Blog 3688 – 12.10.2025

Moral Superiority 

There is a scene in one of my favorite movies, Door In The Floor, where Jeff Bridges playing one of the lead characters in a movie adaptation of John Irving’s novel, originally titled Wife For A Year, comments on the young nanny thinking she is morally superior to his young writing assistant who thinks that he is morally superior to him, “Everyone thinks that they are morally superior to someone.” It is one of our silliest notions. All the big five religions Buddhist, Hindu, Jew, Christian and Islam think themselves morally superior to the others. And the over five thousand denominations of Protestants think themselves morally superior to Roman Catholic Christians, Greek Orthodox Christians, and all those five thousand plus variations on the same theme.

Jesus of Nazareth, if he was a true historical character and not some composite invention of the Roman Emperor Constantine to unite his fractured Empire and win a great victory over his enemies, was not a Christian. Christian was a term of derision that Pagan Romans used to express their own sense of moral superiority over the young Jewish sect that called themselves “followers of the way.”

But to my point, why do we perpetuate the myth that we are superior to others morally or in any way except that we feel ourselves less than, because we cannot forgive ourselves for being human and divine. Our higher best self from whom we derive all our notions about an all powerful and all knowing God and our lower worst self from whom come all our notions of enemies and demons, reside side by side. We cannot love the higher without loving the lower.

One of my favorite authors, Louise Hay, said that all of our problems come from not loving ourselves enough. Love is always the answer, to every question. Love is the action that enables us to forgive and to forget our own trespasses and those of others as well. Love sees everyone else as merely a reflection of ourselves, neither better nor lesser but the same. Love forever settles the question of moral superiority. Where love is there is no sense of superiority only equality. “The least of these my brethren”, “the black sheep of the family”, “in-laws and outlaws”, and “allies and enemies” become only figures of speech in face of the ole time religion that makes me love everybody. 

Emperor Constantine took the symbol of the cross upon which a man so loving that he even forgave those who crucified him died and changed it into a symbol of war to conquer by: i.e. “Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before.”

Moral superiority has been used to justify hating our neighbors, making war with our perceived enemies, owning slaves, and every evil and unloving act under the sun. One act of love and it is all undone.

“Love lifted me

  Love lifted me

  When nothing else could help

  Love lifted me.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White