Walking recently in the fast-gentrifying former mill-town section of Middle America in which I live, I spied yet another sign taped to a front window. “Anti-choice is NOT pro-life!” it read.

“Yeah, pro-choice is pro-life,” I mutter under my breath as I pass.

I’m no longer surprised by the signs I see in many windows of this section of Pittsburgh known as “Larryville”–Scaryville might be a better term for it given the high number of hairy-legged, dress-wearing men flouncing around like it’s Halloween. These statement signs litter the formerly mean row houses now occupied by folks who mostly prefer having dogs or cats to having spouses or children.

On my way back home, I take a new route, seeing another sign as I go. “Safe abortions for all,” it reads.

“Ahem, abortion is fatal to babies,” I think to myself. It seems that down is up in Scaryville. Vice is virtue. Lies are truths. Killing can be SAFE FOR ALL.

Some might find the burgeoning number of neighborhood signs declaring fealty to the unholy sacrament of child sacrifice discouraging. But I think they’re a good sign. They are a form of virtue-signaling, pure and simple. But that virtue-signaling also happens to signal that those who hold traditional values are gaining ground against woke ideals.

The sad news is, many of those on the traditional side of things belie the same human frailty as their woke counterparts. Christian or not, they do this by reveling in and feeling justified by practicing their own sin, all while urging others not to be so sinful.

I saw an example of this the other day when I read one conservative commentator suggesting that woke individuals should abort their unborn children, since we’d all be better off if they did. But when we fall into this trap, we make ourselves God, setting up our own truth and moral law and trying to save our culture with half-measures.

I fell into a similar trap once upon a time. I was left leaning in my views then, and was wanting to conform Jesus and Christianity to my way of thinking, confusing the unconditional love that both offer with non-discrimination and acceptance.

“You want your own personal Jesus,” one of my brothers pointed out to me at the time. “You don’t want Jesus as He is, you want Him to conform to your views.”

We do the same thing today. We want moral behavior from our fellow Americans, but we detest anyone moralizing to us. Traditional fathers want their children to be virtuous individuals, yet those same fathers boast of their past sexual conquests as if they’re the essence of life, falling for the same old lie of materialism trumping all.

Many of us traditionalists want more people to know the truth, but we’re not even sure we totally believe it ourselves. We reject parts of the truth, as so many atheists do, but in the next breath, we want people to have more faith. We speak out of both sides of our mouths—like politicians. As more than one writer has noted recently, we can’t simply declare the virtues we believe are necessary to hold our world together—we have to live those virtues.

Would you like a chaste and sober girlfriend who doesn’t get drunk and sleep around and claim it’s empowering? Be chaste and sober yourself first, both as an example to others, but also to increase your chances of finding her. Like attracts like.

Do you want others to have more faith? Show them how, by growing your own faith by going to church, spending time in God’s Word and in prayer, and in fellowship with others who believe the same way. We often learn by example.

America is now a collection of Scaryvilles, and if we’re going to see it get saner, kinder, more beautiful, virtuous, and neighborly, it’s up to each of us to do our part. We need to recognize our failings, repenting to Heaven if needed, and then cutting out the evil we exhibit in our daily lives, both because it’s wrong and because it tacitly encourages others to sin.

We must live more upright lives not just to save America, or because it will make us happier, but to show the difference between us and the hypocritical, wildly-gesturing, virtue-signaling types. Actions do speak louder than words, so don’t just stand for the truth—live it.

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Image Credit: PublicDomainPictures