It’s very easy to look around us and see the wrong being done by, and think we are doing better.
Often, we seek reassurance by telling ourselves, “At least I’m not living like them,” or “I have a better sense of morals than most of society”.
It’s very easy for us to put ourselves up on a pedestal and look down at the world around us without knowing. It can truly be hard to maintain our standards and remain humble in doing so. When most of society won’t praise us for our efforts in virtue, sometimes we need to be our own little cheerleader.
The constant battle to pick the righteous path, but not be self-righteous, is a tricky one.
This is what you might call a Christian-false-sense-of-security. By comparing our own moral efforts and standards to those of other people, we can fall into the trap of thinking “I’m not that bad”. And this is dangerous territory.
This is where the slippery slope starts… because we are comparing ourselves down, instead of up. If you want to improve at something, you don’t compare yourself to those you know aren’t doing as well as you. A 16 year old soccer player isn’t going to improve his game by carving up against a bunch of 10 year olds week after week. He’ll most likely get worse. His reaction time will slow, his skills will decline, he will take more risky long kicks because he can probably chase his own kick faster than the 10 year olds. But he won’t be as fast as other 16 year olds, or anyone else who is better than him for that matter. The same is true for us if we compare our moral life to those we are “doing better than”. We start to kid ourselves into “cheat days” or “just this one time”, because we think we can make-it-up later. But with every set back we cause ourselves, that slippery slope becomes steeper, and we are all very good at finding loop holes to let ourselves become bad people.
Our spiritual journey is one big mountain hike – we should be keeping our eyes on the prize looking up, if we spend too long looking back and down, we just might fall. And the old saying says, the bigger the man, the bigger the fall.
Not only does this false sense of security come at risk to us, it also brings risk to others…
Everyone is on very different paths, at different stages of their spiritual journey. This is something people often forget when making judgement about the actions of others. What people fail to forget, is that if you have a greater insight into the right thing to do, you are in fact more responsible for upholding those morals than someone who is not as aware of them. Participating in wrong actions “to a lesser extent than others” doesn’t make you a better person. It can actually be a greater sin for you than the other person, because you are doing something you know is wrong, and you are demonstrating support of it, thereby signalling to others that you think it is ok. And if you’re considered “the moral friend” in the group, you’ve just given those around you the green light to continue.
This responsibility presents itself daily. When you are at work and a co-worker wants to start gossiping about another colleague, you are responsible for shutting that conversation down. When you hear other men having “locker room talk” about women, the very least you can do is not participate. When you’re at a party and another round of beers is called for, you should stop when you know you’ve reached your limit. When a friend asks for your opinion on a relationship dilemma, you are responsible for promoting what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. The degree to which you use these moments as opportunities to say something about doing the right is up to you.
You can be a silent witness by not participating or walking out of the room when people are talking inappropriately. You can give a polite reason for your decision to not gossip, such as, “I don’t mean to end this conversation with you, but I’m really trying to work on not gossiping about other people these days, would you help me by talking about something else with me?”
And if people jeer or call you a goody-two-shoes, you can smile and say “I’m not perfect, I’m just trying.”
Written by Elise Drum
Elise is a medical student from rural NSW. She likes to take every chance she can to be outside – playing sport, gardening, or enjoying a good book.