Why "Virtue Signaling" Isn't the Problem

We all want to be good. But often, what we want more is for others to know just how good we are. We have long been warned about the dangers of flaunting our own moral superiority this way: In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus instructs his followers not to be like the ‘‘hypocrites'' who ‘‘love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners that they may be seen by men.'' Nearly 2,000 years later, the 19th-century Catholic saint John Vianney argued that the instinct to show off our goodness — our fasting, our donations to the poor and the church — would ‘‘make hypocrites of us.'' ‘‘If we desire a heavenly reward,'' he wrote, ‘‘then we must hide the good which God works in us as much as possible, for fear that the devil of pride may rob us of the merit of those good works.'' And yet lately, many people believe that these admonitions have been forgotten — that we are living in a veritable golden age of hypocritical showboats advertising their own righteousness.