I’ve been thinking more and more about “why” Churchianity is so attractive.

Generally speaking, people don’t do things just to do them. There is always going to be some ‘incentive‘ or ‘attractiveness’ about the things people participate in or else they wouldn’t join up in the first place. My previous post explored a bit how entitlement mentality basically avoids any form of suffering and contentment. This was also explored a bit by a guest commentor at Donal’s.

I was reading Sunshine’s post on Vox’s analysis of SJWs, and the virtue-signalling phrase stood out to me this time. It’s not that I hadn’t heard it before, but I also wasn’t looking for the reasoning behind actions. Generally speaking, liberalism and feminism is based on the appearance of ‘doing good’ while simultaneously jettisoning personal responsibility of actions: we can’t punish these children because it will hurt their feelings, or we can’t punish her because she’s the victim.

The appearance of ‘doing good’ has a seductive appeal because it gives the ‘moral high ground.’ This moral high ground is then exploited to shame and barrage anyone who disagrees into oblivion.

So too the infection of feminism and liberalism within the Church manifests in the same way. The men = bad and women = good meme is simply one example of this. Any time a woman does good is because it’s part of her nature, while every time something bad happens is because it’s failure of the leadership of men. This is used to undermine the leadership of men, which results in a push for ‘egalitarianism’ in the Church and family relationships. The complementarians also fall for this ploy under the guise of ‘sticking to Scriptural values’ while perhaps unaware that they are also undermining Church and family authority.

The reason why this is self propagating and self reinforcing is that women tend to care extremely highly about appearances more than most other things, and men tend to care about women more than what is right.

Women lie by omission, vaguely word things to avoid responsibility, gossip as a means to improve their own appearance and/or detract from others, back stab, and otherwise covertly aim to look good while disguising the evil. And even in this, the appearance is prominent but behind it is the potential disapproval or letting others down, especially men.

Ecclesiastes 7:27 “Behold, I have discovered this,” says the Preacher, “adding one thing to another to find an explanation, 28 which [s]I am still seeking but have not found. I have found one man among a thousand, but I have not found a woman among all these. 29 Behold, I have found only this, that God made men upright, but they have sought out many devices.”

Matthew 15:7 You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you:8 ‘This people honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far away from Me. 9 ‘But in vain do they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’” 10 After Jesus called the crowd to Him, He said to them, “Hear and understand. 11 It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.”

12 Then the disciples *came and *said to Him, “Do You know that the Pharisees were [d]offended when they heard this statement?” 13 But He answered and said, “Every plant which My heavenly Father did not plant shall be uprooted. 14 Let them alone; they are blind guides [e]of the blind. And if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”

Typically, this manifests in the works mentality. The works mentality is the core of self righteousness: ‘if I do good works than I am good.’

However, the more and more you look at it, there are a lot of people who desire to do good but are deceived. This is the seductive appeal of appearances. A woman who dresses like a prostitute will evoke a strong desire in men to do what is wrong. The desire to have a good appearance to others will evoke a strong desire in women to do what is wrong. The outside looks good, but the inside is rotten. The plant looks good, but the roots are rotten.

The accumulation of sin without repentance leads to a rotten core while maintaining a godly veneer. The godly veneer hides the rotten core leading to virtuous signalling with insidious rotten fruit.