Why Do I Call Myself Good?

Last updated on: January 3, 2021 at 9:15 am by Anne Kennedy

Why Do I Call Myself Good? 2021-01-03T09:15:31-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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I’m still enjoying my last day off and so here is my recent article for the Christian Research Insititute on Virtue Signalling.

“‘This century…I say the next 80 years, I think is gonna be the defining period for humanity. Twenty-first century, make humanity great again, the coming of age of humanity,” says Eddy Izzard, pointing a rosy but sharp, well-manicured nail into the camera. He is clad in a somber, dark, feminine suit, and his coiffure — always a perfect reflection of the age — long, blond, and lifelessly lack-luster, suggests “homeschool mom” more than chichi. As usual, he has on pink lipstick, but now it is muted, tasteful even. His campaign is called — as the quote intimates — Make Humanity Great Again.1 This new venture is built upon the idea that humanity ought to put aside all its divisions and embrace the truthiness of every religion, viz., the deepest and purest hope is that we should all “treat others as one would like to be treated.” He has devoted himself to this project in three ways — coming out as transgender, running marathons to raise money for charity, and doing stand-up comedy in four different languages.2

I watched entranced because I’ve always been a secret Eddie Izzard fan. I know it isn’t seemly for a Christian to watch such subversive comedy — especially Izzard brand, which is full of foul language — but his “Cake or Death” routine is, though profane, very funny, and his knowledge of history makes him a gracefully fluid communicator.3 Back when it was really shocking for men to dress up as women, he wore platform heels, a kimono-styled top, the aforementioned bright lipstick, and an air of defiance.

But that is what feels like a lifetime ago. Somewhere in the past two decades, edgy, offending humor went the way of all flesh and now Izzard looks not only tame, but conservative — virtuous even. If he weren’t a man dressed up as a woman, he would fit in on the evangelical Christian conference circuit. What happened? One big, totally predictable cultural twist happened — virtue signaling.4

Why Do You Call Me Good?

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked, directing His divine gaze on the young ruler trying to figure out how to muscle his way into the kingdom of God without having to rely on anybody but himself, “No one is good except God alone.”5 This was one of those disappointing moments in the Bible where Jesus sees past all the hubris of the human spirit and points out the obvious. “You know the commandments,” He carries on, “Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steel, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.”6 Some commentators think that the rich young man breathed a sigh of relief at this point, given that Jesus had left off the first table of the law, the bit about loving God and not committing idolatry. But I rather think the young man smiled placidly. His original question, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”7 was not so different from Eddie Izzard’s apparently novel Make-Humanity-Great-Again scheme. Surely if we are just kind to each other, our goodness will become manifest even to God. What’s so hard about that? Though Izzard does admit that at least half of humanity doesn’t want to follow the golden rule, and that therefore the project will be “impossible.”8 Impossible — the very word hovering on the lips of Jesus as He helps the rich young man out of his darkness.

Jesus’ repost, “Why do you call me good?” must have confused His young interlocutor as much as it confuses each of us. Obviously, Jesus was a good teacher, just as the young man was a decent and “good” person, and Eddie Izzard is a good comedian. If you don’t murder anyone and don’t steal and aren’t “bad,” then you, by process of elimination, are “good.”

Social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt, in his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, works through the secular psychological research that propels each person toward the defense of personal goodness. In a series of interviews with people from differently stratified class, gender, and ethnic categories, Haidt and his assistants discovered that the internalized moral compass that guides human behavior first and foremost works to justify the behavior of the individual. Both intuitive “feeling” moral judgments and the rationalizing efforts of the mind together work overtime to preserve the virtue of the individual. Haidt likens the mind to a man riding, and serving, an enormous elephant — the emotional reasoning of the person. The two work together not toward truth, but toward the beliefs that the person already has about him or herself, and about other people.9

Haidt unwittingly illustrates, through an atheistic exercise of social science and philosophy, Ashley Null’s pithy summation of Thomas Cranmer’s theology: “What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.”10 The heart wants what it wants, which is why we all go up to God and ask Him what we have to “do” to enter the kingdom of God. We haven’t even noticed the first table of the law, the part about who God is and how we were meant to relate to Him. It is that first table that brings about the shipwreck of the human person on the shoals of self-love, the “righteous mind.” We worship and adore ourselves so completely that we cannot even see the apparent goodness of another person, never mind the real goodness of God.

Putting the Signal Back in Virtue

But something has changed in the last couple of years. To demonstrate that change, it is necessary to stress the reality that virtue is a crucial ingredient in an ordered society, but more than that, seeing that virtue is of the essence. Being able to basically trust people is the way the world goes around. When I stop by the shops to buy a rosy pink piece of salmon, you as the shop owner must feel the necessity of signaling your virtuous economic habits to me. You will heap up ice under the fish. You will adorn the fillet with watercress. When I sidle up diffidently to your counter, you will smile and greet me. Your apron will be bright and clean and your hair well back from all the fish under the display. Because you desire me to buy fish from you again the following Thursday, you will count my change back to me aloud. If you are thinking about falsifying your scales, you will try very hard to conceal that desire, or the reality, so that I won’t be able to stop along in the street and say nasty (if true) things about you.

Signaling virtue, or goodness, is the very core of human community. The good must be sorted out from the bad. The bad must conceal their vice. This deep-rooted common grace keeps most of us trudging along in basically a good direction, trying to, in the same moment, advance our own interests and win the approval of others.

The new signaling of virtue, however, constitutes a sharp, some might say malign, departure from the old. The virtue itself has come to require the signal — the signal itself is the virtue. Whereas, in years past, virtue required that the signal be disguised, hidden, or cloaked under a mantel of that old, tired idea of humility, the new virtue cries out for itself by its own name. “I am good,” says each person both in person and online, “and the way that you’ll know is by virtue of the signal itself.”

This came to me in a flash of insight watching Eddie Izzard try to make humanity great again….read the rest here!

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