Piety, political correctness, and propriety: Monday scrapbook.

Can you read the blog posts I link to. Because I edit. I remove. I leave out the comments, or leave out the original post and post the comments.

Think of this as a bit like a magpie sorting through a field and keeping anything shiny.

Dawn is a precious soul. One of the few internet friends I have met, and a very gifted artist. But she struggles with the daily cruelty of life: what we call Aspergers is as much a sensitivity to social interactions as any blindness to this.

And she’ll hate me (even though she is one) for calling her a precious soul.

As an Aspie, I much prefer the realm of Facebook socializing. It is much less confrontational and not as immediately demanding. But socializing online is no less hypocritical, of course. There are three main types of communications I seem to encounter and observe in my Facebook feed. The sanctimonious wannabe-educated-and-politically-correct uppity threads, where a special kind of hush falls like soft dandruff, as soon as one dares to cut across the fluffy LaLaLa righteousness with a stinging statement of cold hard logical truth. There is also the somewhat vapid foot-stamping crowd letting off steam, who are unable to grasp any analytical clarity whatsoever. And of course, the fascists, bigots and downright dangerous trolls who are somehow attracted to the BBC news like legions of flies to rotting meat. Usually, I take it all with a healthy pinch of salt and from a self protective distance. That is the beauty of online socializing after all. However, occasionally, it does make me utterly abhor humanity. Facebook is a wonderful thing and a terrible thing at the same time, isn’t it?

I don’t go to the USA. Although I’m not as sensitive in that way that is called Aspie by those who are challenged by abstraction (let alone mathematics) I find the hassle of getting into that country simply not worth it.

Yes, I am talking about the TSA.

But this is Hearthie, who looks at the same issues and strips the preciousness from our sense of the proper, leaving us either with true religion or a broken form of it.

Piety and propriety hang about together so much that they’re often confused for one another – but they are not the same, and while piety can produce propriety, the reverse is rarely true.

The pious person, because of their relationship with the Holy Spirit, lives in such a state that none can put a law against them.

As an example, society’s rules about modesty of dress change – but a modest person does not dress with the intent to attract notice, and thus is always modest. The inside state reflects itself in the outer man. Piety thus produces propriety.

Propriety, serving only itself, turns quickly to hypocrisy. For propriety is the outward manifestation of correct behavior. And if only your outside is correct, you’ll soon find yourself indulging in what your heart desires, so long as no one can see. The solution is to clean the inside of the cup, not the outside.

Human as I am, I too mourn the black horror of what this world is, has always been, and what the Western world is rapidly becoming. Propriety, divorced from piety, is a fragile shell without meaning. But this gives us opportunity. For it is in the darkest night that even a tiny candle can be seen. And so – let us not mourn, but rejoice. In all things, rejoice.

There is ugliness in this world. Trolling exits. And at times we need to cut through and be blunt. But let us never forget that some people are precious, and that needs to be preserved.

The beauty we see in this world, broken though it is, reflects well the glory of God.