Virtue II

     Have you heard (or said) statements like these?

     "I never read the Harry Potter books."

     "I don't shop at Target."

     "We don't really do Disney."

     "We don't buy Hershey's anymore."

     "We don't watch TV."

     "We only give to causes that support XYZ."

     What do all of these statements have in common?  They can be construed as virtue signaling. Not that they necessarily are.  They are personal statements.  But they can be used in the wrong way, and I'll explain.  

    On December 29, 2021, I wrote a post called Virtue (you can scroll back and read it if you want).  In that post, I talked about different virtue signals people were making, and how virtue signaling doesn't really make the person doing it morally superior, but it is often made to look like it.  At that time, a lot of the virtue signaling I was hearing about were Covid-related.  People who not only wore a mask and got vaccinated, but also felt the need to broadcast it to everyone, and villainize those who did not.  Sometimes, it was even disguised as compassion (IE: I don't wear a mask for me--I wear it for you!).  

     To quote that 2021 post: The Oxford Languages online dictionary defines virtue signaling as, the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue.  In other words, it is demonstrating your own goodness in a way that others can see.  Sometimes, it is done in such a way where others are not allowed to disagree with you without looking like the bad guy.  

     I also shared Matthew 6:1, which says, Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.  Even if they are right in what they are doing, virtue signalers have received their reward in full.  

     Why did I feel there was a need to do a Part II?  Well, Part I was my response to virtue signaling I was seeing that really bothered me.  Now, I am responding to myself!  Ways I virtue signal without knowing.  I have caught myself saying statements similar to the ones I started with.  Simply stating these things is not sinful, but if the motive is virtue signaling, then I have received my reward in full.  

     To be honest, I never did read the Harry Potter books, for a few reasons: They came out after I was a college student, and it seemed to me that they were geared to people younger that myself (though I know people of all ages have enjoyed them!).  For another thing, I'm not as into fantasy--the only fantasy I ever really got into were The Chronicles of Narnia, and since I'm not really a fantasy person, even those were almost beyond me.  For still another reason, I didn't feel completely comfortable with the premise and subject matter of Harry Potter, and little things I would hear about the plots of the books and movies were a little dark for me.  In spite of that, I have never made a declarative stance for or against them, because I know godly people who enjoy this series with a clear conscience, and other equally godly people who are very troubled by them.  I think to have the right to a strong opinion, I would have to read them myself, and I just don't have the time to invest in a long series I'm not that interested in anyway.  Life is too short to read books you're not interested in!  I made the choice that was best for me, but I also choose not to have a really strong opinion about them.  It was only recently that I heard myself in a conversation assert that I had never read them, and then wondered if I were doing it as virtue signaling.  I had to do some soul searching about that one.  Not reading them certainly doesn't speak one way or the other about my character.

     To be honest, I don't shop at Target anymore--and I miss it almost every day!  My husband and I signed a petition in 2016 that we would not shop there until they changed their bathroom policy to only allow biological males and females to use the bathroom of their birth sex.  I don't need a man in a dress walking in on me going to the bathroom.  Whether he's confused by the lie of transgenderism and thinks he's a girl, or whether he's a predator who is taking advantage of the situation, I just don't need that.  As a friend of mine said (and excuse the language, but it makes the point), "I'd be really pissed if a man walked in on my twelve-year-old daughter in the restroom--pun intended!"  For a very basic reason, shopping there now would be going back on our word, since we signed a petition, and we don't believe God would want us to do that.  Our word matters.  More recently, Target has carried questionable products and pushed an agenda that we don't want our son exposed to.  I don't see this as a store I want anything to do with--but I know very godly people who disagree with me and continue to shop there.  Almost all stores carry questionable products a Christian shouldn't buy, and possibly support causes we disagree with.  If I stopped shopping at all of them, there would be nowhere left!  It would be exhausting to go through every business and determine their worthiness. In principle, I mainly just say that as long as the product is okay, the business isn't as big a deal.  However, Target has been pretty public about their stand, so it has been easy to make this choice.  Where we do business is a second vote, or sorts.  It's a chance to decide where we want to give money.  It's another way to voice our beliefs.  I don't expect others to make the same choice we did.  They need to follow their own conscience.  Our family's decision on this doesn't make us better than those who have a different conviction than we do.  

     To be honest, we are about 90% boycotting Disney.  There are still some old films, like Mary Poppins, that we love and have shown to our son, but mostly, we feel Disney no longer reflects what we believe family values should be, and we don't want to spend a lot of our money on them.  A pastor friend of ours recently pointed out that even older Disney films often didn't have a good message (very few in-tact families in the old stories, Jiminy Cricket saying humans are animals, etc), and could be quite traumatic (IE: Dumbo's mother being locked up, or Pinocchio's friend turning into the donkey).  We aren't 100% against everything Disney, as I said.  If Tommy sees a Mickey cartoon at a friend's house, that's fine.  There are still a handful of Disney movies we'll watch.  We know that this conviction doesn't mean we're superior to those who still enjoy Disney.  There's a lot to enjoy!  Titus 1:15 says, To the pure, all things are pure... and many of our good-hearted friends can enjoy Disney in good conscience.  Mostly avoiding it is a direction our family is led to follow.  

     To be honest, we try not to buy Hershey products anymore, for similar reasons to why we don't shop at Target.  And for the same reason, there are people who agree and who disagree with us.  People need to make their own choices.  Does anyone really need candy?  There are alternatives, though...

Jeremy's He-Him and She-Her bars.  The He-Him ones have nuts!  Get it?  A great, non-compromise alternative.  But as I've been saying all along here, and will continue to point out, our eating these over Hersheys doesn't make us better than those who still eat Hershey's.

     To be honest, we don't have cable TV (not because we think it's bad, but because we're cheapskates!).  We watch videos and DVD's, and also stream what we want to watch.  On the rare occasion, we'll watch non-cable "regular" TV.  So do we knock all TV?  No!  And this one is kind of funny for me, because I chose not to watch TV for most of my upper teens and most of my 20s.  From about 16 onward, I didn't really watch TV.  And I really did virtue signal about it, I'm sorry to say.  This was before social media, so it was all in-person virtue signaling.  I'd proudly tell people I didn't watch TV, or that I hadn't watched it in years.  Any benefit I received from not watching TV was lost by this, because I received my reward in full by people acting impressed by my discipline of not watching TV.  A lot of them weren't that impressed anyway!  Some felt sorry for me and thought I was missing out!  I don't think I missed out.  But I also don't think my avoiding TV made me a superior human being.  I slowly got back into some TV when I married.  There are some good shows out there.  In fact, there are more wholesome and even Christian shows than there were years ago.  It's a matter of discernment.  Watching or not-watching doesn't make someone superior or inferior.

     To be honest, when we give to ministries, we make sure they are ministries that actually preach the Gospel.  If they do humanitarian work, but don't meet people's most important need of salvation, we prefer not to give them our hard-earned money.  Humanitarian work is good.  But we'd rather give to a humanitarian cause that also preaches the Gospel.  But again, this is our conviction.  It doesn't make us better or worse than others.  

     Those are a few examples of virtue signaling I have wrongly done (or at least implied).  My choices in these things are from my real heart and conviction, and as such, it was right for me to make these decisions for myself...HOWEVER, none of those decisions makes me morally superior to someone who doesn't do these things.  Someone can disagree with every one of my convictions listed here, and still love Jesus with all their heart, soul, mind and strength.  None of those convictions has anything to do with my relationship with Jesus (they can stem from that, and be a result of how God led me, but on their own, they're not a mark of godliness).  Nobody is going to look at my life and say, "Wow, she doesn't shop at Target.  I'm going to give my life to Jesus because of that!"  Even though I have reasons for my convictions, and believe they are important to a point, very little of it really matters in the sense of eternity, with the possible exception of giving to causes the preach the Gospel (and even then, though, nobody is going to receive the Lord BECAUSE we refuse to give to other humanitarian works.  They're not going to say, "The Stoermers didn't give to the city flood relief fund, but instead gave to an evangelistic work that helped out.  Wow, Jesus must have really died on the cross after all!  I'm going to receive Him now!").  

    So far, I've shared some convictions I have in my life that could be virtue signaling, even though these things do not make me better than anyone else.  But I've also met other people who virtue signaled to me about decisions they had made.  Some examples involved people distrusting the FDA and thinking it was morally and spiritually better to grow one's own organic vegetables, and if you were really godly, you wouldn't shop at regular grocery stores.  This same bunch also believed deodorant was harmful (maybe they're correct, maybe they aren't), and viewed it as right and moral to make your own deodorant at home and never use store-bought.  They would talk about how they kept it in the fridge to keep its consistency, and the whole family used the same container.  For some of these people, these things were how they measured their spirituality.  Who knew my deodorant stick in the medicine cabinet made me such a lousy Christian!  

     I had a different friend who had different beliefs medically than I do, and believed I was sinning to take a certain prescription my doctor gave me (to be clear, it wasn't something most people would think was controversial at all.  Nothing scriptural is said about it). This friend had to make this into a show of moral superiority.  

     Other people virtue signal by being book snobs and putting people down for enjoying a movie more than the book it is based on (yes, I can be one of those book snobs, so I'm pointing the finger back at myself with that one).  On the flip side, I had someone become very angry at me for liking the TV show of Little House on the Prairie more than the books.  

     Do our opinions on any of these things (Harry Potter, Target, Disney, Hersheys, TV, giving to one cause over another, organic vegetables, deodorant, medicine or movies vs. books or shows) have anything to do with Jesus or our walk with Christ?  No!  None of it does!   If any of this becomes our focus more than Jesus Himself, we have lost our way, and are making an idol out of these convictions!  

     I know people who act as if having stricter standards about something makes them a better Christian, or stronger in some way.  Actually, though, according to Romans 15:1 (which is a continuation of the previous chapter's discussion on different convictions Christians can have), having more sensitivity classifies one as being the "weaker" believer.  Accordingly, I have a weaker conscience than my friends who shop at Target, and a stronger conscience than my friends who make their own deodorant.  Ultimately, Romans 14:5 says, that Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.  Later, 14:23 closes the chapter with these words: For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.  If my friend doesn't have a clear conscience about watching Little House on the Prairie, then it is a sin for her to watch it, but if my conscience is 100% clear on it, then I can enjoy, without needing to justify it to anyone (it is actually my husband's and my favorite show to watch together).  Nobody is wrong, even though our convictions propel us in different directions in this instance.  

     The only instruction here is not to pass judgment on fellow believers who have different convictions.  They might have had some very different circumstances in their lives than you have, and it shaped the kinds of things that might hurt their spirit, even if it wouldn't hurt yours.  But to the one who has the stricter standard, don't virtue signal about it.  You're not better than the person who doesn't share your conviction on this.  If the Bible is 100% clear on something, we must agree with it.  If there is room for differences, than we give that liberty.  This passage of Romans 14 talks about not making fellow believers stumble.  But the flip side is, don't strut proudly with your convictions, as if that makes you spiritually superior.  Your'e not.  Only Jesus is.  It is to Him that everyone will answer!  

     Quick challenge before I close.  Here's a test to see if you have a tendency to virtue signal.  If someone mentions your pet conviction, do you feel compelled to jump in and lecture everyone about it?  For me, that might be someone mentioning a recent trip to Target, and I might feel like I need to tell everyone, "We haven't shopped there in years.  That store has all the wrong values!"  But do I need to do that?  No!  But if I feel that inclination, that can tell me about my own heart.  Do this with your convictions, and ask God to help you give the glory to Him, not to yourself for following your convictions.