Idols for Destruction: The Conflict of Christian Faith and American Culture

​Chapter Two, “Idols of Humanity” — excerpt, pp. 51–55

Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1993 [1990]

What happens when a Christian culture collapses back into secularism, humanism, and paganism? Or, when Christian virtues get replaced by distorted, self-serving mockeries of virtue? Just as the devil can put God’s holy words in his unholy mouth (Matt. 4:5–6), so virtues can be sacrificed by bad actors and worn like a skin-suit. And many times, the unsuspecting cannot tell the difference.

One such misguided “virtue” is altruism that comes not from a genuine love of neighbor, but a pseudo-love that comes from self-interest. Writing in 1993, Herbert Schlossberg (1935–2019) identified this vice when he addressed another malady of the heart, something called ressentiment.

Sourcing the work of Max Scheler (1874–1928), Schlossberg explains that ressentiment is the condition that occurs when a man desires something good, but cannot acquire it. Rather than patiently waiting for the desired object or virtuously working to attain it, he begins to deride the thing as unlovely, ugly, or unwanted. This is ressentiment. In truth, ressentiment is a deeply perverted passion. But, in our godless age, it is all-too-common—even if we’ve never had a word to describe the condition.

What makes matter worse is that when a heart calls something good “bad,” it soon calls bad things “good.” And this brings us back to altruism—the self-congratulatory notion of doing “good” to others to please our own sinful desires. Do you see how convoluted this is? Truly, “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” And, as Jeremiah 17:9 continues, “Who can understand it?” To that question, we turn to the work of the late Herbert Schlossberg, in his book Idols for Destruction: The Conflict of Christian Faith and American Culture (Crossway, 1993).

Situated as a bridge between the Ten Commandments and our new month on the pastor and politics, Schlossberg’s reflection shows how covetousness, a violation of the tenth commandment (as well as the first, see Col. 3:5), is not limited to individuals. Indeed, when envy enflames a society, then ressentiment becomes a tool for political ends. And more than that, such envy, or ressentiment, becomes a tool in the hands politicians to steer the passions of discontent people.

Truly, the grace of Jesus Christ is the only solution to the restless heart, whose passions for good and evil cannot be set right apart from the gospel. Yet, as Schlossberg reveals, this personal need relates to political, too. And below, Christ Over All is pleased to present an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Idols for Destruction, in which Schlossberg explores the ways that Christian love has been replaced by a counterfeit altruism which is ultimately powered by envy and hatred. Schlossburg first explains how envy and hatred towards the success of others becomes acceptable as ressentiment, before moving to the way that this evil ressentiment powers empty altruism that makes a mockery of Christian love.

So take up and read, as these penetrating words shine light on your own heart and on the way that political leaders exploit restless hearts.

Ressentiment

The twisted path from humanism’s soaring tributes in honor of the human divinity to the consequences of modern humanitarianism is best explained by the concept of ressentiment. When Nietzsche wrote his celebrated attack on Christianity, he transliterated this word from the French because he could find no German equivalent. Max Scheler, a German sociologist, built on and corrected Nietzsche’s work and again used the French word. When Scheler’s book was translated into English the same practice was followed, because “resentment” is too weak to convey the meaning he intended. Ressentiment begins with perceived injury that may have a basis in fact, but more often is occasioned by envy for the possessions or the qualities possessed by another person. If the perception is not either sublimated or assuaged by the doing of some injury to the object of the feeling, the result is a persistent mental condition, stemming from the repression of emotions that are not acceptable when openly expressed. The result is hatred and the impulse to spite and to say things that detract from the other’s worth.²⁰ One of the most common secret elements to be repressed is Schadenfreude, the rejoicing at another person’s misfortune; vengeance is the principle manifestation of ressentiment.

This phenomenon differs from mere envy or resentment because it is not content to suffer quietly but has a festering quality that seeks outlet in doing harm to its object. Ressentiment has its origin in the tendency to make comparisons between the attributes of another and one’s own attributes: wealth, possessions, appearance, intelligence, personality, friends, children. Any perceived difference is enough to set the pathology in motion. Ressentiment “whispers continually: ‘I can forgive everything, but not that you are—that you are what you are—that I am not what you are—indeed that I am not you.’”²¹ The other’s very existence is a reproach. “There is no vice of which a man can be guilty,” said an English newspaper more than a century ago,

no meanness, no shabbiness, no unkindness, which excites so much indignation among his contemporaries, friends, and neighbors, as his success. This is the one unpardonable crime, which reason cannot defend, nor humility mitigate. “When heaven with such parts blest him, have I not reason to detest him?” is a genuine and natural expression of the vulgar human mind. The man who writes as we cannot write, who speaks as we cannot speak, labours as we cannot labour, thrives as we cannot thrive, has accumulated on his own person all the offenses of which man can be guilty. Down with him! Why cumbereth he the ground?²²

Ressentiment does much to explain the existence of crimes that otherwise are thought of as “senseless.” They are senseless from a materialist perspective because the criminal does not gain anything tangible from his action. But if he is striking at the object of ressentiment, his crime is as rational as if he had made off with the crown jewels. He has gained what he desired. Ressentiment values its own welfare less than it does the debasement or harm of its object. Many crimes of vandalism, brutality, and murder might be explained in that way. Even anti-intellectualism is described by Richard Hofstadter in ressentiment terms, being “a resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition constantly to minimize the value of that life.”²³

In attacking the sources of its irritation, Scheler says, ressentiment uses third parties as foils. “The formal structure of ressentiment expression is always the same: A is affirmed, valued, and praised not for its own intrinsic quality, but with the unverbalized intention of denying, devaluating, and denigrating B. A is ‘played off against B.’” Therefore, what appear to be positive affirmations of the worth of others are really disguised attacks on still others. Altruism has its source in this poisonous brew. The word was invented by Auguste Comte, who thought that self-love was immoral. In common with other forms of ressentiment, altruism glories in the praise of the weak and base, even at its own expense, if that will also debase the strong and good.

Thus the “altruistic” urge is really a form of hatred, of self-hatred, posing as its opposite (“Love”) in the false perspective of consciousness. In the same way, in ressentiment morality, love for the “small,” the “poor,” the “weak,” and the “oppressed” is really disguised hatred, repressed envy, and impulse to detract . . . directed against the opposite phenomena: “wealth,” “strength,” “power,” “largess.” When hatred does not dare to come out into the open it can be easily expressed in the form of ostensible love—love for something which has features that are the opposite of those of the hated object. This can happen in such a way that the hatred remains secret.²⁴

Altruism is thus best interpreted as a counterfeit of Christian love, informed by the ideology of humanism and powered by ressentiment. It permits demeaning the successful, or those who display any form of superiority, by pulling over that act the mask of concern for the poor and weak. Scheler believed that the counterfeit is often good enough to fool the astute, and he concluded that Nietzsche confused Christian love with its imitator. Of course, by the time Nietzsche wrote, the church was sufficiently infused with humanism to make his mistake understandable.

Christian love, says Scheler, does not help the weak, sick, and helpless because it values those attributes but because of concern for the person who lies beyond them. There is none of “the exposure of social misery, the description of little people, the wallowing in the morbid—a typical ressentiment phenomenon.” The fake love of altruism perverts the sense of values so that sickness and poverty approach the status of virtues. Christian love seeks to help the person but refuses to elevate the problem by giving it ontological status and worth. It also avoids helping the weak as a means of causing harm to the strong. In this it heeds the apostle’s admonition that love “does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right” (1 Cor. 13:6). That is the meaning of Goethe’s statement that “against another’s great merits, there is no remedy but love.” Christian love is directed toward persons who need help and not at abstractions such as humanity or the general welfare. It is action and movement and not primarily feeling or “psychical contagion.” It is concerned for the other person and is not preoccupied with such internal experiences as empathy.

The ressentiment penchant for creating wards in order to strike at enemies is illustrated in humanitarianism’s treatment of class in Western nations. So effusive has been its praise of the lower class that Jacques Ellul protests what he calls “the divinization of the poor.”²⁵ When Judas criticized the use of expensive ointment to anoint Jesus, it was ostensibly due to his concern for the poor (John 12:5f.). In general this phenomenon praises the worthiness of what is unsuccessful or debased while expressing contempt for the exceptional and successful. Along with the exaltation of the poor comes the abasement of the middle class; “bourgeois” has become an epithet of hatred among those who chortle at H. L. Mencken’s lampooning of the “booboisie.” Michael Harrington recalled that in his youth in Greenwich Village the chief moral stricture in the midst of a dissolute life was, “Thou shalt not be bourgeois.” Thus the poor are foils through whom ressentiment can strike at the successful while hiding its evil intentions under a mask of goodwill.

A common humanitarian complaint is that the poor are not sufficiently interested in their own welfare, making it necessary for the humanitarian gospel to be preached among them. B. F. Skinner’s behavioral controller explained that they would not speak out on their own behalf because the environment had implanted a system of beliefs within them that inclined them toward compliancy. John Kenneth Galbraith is offended by what he thinks is indifference of people toward their own economic improvement, and thinks that only trauma or education will bring them to their senses. Helmut Schoeck, a German sociologist now living in the United States, finds it ominous that equalitarians are striving with greater urgency to whip up among poor people a keener sense of resentment against their neighbors.²⁶ Galbraith and others complain of their difficulty in this task; perhaps that is because some of the poor can recognize when they are being used as tools.

Conclusion

Christians cannot let the love of Christ be replaced by a cheap imitation which hates the successful and helps the poor only out of self-interest. The history of the church in America tells us that it’s happened before: whole denominations surrendered the true gospel for the altruism of the Social Gospel. Now, our culture is pushing harder than ever for churches to abandon true preaching and advocate for envy-driven wealth distribution instead, all in the name of love.

We at Christ Over All have included Herbert Schlossberg’s analysis of the problem in this month on politics for exactly that reason. Standing firm on the gospel is a political act: it requires resisting the urge to excuse the sinfulness of envy and condemn success, and it requires the proclamation of a love which results in and requires obedience. Biblical courage requires that we stand firm precisely on the points culture most demands that we cave in. Pulpits which will not condemn envy, wealth redistribution, and Marxism cannot and will not stand firm on the gospel.