THE American conservative commentator Heather Mac Donald was eloquent in her interview on the Ben Shapiro Show about the debilitating cultural effect of ever more people in Western society claiming special victim status. But her apparent blaming of Christianity for opening the floodgates to intersectional sob stories would seem to reveal the fatal weakness in the secular conservative response to cultural Marxism.
In her critique of contemporary victimhood, Dr Mac Donald invoked the anti-Christian German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900): ‘Nietzsche said that Christianity was a major betrayal of classical ideals in that it celebrated the Original Victim’ (i.e. the crucified Jesus Christ). She suggested that ‘somehow in a secular way that idea of a scepticism towards strength and a glorification of weakness’ has now taken root in Western civilisation.
The fact is that Christianity is the only spiritual and moral solution to the narcissism that drives people in the post-Christian West to compete for privileged victim status. That is because – and secular conservatives such as Dr Mac Donald and libertarians like Ben Shapiro with his support for cannabis legalisation urgently need to grasp this – Christianity, properly understood and practised, humbles human pride and exalts the redeeming strength of the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This is beautifully illustrated in the attitude of the Apostle Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians. Writing to a new Christian church in 1st Century cosmopolitan Corinth, a culture that celebrated the pagan classical ideals of human wisdom and strength, Paul issued a vital corrective from his own experience:
‘And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me’ (2 Corinthians 12v7-9 – Authorised Version).
It is biblical Christianity as taught and exemplified by the Apostle Paul that teaches me to see myself not as a victim who deserves special status but as a sinner who needs to repent of my Christ-denying hubris and self-worship.
Unless secular conservatives grasp this uniquely Christian insight, they will fail to mount a meaningful and effective resistance to the victim-claiming cultural Marxism that is destroying Western civilisation.
