A person’s sense of right and wrong is unknown, even to themselves, until the moment that person can gain something by being a low-life lying creep. At such moments, the only thing you have going for you-the only stake in your corner-is your simple and unvarnished sense that certain things are just wrong. Who knows how you get that sense-from mom and dad, from your first teachers, or from church. No, not from church, as we can tell from the ever-growing list of loudmouth moralizers who are the first to point out everyone else’s failings, while ignoring the most basic lack of decency in their own lives.
You have this week’s slime ball (South Carolina) Governor Mark Sanford, who admits to indiscretion after indiscretion, while comparing himself with a Biblical hero. You have last month’s slime balls, who shamed gay men from their pulpits before running off to their muscle-bound boyfriends waiting in the wings. How do these religious men get so hypocritical? The louder and more self-righteous, the more likely the double standard?
It’s because they’ve grown up believing they are special men, God’s chosen, God’s elect, God’s messengers who are given a mission. These men believe that they are God’s anointed, sent to bring the light (Republican politics) to the world. Because they consider themselves so special and set apart, they honestly don’t believe that indulging in the sins that they are condemning is particularly wrong. Because they are the special emissaries of God, normal morals don’t apply. That sense that you either have, or don’t have-that sense that certain things are just plain wrong, well, these Republican leaders have obliterated that. Instead, they have the visionary notion that God forgives whatever they do, because they are on a mission to tell the rest of us that we are going to Hell if we do not become more like them.
How’s that for twisted? Such convoluted craziness is probably why one religious leader initiated a relentless course of confrontation with the religious hypocrites of his day, a confrontation filled with rancor and vitriol, a brawl that took no prisoners, and ended in his being violently executed. That man was Jesus Christ, and my guess that if such a man appeared in today’s mega-churches and asked “Who do you think you’re fooling?” the leaders would find a way to put him away as well.
This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2009.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Are you saying Republicans are they only ones “believing they are special men, Godâ ™s chosen, Godâ ™s elect, Godâ ™s messengers who are given a mission.” Republicans are the only ones to commit hypocrisies regarding faith and life? You are dense, and its people like you who perpetuate the problems within the human race. Iâ ™m sure you were out here writing about these hypocrisies when your Christian, God fearing president Clinton was banging everyone but his wife. Look at every situation with the same eyes lady, or else you start sounding like the hypocrite.
Tired,
The key to Stewart’s letter is the line: “The louder and more self-righteous, the more likely the double standard?”
The Republican party got snugly into bed decades ago with the Christian Evangelical Movement and since then this has been the party of “Family Values” and “Christian Values”, encouraging its grass roots to (erroneously) regard the US as a “Christian Nation”…. you get the picture. So in COMPARISON WITH the position of holy and unblemished ethics the Party aspires to the actual (and otherwise relatively normal I must admit) behavior of some of its members (sic.) comes across as, well, hypocrisy.
The letter writer wasn’t saying Republicans shag more than Democrats, just that they’re more hypocritical about it.
Hope this helps
Mr. Sanford may have SOUNDED self righteous in comparing himself to King David, but when you consider the biblical “hero” had a man murdered just so he could have sex with the dude’s wife, and he killed thousands of infidels to protect and/or expand the mini-empire … well, maybe we shouldn’t be so quick in our indignation over the comparison. Maybe Sanford looks really GOOD compared to the hero. Okay, David could write a mean poem and all, and the times they were different, but I don’t think what Sanford did was something to get much worked up over.
Olde-Tymer
As a believer would say–AMEN!