By Gage Klipper, Daily Caller News Foundation |December 25, 2024
“My neighbor won’t stop praying for me. What should I do?” You’re probably a normal person, so you’ve likely never had such a narcissistic and morally inverted thought. Even if you did, you certainly never bothered writing into The New York Times about it, asking for advice.
However, your average reader of The Times is not a normal person. They’re middle-aged, single, just affluent enough to know what they’re missing out on, and making up for it by self-righteously inducing misery in everyone around them. So of course they’re mad their kind old neighbor prays for them — and they want the world to know it.
Per The Times’ holiday-themed advice column:
“I have an 85-year-old neighbor who is a sweet friend and caring person. My issue is that she is very religious and I’m not at all. She prays for me and says it in person, texts and emails for even the most minor of situations. I’ve told her my view of religion and that she doesn’t need to pray for me. She said she has to, otherwise she’s not following the Bible. I’m trying to ignore this but it’s really bothering me that she can’t respect my wishes.”
After you pick your jaw up from the floor, note how this cuts against the argument liberals have long used to smugly dismiss any conservative concerns in the culture war.
- Why do you care what two do men in the privacy of their home?
- Why do you care what a woman does with her body?
- Why do you care if someone identifies as a man, woman or anything in between?
How does it affect YOU?!
The same could easily be said here: Why do you care that someone prays for you? If you’re a non-believer, how could it possibly affect you?! Mind your own business, fascist.
In a shocking twist of Christmas magic, The Times’ advice columnist seems to agree: “[I]nstead of requiring that your octogenarian neighbor change her ways, I wonder whether you might change yours — and learn to accept this woman for who she is, hearing her prayers as a sincere expression of her loving feelings toward you.”
“So you’re not entitled to insist that she stop including you in her prayers.”
Duh. You don’t even have to be religious to acknowledge this obvious truth. Only a cynical shrew could believe an old lady’s prayers were an ironic taunt, or anything other than a “sincere expression” of kind feelings. So while the advice-seeker paints herself (“name withheld,” but let’s be real, this is obviously a woman) as the victim of oppressive Christians, it’s clear the bigotry actually flows in the opposite direction.
There’s no legitimate harm done to justify feeling disrespected here. Rather, the author is just looking for a pretext to justify her own malicious feelings towards Christians and Christianity. Her liberal worldview doesn’t allow her to believe that Christians could possibly be nice people. So she flips the morality up in her head, reframing thoughtful kindness as antagonism, and positioning herself as an individual receptacle for all of Christianity’s perceived historical oppression. It’s not the prayers she has a problem with, but the broader context in which they’re given. Obviously, she would not object to an “oppressed” Muslim’s prayers.
It’s a deluded inversion of morality, on top of nuclear-grade narcissism. But what else can you expect from a New York Times reader during the holidays?
Gage Kilpper is a commentary & analysis writer at Daily Caller News Foundation
Original article link
