The Moral Division Between the Christian Right and Secular Liberals
Unhappiness and secular leftism
When everybody feels like a victim and is always looking for someone to blame, its only natural the rates of depression will go up. Social justice warriors are set on the idea that everybody except a white straight male is oppressed, and that the white straight male is the one responsible for the oppression. Furthermore, when they perpetuate the narrative that they are social outcasts, shamed by the world and hated by bigots, the feelings of alienation only continue to grow. But when it comes to unhappiness and liberalism, there may be a much bigger factor at play.
Secular liberals believe the traditional family, proven effective virtually since the beginning of time, is actually destructive and unhealthy. Masculinity and femininity are considered sexist or weak, and abortion should be casual, free and guiltless. Casual encounters through Tinder is living in hedonistic joy, and spending hours a day on porn sites is normal. Celebrate obesity, eat all you want, take drugs and drink to make yourself feel better. Display every accomplishment on Facebook, take a half-naked photo for Instagram and see how many likes you get. In the end we die anyway, so we might as well enjoy ourselves. Because there’s no God but atheism.
Such is the thought process of the leftist-dominated West. And it is only natural mental illness is now an epidemic. The values and habits of people are incomparably different from what they used to be, before the internet, entertainment on demand and postmodernism. Anything reminiscent of the past is labelled boring or old fashioned, and the live-for-the-moment ethos is symbolized on billboards, Netflix and in academia. Much of the economy sells instant gratification hits designed to shorten attention spans, elevate impatience and keep people coming back for another hit. Dopamine is the drug the left is peddling; easy solutions that feel good in the short term, yet make things worse in the long run. Again, this doesn’t matter because there’s only one life, and in the faith of atheism there is no moral code.
Happiness and conservative Christians
This is where conservatism differs, and Christianity also. They overlap in several ways, perhaps the most noteworthy being the concept that patience is a virtue. The idea that we must suffer now to gain rewards later can be connected to the natural adversity/reward dichotomy necessary for people to reconcile the good with the bad. It can be said anything worth doing isn’t easy, to paraphrase Republican president Theodore Roosevelt. Conservatism acknowledges that there aren’t any easy answers, contrary to liberal rally cries such as “Tax the rich,” “Raise the minimum wage”or “Free healthcare.” Conservative political, social and economic theory supports working through hard times as a collective and reaping the benefits long term, understanding if results are instantaneous then there will be a crash to follow.
Similarly, Christianity warns against everything the left tends to cherish: ego, excessive consumption, pride, immodesty, intoxication, lustfulness, the self over the collective, anti-natalism and the destruction of gender roles. For centuries Christianity was used as the authoritative moral compass in the form of Christian theocracies. The age of enlightenment led to the separation of church and state in Europe, and an influx of humanist values took place, closely related to concepts like individualism and liberty. While these concepts allowed the West to grow intellectually, morality became superficial and surface-level. People invented ideas about what they felt was right in their own views rather than that led by a fatherly, tough-love God, one who will punish those who take the easy-route to fulfill their base desires. Through solipsism, skepticism, nihilism and existentialism, Western philosophers continued to develop the idea that one decides for themselves what the meaning of their life is, which has led to a pursuit of instant gratification.
The left uses ideas originating in the Bible such as equality, acceptance and universality, yet it is a self-aggrandizing interpretation of these values in how it believes its own movement to be a replacement for God. Where there is no God people create their own rules, which in turn leads to misery and conflict. It is somewhat analogous to how fatherless children are often rebellious, or when children set the standard for their own playtime. The totalitarian push for the acceptance of new ideas is an example of bastardized Christianity; they will only tolerate those who agree with them. It is somewhat reminiscent of Nietzsche’s “There are no absolute truths,” a contradictory statement claiming that very statement to be an absolute truth. In other words, it means “There are no absolute truths, except mine.”
It may be unfair to define secular liberalism as a complete dismissal of Christ. Any noteworthy historian is aware Jesus Christ was a real person, one that arguably had the most impact on the world than any other human being. There is a subset of Christianity named liberal Christianity that disregards the theology of the Bible, such as the fact Mary was a virgin or that Christ rose from the dead. They take an academic approach in stating while the Bible is full of embellishment and outright lies, Jesus was a great moral teacher who one can emulate even if they think he was a raving lunatic with a God complex. Regardless of any logical inconsistencies, one could argue this is better than ignoring Christian values altogether. But upon examining the set of political values they associate themselves with, it seems antithetical to what Christ intended.
The rebirth of Christianity
Christianity is seeing a re-emergence as mental health in the secular world continues to decline. Movements such as reactionary, traditionalist and paleo-conservatism are gaining popularity, all of which take the “conserve” concept one step further by wishing for a return to simpler times. These movements encourage young people to replace porn with exercise, obesity with healthy eating, social media with reading. They encourage each other to live clean, wholesome lives focused on self-improvement and discipline. It is an acknowledgement that what is considered the norm in contemporary society, encouraged by commercials and media, is a deceptive trap intended to enslave for the sake of profit, and that consumers are happy to comply as long as it offers escape. While there has been a great deal of positive progress when it comes to freedom of choice, the left is addicted to change. The “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy no longer seems to apply.
In the Bible, it is suggested that humanity is granted free will, and one can make a choice whether they go to heaven or hell. The liberals are right in this respect; freedom is a human right granted by God. It is not unlike something a loving father would do, like letting a child eat all the chocolate they want until they realize it makes them feel sick. But at a certain point, if the father is absent for too long, the sin of greed will set in. Then the child becomes diabetic.
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