Looking Good, Feeling Good, Doing Wrong

Mike Scruggs

February 22, 2014

There is nothing wrong with trying to look your best and trying to make a reasonably good impression on people.  It makes good sense up to a point. There is nothing wrong with feeling good or wanting to feel good. The problem comes when looking good and feeling good become a priority over speaking truth and doing right. The problem magnifies as activities to look good, to impress people, and to feel good crowd out everything else in life and begin to shut out the conscience and truth. These are problems inherent in the human race, but they are generally more prominent and most dangerous among those who aspire to political leadership.

Our country has growing economic, social, and national security problems, some of which are nearing nation-destroying dimensions. We are speeding toward the brink of self-destruction because we will not face up to the economic, social, and ethical realities of excess government spending, excess federal government control, excess welfare dependence, excess importation of cheap foreign labor, and failure to acknowledge the aggressive and violent nature of Islam. These are all consequences of moral blindness, the origin of which is spiritual blindness.

In Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s account of the Communist penal system in the Soviet Union, the Gulag Archipelago, he speaks of a group of political prisoners who were complaining: “Why have all these woes come upon us?” After a few moments silence, an older man in the group responded: “Because we have forgotten God.” Exactly!  But the train of woes that come from forgetting God most often moves gradually without recognition and without fanfare. Its consequences accumulate and eventually destroy unless reversed.

In our distorted obsession for feeling good and self-aggrandizement, we have substituted our own self-centered and imagined righteousness for the righteousness and divine counsel of God. We have embraced secularism as our guiding principle of life and government. Secularism is a religion that pretends the God who is self-evident in his design of all things does not exist. The result is spiritual and moral blindness that leads to foolish personal decisions and lifestyles, dysfunctional families, debased culture, and corrupt, dangerous, and nation-destroying government policies.

“Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.”—Ronald Reagan

Our country is in dire need of leaders who can put right and truth above appearance and feeling. Glib charisma is not a substitute for principled leadership, and our elections should not be a search for charismatic personalities. We need leaders who have demonstrated superior wisdom, consistent honesty, humility, and persevering courage.

It has been said that courage is the virtue without which no other virtue can survive. Courage is the strong arm of character, which is the determination to put doing right before the mere appearance of righteousness (hypocrisy). Character is dedicated to truth and never subordinates truth to popular or crowd-pleasing emotion. It does not lie or mislead.  It puts aside fear for the sake of truth and right.  It staunchly resists the temptation to substitute emotional anecdotes for truth or appearance for reality. Character must often exercise the wisdom and courage to say “No.”

Alexander the Great once remarked that:

“The people of Asia (western Turkey) are slaves, because they could not learn to pronounce the word, “No.”

America’s political leaders are going to have to learn to say “No” to feel-good excess and the substitution of emotional anecdotes and emotional platitudes for doing their homework on issues. They are going to have to say “No” to lobbyists who want to substitute their special interest and campaign donations for public and national interest. They are going to have to say “No” to whatever and whomever might weaken the rule of law or the moral fortitude and stamina of American society and culture.

Our Federal and State legislators should especially beware of corrupt political bargains that advance the goals of special interests above the good of American workers, families, taxpayers, and national security. English Puritan Thomas Manton (1620-1677) warned of the terrible numbing of conscience in the stealthy advance of greed:

“There is not a vice which more effectively contracts and deadens the feelings, which more completely makes a man’s affections center in himself, and excludes all others from partaking in them, than the desire for accumulating possessions. When the desire has once gotten hold of the heart, it shuts out all other considerations but such as may promote its views.  In its zeal for attainment of its end, it is not delicate in the choice of means. As it closes the heart, so also it clouds the understanding. It cannot discern between right and wrong; it takes evil for good; it calls darkness light, and light darkness. Beware then the beginnings of covetousness for you know not where it will end.”

I am not a West Pointer, but I have always appreciated their motto: *“Duty, Honor, Country.” Good soldiers may like to look good and feel good, but they know these things must be of small priority compared to duty, honor, and country. The best soldiers and the best citizens internalize such values so that feeling good is about duty honorably discharged and their country free, just, and secure. Good soldiers endure hardship, pain, suffering, and even death to protect the security, welfare, and freedom of their people. Every elected official in America should also embrace these principles.

“Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.”