Op-ed: The woke will not inherit the earth (and they seem to know it)

Every revolution eventually devours its own heroes.

The French Revolution did it with guillotines. Mao's Cultural Revolution did it with purges, labor camps, and rivers of blood. Our own cultural revolution does it with hashtags and cancellation campaigns.

Revolutions behave this way because they cannot stand still. Their moral authority depends on constantly discovering new injustices, new heresies, and new enemies. Yesterday's hero becomes today's obstacle the moment he fails to keep up. Ask author J.K. Rowling, who went from feminist icon to TERF pariah, all because she thinks being a woman is about more than wearing make-up and a dress.

Every once in a while, someone inside the movement accidentally admits it.

That's why I was amused watching self-professed "woke" comedian Patton Oswalt stumble onto this uncomfortable truth.

[Warning: Language]

In the bit, Oswalt ends up acknowledging the very dynamic that drives the cultural revolution he supports. Today's moral certainty, he admits, has a short shelf life. The standards keep moving, the boundaries keep shifting, and sooner or later everyone falls behind.

It's logical.

If moral authority is defined by perpetual progress rather than some grounded, unmovable truth, then there is no final destination.

Only an endless treadmill awaits those desperate to stand on the "right side of history." The activists enforcing ideological purity today will one day find themselves denounced by a younger generation pushing the moral frontier even further.

If you watch the clip, Oswalt seems to understand this dynamic instinctively. He imagines his future self being condemned by younger progressives for failing to keep up with whatever strange moral causes they champion decades from now. His conclusion is that everyone eventually gets "steamrolled" by progress.

But Oswalt is mistaken about one thing.

He seems to assume that dying as a loyal progressive somehow softens the judgment of future generations.

It won't.

The cultural revolution has shown little patience for its own pioneers. The moral heroes of one generation - from Margaret Sanger to early gay-rights activists - are routinely recast as villains by the next for failing to keep pace with the latest moral frontier.

Each generation tends to treat what they decide are the moral blind spots of the previous one not as understandable limitations of their time, but as unforgivable sins. They do so apparently under the delusion that their moment will last forever.

The same movement that mocks the moral assumptions of past centuries shows remarkably little humility about how its own assumptions may look even 50 years from now.

That is the deeper problem.

A moral system built entirely on constant reinvention cannot offer mercy, because it has no stable ground from which to extend it. Every new generation must prove its moral superiority by condemning the one that came before. The result is a culture where no one is ever finally righteous … only temporarily approved.

That is a heavy burden for any soul to carry.

Christianity offers something radically different. Its moral vision does not change with cultural fashion because it is rooted in a truth that transcends generations. That same faith also offers something the progressive revolution cannot: forgiveness.

Jesus did not promise His followers a constantly-shifting moral ladder they must climb faster every year. Instead, the Bible declares that God Himself descended the ladder to us. As the Apostle Paul writes, though Christ was in the form of God, He "emptied Himself … taking the form of a servant" and humbling Himself, even to death on a cross.

What sets Christianity apart is that it does not place humanity on the endless moral treadmill Oswalt describes. It offers redemption to people who could never run fast enough in the first place.

The tragedy of a morality built on endless progress is that it never produces saints, only temporary heroes waiting their turn to become villains.

Which is why the invitation of Jesus sounds less like ancient religion and more like mercy. To those worn down by the exhausting work of proving themselves righteous in every new moral age,

He still says: "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden … for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.