Works Righteousness and Intersectionality
Recently, a guy on Twitter claimed that doing gay stuff with guys is worse than gay stuff with girls because of reasons. Another guy, who may or may not be a potato, wants to make sure we know what SOME sins are never a speck in someone else’s eye, not like that Large Catechism says. And if you don’t think other people’s sins are really, really, like really bad, then you must support child abuse.
I know. It’s very dull.
This made me seriously think about whether sins are better or worse?
Luckily, my feelings are irrelevant. Jesus said every sin warrants death. And something about “If I call someone an idiot, I’m a murderer.” So it seems that even though we want to minimize our sin, everything is a major problem.
So I’m NOT going to call whoever said this “Raka!” I WILL say it’s an idea that has been floated before, and it’s been discredited.
The Roman Church tried this- and got into the weeds, as you might recall. Every sin was ranked and rated based on severity. There were mortal sins and venial sins. Mortal sins are considered more severe because they violate God's “moral “law in some way and are committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent. Mortal sins result in the loss of sanctifying grace and, if not forgiven through the sacrament of confession, can lead to eternal separation from God.
Venial sins, on the other hand, are less serious because they do not gravely break God's moral law and are committed without full knowledge or deliberate consent. Venial sins do not result in the loss of sanctifying grace, but they still damage a person's relationship with God and can weaken the soul.
But that was only the beginning of the “rack and stack” philosophy of crime that dominated.
Sins could get you various penalties. Stub your tow and utter an obscenity- that’s a little one- a few “Hail Marys” and a few “Our Fathers,” and you’re all set. Bigger sins? More penance. When you run out of time for Our Fathers, you’ll need to start donating money. Once you run out of time on earth, other people can kick in some money for you… and it turn into a big revenue generator for your Church.
Of course, this system had flaws, leading to some well-founded complaints.
Ranking sins in detail is a very common human instinct, though. This ranking and accounting concept is essentially the core of all Islamic thinking on sin. Everything must be atoned for with good actions and financial donations. Muslims also believe in the concept of accountability on the Day of Judgment, where individuals will be judged based on their deeds in this life. Therefore, it is important to continuously strive to do good deeds to attain Allah's mercy and forgiveness.
I only delve into the Roman and Islamic versions to make this point: It’s a common error.
But it’s still an error.
What I like about this error is that this is the same error as Intersectionality, part of the basis for Critical Theories that branch out into Critical Race and Queer Theories. The idea of intersectionality is that some people are more oppressed and others are more oppressive. The “intersection” is the combination of all your attributes to determine what level of victim or monster you are. It’s like math! No, really, it is!
The intersectionality crowd thinks White Christian Men are just about the MOST oppressive. Mahler says that White Christian Men are the BEST. See? We added up white and Christian and penis, and it gave us the answer we wanted, so it must be real.
Mahler thinks all the same things, just backwards from the CRT people. He also bases his assessment of people on their attributes. He uses the same methodology, but he comes to the opposite kinds of conclusions.
The problem, of course, is the methodology. It’s flawed. It’s stupid. It’s meaningless.
And we should reject it, outright, regardless of what you think it tells you, because it is not a rational methodology. The Marxists and the Fascists are the two sides of the same coin, and this pseudo-mathematical “analysis” of all the bad people in the world just shows how close they are.
So when you see Mahler, or Potatoe, or Woeisme, preening about the certainty of their calculations, remember they’re just as credible as the people screaming that all White people are automatically racist because they have white ancestors.