Are We Any Better?

I recently came across a quote from former US president Barack Obama that genuinely shocked me…

It is possible for me to be a great admirer of George Washington and also acknowledge he was a slaveholder. And that does not negate his greatness.

This is from an interview done on MSNow, he continues…

That simply acknowledges that there is a profound, deep flaw in these Founding Fathers, who were also geniuses and gave us these tools. Which is true of all of us, right? It's true of every president. We're this mixed bag. We've got contradictions and embody the country's contradictions.

As much as I didn’t really like the man when he was president, he’s spot on here.

U.S. History is full of contradictions. We do have founding fathers who were slaveholders and yet spoke on freedom and equal rights. Some of them were convicted to free their slaves, but many of them didn’t necessarily see blacks as equal to whites.

The Civil War period is no different. Both sides had their head scratchers. Abraham Lincoln known as the great emancipator but has complex views on race and black colonization.

In WW2, the United States sent black troops to the Europe to stop Hitler’s regime which promoted “racial cleansing and purity” while upholding Jim Crow Segregation at home.

I could go down an entire rabbit hole of politicians past and present who speak and do contradictory things on both sides of the aisle, but I won’t do that here.

The Media's Moral Theater

One thing that the media often likes to push is the morality and ethics of the leaders, influencers, celebrities, politicians etc. from the narrative that they’re trying to promote.

Then suddenly when one of those voices does something immoral or just not a part of the narrative, their entire character is attacked. Or simply smoothed over.

Here's what's really interesting though: the media doesn't apply these moral standards evenly. They construct narratives that serve their interests, then selectively enforce or ignore those standards depending on whether someone aligns with their agenda. A public figure who violates the narrative gets destroyed, their entire legacy questioned, their character assassinated. But someone else who commits similar moral failures? If they're useful to the narrative, suddenly we hear nuance. Suddenly we're told to separate the art from the artist, or that context matters, or that people are complicated. The double standard is breathtaking. And it works because most of us don't notice the inconsistency. We're too busy cheering when our preferred narrative wins and our enemies lose. But that's exactly the problem. When moral standards become weapons instead of principles, they stop being about actual ethics and start being about power.

And we often as people, myself included, are tempted to completely toss them out or make excuses for their behavior.

And yet, we don’t particularly like it when people do this to us in our own personal lives.

Our Double Standard

Here's the uncomfortable truth: judging others feels good. It's comfortable. When we condemn someone else's moral failure, we get to feel superior, righteous, secure in our own position. But the moment that same scrutiny turns inward, the moment someone holds us to an identical standard, suddenly we become creative.

Our situation was different. Our intentions were pure. We were forced by circumstances. We didn't have all the information. We were younger then. The list of exceptions we construct for ourselves is endless. We're masters of rationalization, capable of compartmentalizing our own contradictions while remaining blind to our hypocrisy.

We'll spend hours dissecting a public figure's moral failure, yet when confronted with our own identical behavior, we retreat into nuance and context. The self-deception is remarkable, and it's universal. We all do it. We all construct mental escape hatches that allow us to condemn in others what we excuse in ourselves.

It’s because we’re human beings. And humans are capable of great good and great evil even in the same week.

The Gospel Solution

In the bible, God has a standard for humanity, a standard that humanity fundamentally and totally falls short of regardless of what we do. The bible calls this sin.

The gospel message is Jesus taking the sins of mankind onto Himself and making us clean before God.

And the great frustration for Christians is having a regenerate spirit and an unregenerate flesh.

Paul says in Romans 7: 19-25 ESV:

"For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin."

But here's what Paul understood, and what changes everything: this struggle is not resolved through willpower, self-discipline, or moral achievement. The answer isn't trying harder. It's surrender. The Christian condition is precisely this inner war, and the only resolution is Christ's grace. We cannot fix ourselves. We cannot earn our way to righteousness through effort or self-improvement. The moment we stop striving and surrender to Jesus, we find peace not because we've become better, but because we've been made clean.

The Gateway Question

Our lives our full of contradictions that we see in ourselves and in others. But the judgement of those contradictions comes back to morality and this one question:

“Am I any better?”

And that requires a “yes” or “no” response.

Of course that also means that we need to know what our standards are and who we give permission to hold us to them.

So here's what changes when you actually answer that question honestly: everything.

Because if the answer is "no", if you're not any better than the person you're condemning, then you've just lost the moral high ground. You can't stand in judgment anymore. The comfortable position of superiority collapses. And that's terrifying but also liberating. When you stop pretending to be better, you start seeing clearly. You see the media narratives for what they are: power plays dressed up as morality.

This is the gateway to actual compassion. Not the performative kind that judges harshly while maintaining plausible deniability. Real compassion.

You stop building cases against people and start extending the same grace you desperately need. You become slower to condemn, quicker to forgive, more honest about your own failures. The standards you hold others to become the standards you hold yourself to, and suddenly they feel less like weapons and more like guardrails.

You become free.

How to Live This Out

So what does this actually look like in practice? Here are some concrete ways to handle contradictions, both in the media you consume and in your own life:

1. Audit your moral outrage. Before you condemn someone publicly, ask yourself: Have I done something similar? If yes, you've lost standing to judge. If no, ask why you're so certain you wouldn't in their circumstances.
2. Follow the narrative, not the truth. When a media story breaks, notice which outlets cover it and which ignore it. Ask yourself: Why is this person being destroyed while that person gets defended? The answer usually reveals the narrative, not the facts.
3. Name your own contradictions first. Write down three ways you fail to live up to your stated values. Not to shame yourself, but to humble yourself before you judge others.
4. Apply the same standard to yourself. If you're angry at a politician for hypocrisy, examine your own life for identical hypocrisy. If you find it, you've just learned something about yourself, not about them.
5. Distinguish between accountability and destruction. Holding someone accountable for their failures is healthy. Trying to destroy their entire legacy because of those failures is vengeance dressed up as justice.
6. Extend grace proportional to your own need. You need grace. So does everyone else. Start there.