How do we evangelize the reprobate mind in light of our Leadership? Virtue Signaling?

In what practical way is it any of those things? How is it being applied?

 

What are liberals and conservatives in this context? Is this politics? Please further define these terms. How do liberals and conservatives hold to their confessions?

 

I guess my overall question is unless a certain pastor is deemed unfit and similar responsive actions how is the inevitable taken from the pastor’s tweet not realized? (There’s a huge opening & to my knowledge it hasn’t been closed)

• All the PCA’s homosexual pastors and elders now have a seat at the table
• Those opposed to homosexuality are old and getting older
• Already this year, forty percent of the assembly commissioners opposed the Nashville Statement
• The study committee just approved will write a report which will supercede the Nashville Statement

 

The problem with "virtue signalling" as a term is, in my eyes, twofold. First is that it makes a claim about someone's intent, that a statement or action is not about the claimed principle but is instead a act of social positioning. Sometimes people wear their intent on their sleeve. Sometimes it seems blatant that someone is being disingenuous. But most of the time imputing intent risks breaking the 9th commandment. It's completely true that people virtue signal, and it's good to examine yourself to see if you are just posturing. We can't see into someone's mind to know if they are engaged in empty signalling or are being sincere.

The second problem is that like so many popular-on-the-internet terms, its potential usefulness gets undermined by how easy it is to use it as a stick for beating one's opponents. Not saying that anyone in this thread is doing that, but that is why so many uses of the term are hard to square with a proper definition of it.

As for the list, I was really disappointed at a couple of familiar names on it. I hope last G.A.'s burst of trying to shut down speeches with... strained... claims that the speaker was being intemperate doesn't become the norm. That would just inflame discussion further and make it even harder to unite around the truth. That's why I was so encouraged when that one TE on the last morning spoke up and tried to get the protest overturned.

 

Good points, my other concern is that it feels like liberal progressive terminology. Maybe I’m not educated enough but both the term and definitely the tactics you mention are liberal progressive in nature and practice, especially in the political realm. Maybe I do engage in a much milder form of the aforementioned (I never thought of it as VS) on my very limited, non-official platform, but I try to join other much more established and probably more polite voices calling us back to the confessions and church founders. I guess these developments are taking concerned outsiders by surprise. We expect these things in some quarters of Christianity but definitely not others. It feels like a lot of this is really getting ramped up.

 

Yeah, it just doesn’t seem like a helpful and appropriate/applicable term.

“The term was popularised by James Bartholomew in an article in The Spectator on 18 April 2015 to mean "public, empty gestures intended to convey socially approved attitudes without any associated risk or sacrifice".


I invented ‘virtue signalling’. Now it’s taking over the world
I invented the term ‘virtue signalling’ in The Spectator. Now it seems to be taking over the world... https://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/10/i-invented-virtue-signalling-now-its-taking-over-the-world/

My first instinct is to run

 

Not a bad instinct. It is kind of ironic the way the term has been adopted by a lot of conservatives in online discussion as a catch-all term for putting down progressives. But for better or worse it comes from the world of academic social theory. One of the less dangerous parts of that world, in my opinion, but still the kind of theorizing that gets used to explain away biblical teaching. Doesn't mean there aren't good uses for it in some cases, but handle with care. (Or run. It's a matter of prudence either way. )

 

I think confessionalists and progressive-confessionals both ‘virtue signal’ in different ways. I’d rather just refer to it as espousing, but everything is politicized and culturalized, thus this type of lingo.

Today’s progressives are modern adherents of the social gospel, and they always seek to add .... inclusive diversity laws in the areas of race, gender, sexuality, etc,

The confessionalists merely seek to conserve and preserve. They aren’t looking to add anything. They would prefer existing confessions stand and speak for themselves.

When progressives virtue signal it is always in defense of a so-called minority class or group, while the confessionalists virtue signal in their proud promotion of long held views of the individual and humanity as unified in their depravity.

One is very complicated while the other, maybe a bit simplistic, attempts to let the word and confessions speak without over- and/or faux applications.

 

Hypocrisy may be justly condemned, I suggest, by highlighting moral contradiction between a person's statements and his actions. Jesus founds His condemnation of the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees on the observation that "they say, and do not do" (Matt. 23:3 NKJ). Likewise, Paul accuses Peter of hypocrisy, because his selection of dining companions contradicted the Gospel he was preaching (Gal. 2:12-14).

 

A good term is a good term. Richard Dawkins popularized the term "meme" after all, and that is also a very useful term.

 

Of course. In addition, I think there’s not as much straight talk being offered. I think the waters become so muddied by jargon, emotions and unorthodox applications (like lgbt lingo) that the only hypocrisy that is clearly established is how far our words, concepts and ideas are drifting from their scriptural and confessional foundations.

At the end of the day, is God concerned that our carnal needs & desires are addressed or even empathized with? (or wholly replaced by something infinitely greater?) Or is this a later human construct that undervalues the reality of the fallen human condition. Why would we want to embrace any part of our fallen condition outside a desire for deliverance?

 

The virtue signaling(VS) meme speaks to the act signaling more than having virtue. It is the modern, often secular, example of what is described in Matthew 6:2, 5. It requires no character, only the desire to advertise character, to show off. It shouldn't surprise us that VS thrives in shallow, quickly updating social media platforms. Why bother with patient research and careful thought when you can fire off quick VS statements that will gain you currency with a select type of people and maybe ruin somebody to top it off.

 

It’s sad times. Even calling out virtue signaling can be a type of virtue signaling. “You can argue for something that happens to make you look virtuous because you genuinely think it is the best solution. That’s the case, for example, with most religious beliefs.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/20/virtue-signalling-putdown-passed-sell-by-date

I would hope nobody viewed Steven Warhurst’s response as a form of VS. But maybe some did perceive it that way. I thought he spoke with charity, sincerity, consistency and conviction. It’s unfortunate that it was necessary. But these matters aren’t as clear as they once were it seems. I don’t think we necessarily have better insights.

 

“Christianity, for example, is filled with pairs of concepts that orthodoxy holds “in tension”: trinity and unity, free will and predestination, grace and works, and so on. Indeed, heresy has been defined as emphasizing one element of one of these pairs at the expense of the other, and throughout Christianity’s history it has been heretical movements of just this sort that have been filled with the fervent zeal of the piety contest. “Tension” might frustrate the reductionist who drives for consistency above all, but irreducible pairs like this serve a prophylactic function in preventing ideologically (and often physically) destructive piety contests.

Even outside of the religious context, modern Western moral philosophy has tried to transplant the success of science – where reductionism has proven powerful and useful – across the is/ought gap and into the normative realm. Rather than the four cardinal virtues of ancient moral philosophy – prudence, courage, temperance, and justice – we have a number of philosophies competing to reduce everything to a single ur-virtue, such as happiness (utilitarianism), or equality (socialism), or self-love (objectivism), and so on.” - Cameron Harwick, Quillette