The story below is meant to illustrate the distinction between true conscience, which involves a difficult examination of one’s own thoughts and actions, and the false conscience that can be created by activist commitments. As such, my own political views come out somewhat strongly. I hope the story does not dwell on them unnecessarily. It stops short of the kind of extended debate that would be had in a philosophical dialogue. The moral psychology being described could just as well effect someone committed to agitating for a cause I wholly agree with. It is well-known to infect the minds of hypocritical religious believers.
As universal as this moral psychology may be, I would suggest that the hypocritical religious believer is an old stock character who has been overused and is no longer compelling. If someone, religious or secular, wants respect in the public discourse of today, they are more likely to say something signaling how much they care for women’s rights, or civil rights, or similar issues than they are to signal what good Christians they are. If this false conscience is available to anyone of any belief, I hope you will see there are reasons to portray it as particularly affecting someone adopting the latest cause, independent of my own desire to express my opinions.
I also want to announce I will be returning to writing The Colors in the Woods. I began writing this story with input from my kids when I was separated from them for several months. That situation quickly changed, and I had to take a break from writing, but at dinner last week my children were looking at the proof copy of my upcoming book The Loser, the Robot, and the Antichrist, and got excited to encourage me to finish the book I had been writing for them. Now that I have the proof, that will be available on Amazon in a matter of weeks. If you would like a signed copy, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter, which will also get you a copy of The Colors in the Woods when it’s finished.
THE DROWNING
On my twenty-first birthday I fell off a bridge and insisted it wasn’t my fault.
I had never drunk that much before. I couldn’t have known what I would be like. The warnings had meant nothing to me. I had no lived experience to make the risks seem real. As my foot slipped I managed to grab the rail, clinging only long enough to feel my strength was inadequate and to know I would fall. My only thought was, “you did this to me,” but I couldn’t tell if I meant the friends who had been serving me drinks all night or the lame old relatives who had told me to stay sober with a wink.
First I heard Jessica screaming. Then a guy yell, “What! What happened?” followed by a rush of incoherent voices and motion, fingers touching mine just as my hand slipped. A momentary glimpse of blurred faces before I saw the water approaching.
My anger at them, all those who I thought had not done enough to keep me from that moment, quickly turned to peace. I had often thought of death, and I was confident. I knew I had been a good person, and if my body were broken on the shallow rocks beneath the waves that I would be quickly received into the mansions of God’s love.
I felt the cold around me and the stinging cut of rocks on my legs and arms, my chest and face. I flailed, too drunk and beaten to remember how to swim. The water pulled me down. I struggled and got my head above the current, but found I was not being pulled by the water. I was being pulled by something solid and grasping.
The screaming faded as I was pulled further down the rapids. The silhouettes of friends ran down the shore, but not as fast I was pulled. It was no longer the water that drew me away.
I felt something slimy around my leg. Something strong and living pulled me down the river. My body crashed violently against the rocks. A tentacle wrapped around my wrist. Horrible faces rose up around me—mutilated men with their skulls half exposed, fanged wolves with their eyes gouged out, fork-tongued apes and more I can’t recall.
“You did this to us,” they moaned. “You did this to us, and we will not let you go beneath the peace of the waves. We will carry you into the air where our master will reward us for the catch.”
I felt myself lifted above the water and saw the trees and all the earth shrink to nothing beneath me. I was unable to move, pushed in on every side by an indistinguishable mass of squirming slime and bone. There was no world but a screeching terror of accusations in the dark of night.
And then there was a light. A floating throne of silver and gems of every color. “You are his,” the voices called with a hint of hope, “you have always been his, though you’ve tried to escape.”
The agonized writhing and voices stopped as we approached the throne. I could see a pile of bones on the seat. They began to shake, to float through the air, and finally to assemble themselves into a skeleton inhumanly tall. He draped himself in cloth dyed deepest red, and put on a crown made of knives held together by a daisy chain. He held a great serpent in his hand.
He shook the serpent in a violent jerk back and forth. It straightened out, rigid as a staff. Its mouth opened and let out the head of a spear. His servants pulled back to reveal my body, and he held the weapon to my breast.
“As you have made no defense except to insist you are a Good Person…” The skeleton paused as the mess of fur and scales around me hissed and giggled like a demonic laugh track, “you will soon be mine in body as you always have been in spirit.”
I closed my eyes and waited, but the blow never came. I heard whispering then felt my body being released.
An angel was addressing the king of the air. He handed him a paper. “No, this can’t be right,” said the king. “She died unrepentant, after countless opportunities to hear your side of things.”
“But I am on his side!” I cried. “I have been a Christian my whole life.”
The angel looked at me sternly and put his finger to his mouth. “Don’t listen to her, this decree has nothing to do with how she’s lived. When she was seven years old and made her first communion, her grandmother prayed that if she ever lost the grace that was in her soul that day she would be given a final chance to repent and return to the sacraments before she died. It was one small prayer from an otherwise undevout woman, but we got it in writing.”
“I see,” said the king. “I have no defense against this law. Release her.” The skull turned toward me, concluding, “I’ll see you soon, lovely girl. My thorns are deeper in your heart now than ever before. I will make good use of this extra time to prepare a most lavish wedding for us, something to outdo these childish horrors.”
The ruler of the air put his crown on the back of the throne and collapsed back into a pile of bones and cloth. The tentacles and hands and mouths that held me pulled away. The angel brought me into his arms, and I hated it.
More than I could remember hating anything.
More than I feared the pain of all that grasping blackness, I hated being held in the light. More than I feared having my heart pierced in a perverse marriage to that king, I hated needing to be rescued, feeling I was weak. Most of all, I hated to be held in the strong arms of a man, the one thing I had always insisted I did not want or need. I knew I was strong; I knew I was innocent; I knew I was OK on my own. Receiving help from that angelic hunk repulsed me more than the accusations of wolves and serpents.
“Let me go!” I cried.
“I can only let you go if you refuse the dispensation that was granted by request of your grandmother, in which case I must return you to that Lord who awaits your hand in marriage. The dispensation was not to leave you to your own devices, but to give you a chance to repent, which means I must sit you down and go over the charges that have been brought against you.”
My body tensed in silent rage as he carried me back down to earth, over the water, and into the woods where I saw a table and two chairs in a clearing. Atop the table was a burning oil lamp and a book bound in brown leather. He placed me in the chair, sat across from me, and opened the book.
“Now we can begin. There won’t be time to go over everything in here, just the major issues to see if you have a change of heart.”
“So, what did they get me on? Some ridiculous technicality? Believing in the Trinity in not quite the right way? Forgetting to follow some obscure rule no one has heard of since the twelfth century?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s much more straightforward badness. Aside from dying in drunkenness, you also blamed others for your faults in the moment of death,” said the angel, “and looking at the broader patterns of your life, you fall under the condemnation you heard Jesus speak many times: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat: I was thirsty, and you gave me not to drink. I was a stranger, and you took me not in: naked, and you covered me not: sick and in prison, and you did not visit me.”
“What? That’s the one thing I know I’m not guilty of. Drunkenness, sure, I guess I could have taken a little more care before I let my friends make me drink for my birthday. But I’ve advocated for every marginalized group I could find. I can’t be condemned with all those people who deny basic human rights!”
“Our Lord never said to advocate for the political rights of marginalized groups,” responded the angel, “He said to love your neighbor as yourself, and to do good to your enemies.”
I felt myself growing angry and clenched my fist on the table. “I loved everyone. I condemned racism every chance I got.”
“You said the words, but you never met an actual racist, so it cost you nothing. You’ve never known a single person who told you they hated others for the color of their skin. And you never personally helped a single individual who was being mistreated because of their race. What you did was talk a lot about vague examples of racism that didn’t have any real connection to you or the people in your life who you were supposed to be helping.”
“But my uncle Chris was racist. I stood up to him at Thanksgiving.”
“Your uncle Chris said he thought police abolition perpetuated a lack of safety in black neighborhoods and that welfare ultimately perpetuated poverty. He said that because he cared about those communities. He used his business, at significant sacrifice of his own time and money, to help black business owners invest in their own communities, while you committed multiple sins by arguing with him. First, by accusing him of being racist, you judged what you thought was in his heart when you were merely disagreeing about economic questions. Only God knows the human heart. He told you ‘judge not.’ Second, you were a hypocrite because you felt you could be good merely by condemning racism, by saying hollow words you believed made you a good person, without actually giving your own life for others.”
“So, I’m being condemned for my politics? Because it turned out, according to you, that I was wrong about the best way to help people?”
“No,” said the angel, “listen to what I said. There’s no sin in a good faith disagreement about economic policy or crime. You are being condemned for judging others, and for hypocrisy, as well as for the pride of choosing beliefs you felt would bring you admiration from the world, beliefs you felt would make you appear smart and compassionate if you shouted them loud enough, while lacking the humility to examine your own life.”
“But judging others is what bigots do,” I insisted. “I was committed to fighting hate.”
“You also helped bring about the suicide of your friend Tania.”
“You mean Tony, and it was his transphobic dad who made her kill himself.”
“Tania’s dad was the only one who worked to make her feel good about herself. She started feeling uncomfortable with her body through puberty, and because she had undiagnosed autism. You and your friends didn’t even do the first most obvious act of compassion: asking her about what else was going on in her life and what you could do to help.”
“We affirmed his identity. We were the only ones who were willing to welcome him as he was.”
“You chose to say the words people told you would make you a good and compassionate person, while refusing to take the time to get to know her better and find out the real reason she was hurting.”
“Let’s suppose you’re right, how can I be blamed simply for making a mistake. I acted on what I thought the real problem was.”
“It’s not that you did your best to find out and made a mistake. You slapped a convenient label on the situation, mainly because you felt it made you look compassionate to adopt a trendy cause, while refusing to even ask critical questions about what was going on with that young girl. And look at this letter she wrote before she died.” The angel flipped through the brown book and turned it to face me. “Her father hid this from you because he didn’t want you to feel guilty.”
I read the note. “My dad was right, but it’s too late. I’ve already mutilated my body.” “I feel so alone. I got rid of all my old friends, I stopped talking to family. The only people I have left are activist friends, and they only like me because I said I was trans.” “I finally know who I was made to be, what I was supposed to be. But it’s too late to go back.”
“I would suggest,” said the angel, “that when you return to life you pray for the soul of this girl.”
I was starting to get angry, and raised my voice. “I did what I thought was right! I followed my conscience. I saw in science class a clam that changed gender. This kind of thing happens all the time.”
“You did well in biology, so you may remember that clam changed sex by switching between spraying a cloud of eggs and a cloud of sperm in the water. We only know the clam changes sex because we know male and female are defined mainly by their roles in reproduction, and humans do not switch reproductive roles over the course of their lives. You’re a smart young woman, so let’s not make excuses and pretend you don’t understand this.”
I stared in anger for a moment, resenting his peaceful face. “Fine. Are there any other charges, or can I go now?”
“There’s a whole book of transgressions, but only one more we need to go over to give you the general impression.”
“What is it?”
“Retail theft.”
“Retail theft? That’s ridiculous! I’ve never taken anything worth more than $60.”
“Like with those other sins, there are many problems intertwined. Beyond the theft itself-“
“Yeah, I took some Chapstick and gum from a Walmart when I was 12, and a few shirts and things at the mall when I was in High School. No way this is one of my biggest problems.”
“Indeed, what starts as a small sin builds into something bigger and bigger. As I was saying, beyond the theft itself, there was your justification. You claimed because these were large corporations it wasn’t really theft, thus denying the owners had a fundamental right to property. Denying part of the population has fundamental human rights is quite serious. It also shows a certain disdain for investors as well as the not-at-all rich retail workers, whose livelihood depends on the success of the corporation.”
“Ugh, you’re condemning me for economics again.”
“Not at all. I’m reading that you have already condemned yourself for denying the rights of others. The final part of this section goes back to Jesus’ parable of the servant who was forgiven a great debt by his master then throttled another for a much smaller debt. You stole hundreds of dollars in clothes when you were a teenager, and yet you slapped your younger sister across the face when she borrowed your socks with the poodles on them without asking. You did not treat others as you would have them treat you. You felt you should be unaccountable for your crime, but a child should be fully accountable for her offense against you.”
“Look, I know I’m not perfect, but it seems like you’re being really picky. Like I have to make an accounting for every little thing I say and do. If that’s your standard, the whole world must be condemned.”
My eyes started to feel heavy. As the forest faded to black, I heard the angel say, “the Lord is merciful, but not to those ‘good people’ who will not cry out for his mercy.”
I woke up with my uncle Chris sitting over me, holding my hand in the back of an ambulance. Jessica was there. She had called him while another friend called 911. That angel was such a jerk, I thought as Chris saw I was waking and stroked my head. I shuddered inside thinking of the horrid limbs and faces that had held me, and the smiling skull awaiting my kiss. That angel was such a jerk. I didn’t want to know how much I needed to be held by someone strong and good. I didn’t want to know how little responsibility I’d taken for my life, or need to ask for help.