Opinion - Jesus Probably Doesn't Like Virtue Signally Tweets

AD Robles

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Did you know that Jesus was the very first person to call out virtue signaling?

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Now I don't know if he was the first, but he definitely is the most important person to do so, and I was thinking about the passage in scripture where he does this just the other day.

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What got me thinking about this was this very virtue signaling tweet from Mrs.

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Rachel Den Hollander. This was a tweet that she put out the other day when Joshua Brown, the key witness in the

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Amber Geiger court case, was found dead. He was murdered outside of his house.

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What she said was, We praised the forgiveness. Did we then, and will we now, grieve deeply and cry for justice?

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So the implication here is that there are a lot of people that were praising the idea of the man forgiving his brother's killer, and we praise that, but there's a lot of people in that group that don't care about justice.

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In fact, they won't be sad when somebody dies, when somebody's found murdered, and they won't want justice for that person.

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That's the implication. That's stupid, first of all. I mean, it's a lie. It's slander. Obviously, there's not...

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I'm sure there are some people that don't care about justice, but in the crowd that was praising the forgiveness of her brother, primarily the evangelical crowd, the

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Christian crowd, that's who she's talking about here. In that crowd, she's implying here that there's a good number of people that won't be sad when a guy is dead, and they won't cry for justice.

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That's the implication of this stupid tweet. This is a very stupid tweet, and it's a very virtue signaling tweet, because the other implication here is that Rachel's been grieving deeply about this, and I see a lot of people on Twitter will say, oh,

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I weep. I weep for these people. I weep for these people, and the reality is, look,

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I'm not a completely normal person. Let's just be honest. I've told this story before where my grandmother passed away, and she was older.

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She had diabetes. She wasn't ancient, but she was older, and so she had lived a long life, and she was sick, a chronic illness, and it was pretty severe diabetes, so it wasn't that surprising when she died, but I was still very sad, and I remember walking up to the casket with my sister, and my sister was a blubbery, weepy mess, understandably so.

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It was a very sad situation, but I wasn't crying, and she didn't understand why I wasn't crying, and to be honest, like, sorry about that, to be honest,

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I didn't understand why I wasn't crying. I don't cry or weep a lot. I have wept in my life, and I've talked about the different times and the different situations where I have wept, but I don't weep about everything, but the reality is, like, and so I don't think,

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I'm not normal, but I have a sneaking suspicion that every time I see somebody tweet about how they weep for something or they grieve for something, that they may have some sad feelings, but they're actually not literally weeping, but they sure want you to think that they're literally weeping.

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Now, I'm sure some people actually do literally weep. I mean, some people are more weepy than others. That's just the reality, and I feel sad when

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I see, you know, if you watch First 48, man, that's a tough show to watch. First 48, it's a show about murder and investigations in the first 48 hours, and oftentimes, the police will talk to the families, and the families are just in the midst of grief because it's their brother or their family member that died, and they're grieving, and that's hard to watch.

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I mean, there's just no question about it. It moves you in your soul, but I've never wept over watching

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First 48. My wife has. I've never wept over it. I wouldn't necessarily say that I was grieving when

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I saw this, because the reality is, I mean, we have only so much grief to give, you know, like, so when something happens close to me, it makes me feel a lot more grief than it does when it doesn't happen very close to me at all.

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So if someone were to die in my community, like this happened recently, someone I served on an executive board with passed away, and I felt really sad about that, but when somebody dies, you know, in Saudi Arabia or something,

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I might not like it, and I might feel a certain amount of grief, but I'm not weeping over that, you know what

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I mean, and that's just how it is. I mean, I don't know what to say about that. That's how life is. I mean, your immediate circle affects you more than circles that are further away, but the reality is that even if you really did weep when you tweeted about how you were weeping, even if you really did grieve in a deep, profound way when you decide to tweet about that grief, even if you are crying for justice in your life, but also when you go out and tweet about it, let's take a step back.

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Let's listen to the words of Jesus, and let's stop this virtue signaling nonsense.

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If you are not actually weeping, don't say you're weeping on Twitter. I mean, honestly, let's stop with that.

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We can see through it. A lot of people can see through the fact that you're not weeping for me and the things that I say when you say that you're weeping for me.

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I understand that. Everybody does, and if you're grieving deeply, I mean, most people, when they're grieving deeply, the first reaction isn't to write a virtue signaling tweet about it.

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That might just be me. That might just be me, but look, Jesus pointed this out back in his day as well.

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This is Matthew chapter six. He says, beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your father who is in heaven.

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Do you hear that? Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.

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You see, a lot of the social justice warriors out there will say, well, you didn't say anything about this part of my beliefs over here, so therefore you really don't care.

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Oh, you praise that hug, but you don't say anything about justice, therefore you must not care.

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Therefore, hold on a second here. Jesus said, beware of practicing your righteousness before other people.

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I mean, you ask me, what have I done for such and such a thing? I say, I've done this and that and this and that and this.

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How am I not practicing my righteousness for you to see? I don't have to prove anything to you. I don't have to prove anything to you.

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In fact, the very idea of you tweeting about how grieved you are and how much weeping you've done and all this stuff,

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I think you should take heed. Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.

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Jesus goes on. He says, thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets that they may be praised by others.

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I'm going to apply this. When you are weeping about sad things or about injustice or whatever, you're grieving about some injustice that have happened, don't sound a trumpet on Twitter so that everyone can praise you for how moral you are, how much you love justice and all this stuff, how much you weep, how much you actually feel it.

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You weep with those who weep and you want everyone to know about it. Look, we should be sad when things are sad.

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When someone comes to me and they've gone through some troubles and they're upset, man, my heart goes out to them.

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There's just no question about that. This has happened to me. I'm not going to give you specifics, but this has happened to me where I've spent time with someone who is in grief in the midst of the black hole and it's just awful and there's nothing you can say to help them and you just feel it.

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You feel it. You feel what they're feeling, maybe not to the same degree, but you feel that and just like can't even imagine that being you and that's awful.

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That's awful. But you know what I didn't do when I did that? I didn't get into my car and get onto my stupid cell phone and tweet about it because I didn't need anyone to know that I was helping someone out through their grief.

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So beware of doing that. When you have something that you think other people should be weeping about and you've wept about it because you're so holy and good, beware of practicing that righteousness and sounding a trumpet on Twitter.

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I mean, even the metaphor here, it's so appropriate.

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Jesus is talking about sounding a trumpet. He might as well have been talking about Twitter, sounding that out to the whole world to see.

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Jesus says that you may be praised by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward, but when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that you may, your giving may be in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you.

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You see, this is Jesus coming up against what essentially amounts to virtue signaling. The Pharisees were virtue signaling when they would sound the trumpet about here,

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I'm about to give my alms here. Look at how much I care for the poor. I really do. And they were really giving them money.

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It wasn't like they were fake giving them money. They were really giving them money, but they wanted everyone to see it. And Jesus says, that's your reward.

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Everyone will praise you. So when you tweet out how much you're grieving over this lack of justice, I weep with his family.

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If you are really weeping with his family or not, it doesn't matter. Probably don't tweet about it, about how virtuous you are.

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That's a virtue signal. And Jesus says, beware of that because then if you do that, all of the praise you get, all the likes you get, all the emojis, the heart emojis, the kissy faces, all that, there's your reward.

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I hope it was worth it. I hope it was worth it. And then he calls you a hypocrite. So you see,

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I don't put online that I weep about things or I'm sad about something when

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I'm sad about something. You know, I don't need you to know that I'm so righteous that I hate injustice in every instance.

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Yeah, of course. If there's something that I can do and say about something being unjust. Like I said about this trial,

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I said, look, if this woman actually committed murder, which now that I'm learning some of the facts,

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I didn't have all the facts when I made this video, but now that I'm learning some of the facts, it seems like it probably wasn't actually murder.

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It was a killing and there should be some penalty for it. But like I said, if she did commit murder, which she was convicted for, then there's clearly an injustice here.

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I mean, there's clearly an injustice here and I don't have to signal that just so you know how virtuous

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I am. I don't have to signal, Oh, I weep for the black community over something that has to do with a single person, over something that has to do with a single person that does not prove that there's some kind of rampant systemic institutional structural racism against black people.

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I don't have to virtue signal in that way. What I have to do though, is just be for what God says

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I should be for and against what God says I should be against and that's enough.

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And then if there's an injustice, I can say that was an example of an injustice. This doesn't comport with the law of God, but I can,

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I can trust God with the injustice because God is a God of perfect justice and he will come to the defense of the poor.

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He will come and take up the cause of the oppressed and all of that kind of stuff. I don't have to virtue signal and tell you how much

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I'm grieving, how much I'm weeping over all these things because beware of practicing your righteousness before others so that you will be seen by them.

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Beware of that. Don't sound a trumpet about how sad, how much grief you are grieving you've been doing and trying to make everyone feel guilty if they're not weeping.

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Look, I didn't weep at my grandmother's funeral. So the fact that I haven't wept over Amber Geiger and her brother and the guy that she killed,

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I didn't weep over Michael Brown. I didn't weep over all of these things. I don't feel bad that I didn't do that.

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I feel upset about an injustice when it actually happens and it's an actual real injustice, but I'm not weeping with any communities.

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And I'll tell you right now, I don't know why you're telling everyone that you're doing it because there's your reward.

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I hope you enjoy the likes. I hope you enjoy the clicks. Anyway, I hope this was helpful. God bless.

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One side note, I am fully aware that using myself as an example in this video as far as something that I did and didn't do leaves me open to the critique that I'm virtue signaling.

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And I understand that, you know, everything I say leaves me open to a certain kind of critique.

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But there's a way to use yourself as an example that doesn't draw attention to the good thing that you supposedly did or whatever in the moment.

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There's a way that you can use yourself as an example that's not virtue signaling. And you might disagree whether this is virtue signaling or not.

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That's really not the point. My whole point of making this video is if you're one of these people that feels the need to virtue signal in the moment when you're weeping or emotional or doing something that you feel is like the good thing that everybody else should do, take a step back and really just think about that because is this an example of you practicing your righteousness before their people?

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Now, if the fact that I use myself as an example in this video means that I don't get a reward from heaven for the thing that I did back then, you know,

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I'm going to have to run that risk in order to bring this message to you. So anyway, I hope that this was helpful.