“Virtue signaling” for those who don’t know, is a political phrase coined to describe those who care, so, so much, they are virtuous. If you’ve ever been in a political debate and someone suddenly declares, “I’m a vegan, I don’t eat animals, do you eat animals?” That is called virtue signaling. It’s an idea that suggests I’m right because I’m a good person with high moral standards, while you are just politically incorrect and want to kill puppies.
In a faith-based context it is similar to worksย before grace, that I am justified because of my own innate goodness and ability to care about all the right things. I am so, so good and I will prove it every day by dashing about and supporting all the right causes.
Women can be especially vulnerable to virtue signaling, in part due to our design. I like to say, we are more likely to see the beauty in ugly dogs, bad men, and sticky children. That’s partially due to biology. Add in the tremendous cultural pressure and our history that has often declared that all good women are virtuous. We are expected to be good, virtuous, simply because of gender. To not be virtuous is a very bad thing indeed, it is taboo. When a woman is perceived to be lacking virtue, we are often horrified, we tend to call them mean names. Whereas men are cut some slack culturally, boys will be boys, we all know how men are, women rarely experience that same kind of grace in the world.
Men in general are not perceived as virtuous culturally, in fact when they do the right thing, we can be somewhat surprised. For women it is just expected that we will do the right thing, and condemnation is usually heaped upon us if we don’t. So when women walk away from their children or families, we are perceived as unbelievably selfish, whereas it is quite common for men to just throw in the towel and walk away. It’s not right, but it is more accepted culturally.
So there are some double standards in the world that lead us to judge women far more harshly. I don’t wish to imply that this is somehow wrong. I like to quip that to whom much is given, much is expected. The virtuous and sacrificial nature of women and the cultural conditions that have created and nurtured us can be a beautiful thing.
However, there are some drawbacks. That harsh judgementalism that women often face culturally and sometimes internalize. The need we sometimes have to be constantly busy doing good works, trying to prove ourselves. The way we will compare ourselves to other women, often in an attempt to signal our own superior virtue. The way we sometimes feel as if we can never be good enough, thin enough, smart enough, pretty enough… virtuous enough. To make matters worse, we have a huge advertising industry that plays off of women’s fears.
Back to faith, Christianity, rather than being hard on women as it is often falsely perceived, can help to protect and heal you from all this virtue signaling. Are women more virtuous than men, are we sin free? No, no we are not, not really, that is a worldly bit of deception. We may have different roles in the world, different priorities, different weaknesses, but sin is a universal concept that impacts us all. Rather than needing to constantly signal our own virtue, to brace ourselves in a defensive stance culturally, we can just set all that down at the foot of the cross.
Imperfect, fallen women, washed clean in the Blood of the Lamb. There really is nothing more liberating, more freeing than that. More empowering, because we are no longer expected to go it alone.
In a political context virtue signaling can be a real problem and it is something both men and women engage in. One reason it’s not so good is because it tends to make politics all about us, the personal becomes political, so rather than focusing on how to fix problems, we focus on how to signal our own virtue. That tends to make us prescribe solutions to problems that don’t exist in a way that eventually benefits no one. Politicians have gotten very good at playing off of our own virtue signaling, often offering up band-aid solutions that make us feel good about having fixed some problem in the world. Whether or not the problem has actually been fixed, improved upon, made better, solved, all becomes secondary to the fact that we now get to feel good about our own virtue.
Scripture can be amazing, the Word can reveal itself to us precept upon precept, like a handbook for all that ails us. I like to joke, read the instructions they explain everything.
It us not as if our works don’t matter, but our works done for the purpose of signaling our own virtue can create endless problems, for ourselves individually and for ourselves collectively. Every time we try to take Jesus Christ out of the equation, we’re going to go astray.
Rejoice and again I say rejoice, because there is great truth in these words. “Imperfect, fallen women, washed clean in the Blood of the Lamb. There really is nothing more liberating, more freeing than that.”
TT said:
Reblogged this on 40+/Single/Clueless and commented:
Honestly, I’ve grown weary of the woman power movement. I see more in WE than in me. These are the words of someone whose choices played a large role in a divorce. Don’t get me wrong, I love women. I love women that are virtuous and not-so-virtuous, but in the end it’s really not at ALL about us.
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Andrew said:
Virtue-signalling can lead to Virtue Fatigue on the part of the signalee, even Virtue-Induced Rage in some cases.
The more they signal (“I’m spiritual, sustainably-based, fairly-traded, socially-just, gender-free, vegan, enlightened, aware, centered, etc. etc.) the more I hear “I’m a works-based lost soul in active or passive avoidance of God and the Gospel of salvation.”
The emergent church seems to have its own “Christianese” version of this same thing, ie: fusion of social-worker/community activist jargon with vaguely Gospel-tinged terminology.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Ha! You are so right. “Iโm a works-based lost soul” just about says it all.
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Julie said:
Virtue-Induced Rage. Great phrase. I wouldn’t have fully understood what that means had I not encountered it this week.
“in active or passive avoidance of God and the Gospel of salvation” nails it. I wrote about exactly that yesterday – not sure I’ll post it, though, for fear of additional VIR.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Ha! “VIR,” I love the sound of that. It even sounds angry. ๐
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dvaal said:
Reblogged this on my heartstrings… fiddledeedee and commented:
Beautiful insight. I like that women are held to a higher standard -as it is a sense of pride. However, we can be cruel to others as we search our own way. God is the answer…
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insanitybytes22 said:
Thank you for the reblog, much appreciated. ๐
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Eric said:
Virtue Signals are naturally going to happen in a society where the ‘Personal is Political’ and Narcissism is the greatest virtue of all. It’s sort of the flip-side of the Victim Cult. One side feeds off the other.
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Eric said:
I don’t think that men are actually cut that much slack when it comes to virtue. Our culture—and especially women—has such a low opinion of men that virtuous behavior isn’t really expected; and usually it’s met more with suspicion than surprise. Most women hold the belief today that ‘nice guys aren’t really nice’; so that we do something virtuous, it’s assumed that the virtuous man is just another male pig under the surface. Most women also believe that ‘all men are pigs’; a pig is just a pig and a man is just a man. One reason why they ignore good men and chase thugs is because the lower the thug is; the closer he comes to most perceptions of the male nature.
It’s noteworthy than the only males women seem to respect are homo/trans sexual males; ones who’ve effectively renounced their masculinity. The rest of us are simply expendable and no one expects virtue or anything else positive from us.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Sad Eric, and partially true too, I suppose. Where women often bear the burden of virtuous expectations, men often bear the burden of being seen as having no virtue at all. There’s a remedy for all this, salvation, looking to Jesus Christ rather than the culture, and realizing that we have such worth and value to Him, that He died for us. Our own cultural virtue or lack thereof has no bearing on how He feels about us. As such, culture should also have little bearing on how we define ourselves. That’s not easy because we live in the world, but I think the first step is uncloaking these deceptions and dragging them out into the sunlight.
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Eavan said:
The thing is, virtue isn’t having the correct attitudes and it’s not meeting a moral list. It’s having good character. A virtuous person is one who has good character. This is a largely lost idea, that people should have and can attain good character.
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belikewaterproduction said:
Great Post ๐
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Paul said:
Very, very complex and interesting topic IB. It reflects the way we process and interact with the world around us. I guess I came upon the complexity of it while managing people in business. It became apparent to me that employees reacted to me and to what I wished to accomplish via my reputation. For instance when I asked a driver to do a difficult task, he would respond based on his previous experience with me. So, if I made it clear that I had to have this task done and in return I would give him an easy task the following week – he would gladly help because he saw that as fair. So it was my reputation or “image” that drove action. I realized that for daily activity, it was critical that I keep my image positive. Truthfully, I do believe in fairness and internally would make sure that drivers were treated fair – but on top of that I had to also be perceived as being fair. Which, it turns out are two completely different but parallel processes.
I could be as fair and caring as I wanted but if my employees didn’t see or recognize that they couldn’t respond to it. This is the same as your “virtue signalling” – image building. I also came to realize that image and reality frequently ran parallel and developed fine. Sometimes, truth and image collided and in those cases truth has to triumph – image can be fixed later. Business calls this optics. And optics should never suggest anything that is not the truth. However, the truth can exhibit qualities that are not covered by the image. It’s like image is representative of the physical world and truth is reflective of the spiritual world. Spiritual always triumphs but if you want a safe place to rest and a roof over your head and food to eat, then you have to deal with the physical world. And that requires managing others’ understanding and respect for you – your image or “virtue”.
Anyway, IB, “virtue signaling”, in my mind is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. Rather it has to reflect your internal feelings to be real and if you don’t like your image then you should address your spirit. There’s lots more on this topic, but you can see it clearly in the Bible as well when, for example, Christ feeds the crowd with loaves and fishes – image building. He did not go through the villages and make food appear to feed the poor, that was not his point – in fact that was the opposite of his point. It was Judas’ intention to take the money he got from turning in Jesus and give it to feed the poor. Jesus condemned Judas for that act. Jesus used the loaves and fishes to make a point – and the point was not that it was his intention to feed the poor bread but rather to feed their souls with his sermons. Jesus also turned wine into water – also image building or virtue signalling. Mind you he was following the truth by contributing to a wedding – a marrying of souls that is such a critical force in spiritual truth. And so on.
So in my mind we have to tend to both our image and our spirit and when they contradict, spirit (truth) is the more important. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. ๐
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insanitybytes22 said:
I like that, Paul, well said. Jesus did indeed work on image, optics, and used a few miracles to make His point, perhaps to build some trust. I like what Eavan said above about virtue being about having good character. That is indeed sometimes forgotten in the world today so it becomes all about the optics instead, not unlike what we often see in politics.
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Paul said:
Exactly IB, and that duality of life is what has made MBA’s so dangerous. Basically the course gives them the ability to manipulate image while creating a totally different reality (like a Ponzi scheme as an example). It is critical that virtue be grounded in real spiritual truths. Rhetoric is basically image building and is particularly negative when it is used to create an understanding that does not reflect reality.
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insanitybytes22 said:
“Rhetoric is basically image building and is particularly negative when it is used to create an understanding that does not reflect reality”
Oh, oh, truer words were never spoken! Ha, you have no idea how right you are, Paul. ๐
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ColorStorm said:
–And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, Came behind him, and touched the border of his garment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched. And Jesus said, Who touched me? When all denied, Peter and they that were with him said, Master, the multitude throng thee and press thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me. And when the woman saw that she was not hid, she came trembling, and falling down before him, she declared unto him before all the people for what cause she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately. And he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.–
Imagine the scene, Throngs of people yet the Lord knew there was a ‘touch,’ one other than mere bumping into. In one of the most illuminating and understated pieces of scripture, the Lord says ‘Virtue is gone out of me.’ Ah yes, a touch unlike any other, sensed by He who knows the hearts so well. Trembling, falling, declaring……….. only to be called Daughter……..her issue gone…..by the great Physician.
I like that word virtue, and I also like your handling of it here ms bytes. ๐
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insanitybytes22 said:
Just beautiful, Colorstorm. The woman with the issue of blood, of course! “Virtue is gone out of me,” indeed.
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ColorStorm said:
We all have issues yes? ๐ Smart woman there. Gotta love how deep answers unto deep ms bytes.
Btw, could not have returned the favor without your inspiration. ๐ Scripture is always perfectly suited to our needs.
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Vincent S Artale Jr said:
Reblogged this on Talmidimblogging.
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