Many religious believers come off as arrogant in their dealings with others. This arrogance, when not simply a basic personality defect, is often a consequence of their absolute conviction that they couldn't possibly be wrong in what they say or believe. This failure to even consider self-reflection and self-criticism is not only self-destructive, but dangerous for all those nearby as well.

In Religion, Politics, and the Christian Right: Post-9/11 Powers in American Empire, Mark Lewis Taylor explains how this applies to George W. Bush:

Though he lays claim to a mantle of Christianity and is declared by the Christian Right as its leader, George W. Bush’s mantra-like invocation of the good on his side, with God on his side, is a betrayal of one of the deepest roots of Christian faith in the New Testament, that is, a capacity for self-critique: for an open-eyed sense of limit and fault and, at least, recognition of one’s potential for error and for violating even our own most cherished standards and ideals. No wonder that citizens, with or without religious backgrounds, asked Bush in the 2004 presidential debates: “Can you name mistakes you’ve made?” (He barely suggested there were some but refused to reveal any.)

Most dangerous of all, perhaps, is Bush’s seeming inability to question his own Christian faith. Bush has repeatedly been touted by the Christian Right as “chosen by God for this hour in our nation,” and he accepts those accolades seemingly with no sense of ambiguity. He takes it in full accord with his own sense of divine calling, to which he attributed even his decision to run for the presidency. It is hard to be self-critical of one’s faith and policies if one is believed to be in one’s position a result of divine election. Howard Fineman summed it up in Newsweek: faith “helps Bush pick a course and not look back.”

The average person, however arrogant, is unlikely to do anything quite as destructive as launch a war on false pretenses and continue the conflict long past any hope of something like a reasonable victory. Sadly, we elected just such a resolutely average person to the presidency where he could do the sorts of harm that most people wouldn’t even dream of committing. What sort of character-less person can’t think of any mistakes that they have made?

Either he could think of some mistakes and simply refused to admit to them, or he honestly and sincerely couldn’t come up with a single thing during his first term as president that could possibly qualify as an error, mistake, or misstep. The former would merely mean that he’s unethical — often an important character flaw for a politician to have. The latter, however, indicates a problem that goes well beyond character flaws: it’s a lack of even a basic understanding of himself and his interactions with the world around him. It’s an extreme sort of narcissism whereby only his own perceptions matter — and so long as he insists on seeing nothing but good things, outside criticisms or perspectives will have no impact whatsoever.

I am skeptical about Taylor’s assertion that self-critique is part of the “deepest roots of Christian faith.” Granted, Christians are certainly capable of self-critique, but I don’t see it as a value promoted either in the New Testament or in Christian traditions. There is an emphasis placed on admitting that one is a sinner and that one has sinned, but that isn’t much of a self-critique; even worse, in the hands of conservative evangelicals it has become little more than a perfunctory mantra recited just before one sins, but not until after a means has been devised for rationalizing how the sins can be portrayed as necessary if not also virtues.

 

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