called “institutionalized” mistreatment. There seems to be no limit to victims and victim causes.

Broadly speaking, there are ways of interacting with the habitual victimhood phenomenon. Some seem to minimize the fact that some people or groups really are habitually cruel to other people or groups. This is the Get-over-it-you-bunch-of-whiners” response, and can lack compassion even when compassion is warranted.

The more compassionate among us take a different route. They choose which victimization claims are legitimate, and then join the fight. Of course, such decisions are extremely subjective, based on one’s own background, psychology, race, ethnicity, gender, income, occupation, religion, physical health, citizenship status, etc. So it’s hard to imagine our very diverse culture ever arriving at a consensus in such a sea of possibilities. If such a consensus is ever achieved, I’m sure we all hope our own group does not get named the primary trouble makers, as the Jews were in Hitler’s Germany.

I for one am nowhere near intelligent enough to decide what the pecking order should be: which groups legitimately belong at the top of the list, vs. which groups should just be ridiculed for their silliness. To me, the better questions to ask are: Where does this eagerness toward self-identified victim status come from? And is it common to all cultures throughout history?

Perhaps a more preliminary question needs to be asked first. What if there’s no deeper psychological or sociological meaning behind self-identified victim status? Blacks were once slaves, women historically really have been treated as economic second class citizens, some people really do fear and hate homosexuals, the homeless really are marginalized. What if people feel like victims simply because they’re victims? What could be simpler?

This is too simplistic an analysis, for three reasons.

First, there is no necessary relationship between how much a given individual has suffered, and how much they self-identify as a victim. Everyone is familiar with the stories of people who have endured great agonies while retaining great peace, optimism, love, and appreciation for life. Two of my heroes, George Washington Carver and Anne Frank, are two wonderful examples. Conversely, we are familiar with real life examples of those who are habitually angry and complaining even though their daily life has always been quite comfortable and nourishing.

Second, even the compassionate among us don’t give equal weight to all claims of victim status. The most zealous champions of “gay rights” are usually far less zealous when it is the traditional family which is under attack, and vice versa. Those who scream from the rooftops about white-on-black or black-on-white crime are usually much less zealous when the order is reversed. The most strident advocates of leveling the playing field in education are also the most strident opponents of school vouchers, even though the majority of poor inner city parents want them. Clearly, even the most compassionate among us need to choose their priorities; they simply must ignore, or even repudiate, the pleas of some victims.

Finally, we can not ignore the fact that, once someone defines him/herself with a victim self-identity, the intensity of negative emotion often remains high or gets worse – even when their circumstances improve, or could improve, significantly. The lot of black Americans, notwithstanding the serious problems that remain, has improved profoundly since the early 1800’s, or even since the 1950’s. But the rhetoric of some prominent black leaders is far more inflammatory than Martin Luther King ever was. And there is a host of other examples: the woman who persists in a pattern of choosing men who are abusive, but rejects the kind and caring man who truly wants to love her; the homeless person that constantly rejects offers of life changing assistance; the oppressed ethnic minority of a third world country that pleads for mercy, then gains political power and becomes the oppressor.

Indeed, the victim mentality, when it finally obtains power, very often leads to the creation of more victims. The abused child often grows up to become an abuser. Feminism has led inevitably to the destruction of viable human life. The victim rhetoric proclaimed in Hitler’s Mein Kampf led to the Holocaust.

The fact is worth dwelling on. Regardless of the degree to which one's sense of victimhood is justified, if there is not some sort of forgiveness, some sort of healing and moving on, the victim producing cycle will perpetuate itself.

So, to ask the question again, where does this eagerness toward self-identified victim status come from?

The beginning of an answer comes from a growing body of theologians known as Girardians, after the teacher and writer Rene Girard. The viewpoint is most helpfully introduced by the left-leaning Gil Bailie in his book Violence Unveiled.

Ignoring traditional Christian theology, the Girardians have opened wide the anthropological meaning and power of the crucifixion of Jesus. They have shown with exquisite thoroughness how human beings tend to bind together most effectively when they share a common negative energy toward a common scapegoat or enemy. It seems that nothing produces social solidarity so solidly as a shared contempt. What holds together the tribe on this side of the river – what keeps their everyday squabbles from becoming culturally destructive – is that tribe on the other side of the river. Surely that other tribe has always victimized us, or is inferior, or evil, or poised to attack at the slightest provocation.

Did the Soviet Union not serve our nation well by giving us a common fear and loathing? And did we not do the same for the Soviets? Watch how a family get-together becomes united and filled with mutual love when some “black sheep of the family” or some agreed-upon undesirable political movement is discussed.

According to the Girardians, this “scapegoating mechanism” was the very foundation of culture. Primitive mythologies celebrate the victory of “Us” over the expelled wicked one; primitive religion enforces those behaviors that will keep “Us” from becoming like “Them”; and primitive government is established and maintained by those who control and manipulate these largely arbitrary standards of moral rivalry and judgment.

Whole religious or political ideologies are built and justified solely on the self-righteous conviction NOT to be some other religious or political ideology.

The prophetic tradition of the Old Testament is the beginning, in history, of questions about this pattern. For the first time, the mythologies, the religious practices, the authority figures are all confronted with the issue: If “We” are better than “Them,” then why is there so much injustice, and so many victims, even among Us? What good are our stories if we ourselves can’t get along with each other? What good is our religion if, after we worship, we go home miserable and resentful? What good is our government if it arbitrarily favors some citizens over others?

The shining moment of this prophetic tradition, say the Girardians, comes in the crucifixion – the victimization – of Jesus. For in the New Testament assessment, the perfect, perfectly loving child of God was cruelly executed by the combined religious and secular guardians of “right” and “law.” Once and for all, the essential delusion, arbitrariness, cruelty and injustice in the foundations of human culture is laid bare. Anyone with the courage can look and see. There is no longer any absolute that human beings can’t twist to their own advantage. There is no power that human beings can’t turn to savagery. Human culture, by definition, creates victims. And even when it defends victims, it can only do so by creating a different set of victims.

Thus this "Kingdom of God" that Jesus preached and demonstrated, by definition, if it is anything meaningful at all, is an attempt to deliver us from this self-justifying victim-making machinery.

To one degree or another, this myth dismantling spirit – for it is a spirit (in the broadest sense of that word) more than a consciously held doctrine – invades all individuals and all cultures that receive the Gospel. And thus, to be Christian means to question myself, my sense of my own righteousness, by sense of moral superiority over another. The reader of the New Testament has not yet begun to understand its central message until he or she recognizes, on every page, a conflict between two ways of being righteous – of “feeling good about ourselves” in the phrase of the day.

The traditional way – the old, religio-political way – focuses on external behavior and involves being better than someone else. It is self-justifying, manipulative and argumentative. It creates victims, usually with incredible subtlety, even as it worships its god or government and sites its scriptures or legal codes.

The radical new way – and we can not now even fathom how radical it was when it burst upon history – begins in an ocean of forgiveness, and focuses on what’s really felt, desired and intended in the hidden inner self. It is self forgetting, trusting and eager to serve. It relieves one of his/her burden of repressed resentment, thus leading to a new habit of thankfulness. Far from making victims, it truly understands, and so loves, its enemies.

Is our own society not trapped between two kinds of righteousness? On the one hand, it can not be comfortable in the old righteousness. We are eager to be “progressive,” to “question authority,” to ridicule “puritanical religion” or “fundamentalism,” to guard against hypocrisy, and expose the holes in everyone else's self-justifying arguments.

But on the other hand, our society doesn’t understand or doesn’t care for the new righteousness, which smacks of being someone’s doormat - forgiving when we’d rather “get even,” serving when we’d rather “empower” ourselves, trusting people who might hurt us, confessing our faults when we need to be “looking out for number one.”

It's a tremendous psychological and social dilemma.

What persists is that human beings desperately need to “feel good about themselves.” We have a ravenous fundamental longing to be – or at least feel – righteous, or right, or justified, or vindicated. But even most of the non-Christians in our increasingly non-Christian society are still too infected with what that gospel tradition has revealed about what we might call the problem of being righteous.

So what are we to do? Are let's pose the question this way: How can I retain my feelings of rightness or moral superiority, without becoming vulnerable to the label of self-righteous hypocrite?

The answer that seems to satisfy many is to self-identify as a victim. If conventional righteousness has been exposed as hypocrisy because it makes victims, then I do not share in the hypocrisy if I myself am one of its victims. If Jesus did this great work in human history by portraying victimization on a grand scale, then I – in my devotion to the New Righteousness – will also be a victim. And I will prove my righteousness in a non-hypocritical way by defending other victims; anyway, the ones with whom I most naturally identify.

To consider the plausibility of this use of victimhood, one need only look honestly at the privileges that victim status stands to earn for us. If I am a victim, who is going to hold me accountable for the bad things I’ve done? If I am a victim, look at all the people who make a fuss over me. If I am a victim, I automatically have a family that will welcome me in – all others who share my particular brand of victim status. Even if I am a pretend victim, I may be able to wheedle my way into some of the special government programs, protection or resources that are intended for the truly unfortunate, the truly victimized.

And even if I get no special treatment from others, there’s one more big bonus. If I fail to get the job or income I want, I can satisfy myself that it was the employer’s problem. If no one wants to be my friend, I don’t have to question my own social skills. Whenever I’m in a bad mood, even if its because of something as basic as poor eating habits, I can always take it out on those who are victimizing me. If I feel vulnerable, or frightened, or ashamed, or hopeless, I never have to examine my own life choices to see if I am my own worst enemy. For the “worst enemy” is “out there.” I can go months at a time without having to look at myself with an apprehensive eye.

In short, rhetorical victimhood might just be the last gasp of religious hypocrisy, the final hope of those who want to feel righteous without engaging in the messy business of repentance.

This is a vicious judgment indeed if it implies that no one is ever actually ill treated by another. But it implies no such a thing. Every single person who has ever lived has been victimized in various ways. Yes, some more than others; and some, terribly so, more than any reader of this document has even imagined. But as has already been noted, this fact in itself does not explain or excuse the eagerness of many to live in a perpetual self-defining prison of victimhood. Do we really desire a culture in which everyone is competing for the right to be the real victim?