The False Rhetoric of "Whataboutism"

Aristotle's Rhetorical Triangle

Introduction:

The most disheartening thing about trying to have a constructive conversation these days is that almost nobody knows how to do it. Whether it has always been this way or whether our ancestors actually engaged in robust discourse is another question. The fact is that we think we do, but we don't. If we wish to have a healthy, free society, we must relearn how to engage in effective communication without coming to blows verbally or physically. We are in such terrible shape socially, intellectually, and spiritually that we argue even about what effective communication should look like. Those who mistake "free speech" for free thought compound the problem. Yes, you are free to scream me down, but that doesn't mean you have "said" anything. Our problem is that we have an entire culture that can't think. How we got here is a barrel of questions indeed. But the truth is that we not only can't think; we abhor thinking. And yet when have we seen so many people itching to have their say?

Christians are at fault perhaps more than anyone. In our antipathy to reading God's Word, we have proved ourselves creatures of sensation rather than sense. Feebleminded emotionalism bordering on moral senility has overrun our music, our worship, our sermons, and especially our entertainments. We have abandoned a reasoned faith, and now our faith is abandoning us. Most people don't even care to pretend that they know right from wrong. Is this state of moral confusion fatal? When Jesus contrasts the wise man with the foolish man in the climax to His Sermon on the Mount, He defines the wise man as "he who hears these sayings of Mine and does them" (Matthew 7:24). The foolish man hears but does not heed, and his fall is great. Notice that at least the foolish man hears. But most people aren't even hearing the words of Jesus anymore, so what does that make them? Is there anything lower than a fool? Solomon rightly said, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10). If we do not want to reap the foolish man's end, we must return to the beginning.

The Rhetorical Triangle:

At the beginning, we find Adam and Eve communing with God in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day. I have always wanted to overhear that conversation. How precious indeed it must have been--and how short-lived, we can only imagine. But of the fact that this was perfect communication--indeed, communication elevated to communion--we can have no doubt. The template had been set, and we may read the rest of God's Word as the story of our return to true communication in Christ, the Word. From the Garden of Eden to Aristotle's rhetorical triangle, there is not as much of a leap as we might suppose. Aristotle was able to idealize effective communication by likening it to an equilateral triangle in which a bidirectional flow balances speaker, audience, and message. Harmony between the speaker and the audience ensures the delivery and reception of the message. Disharmony between the speaker and his audience disrupts the delivery and reception of the message.

A well-balanced message will develop the speaker's claim with ethical, logical, and emotional appeals. The ethical appeal links to the speaker's own ethos and credibility; the logical appeal must arise from the message's inherent truth; and the emotional appeal reaches out to acknowledge and even to overcome the audience's biases and presuppositions. This all sounds very "appealing." When communication deteriorates into propaganda, however, all sorts of evil things happen. Satan himself was the original propagandist. He spun his message to deceive his audience; his deceived audience developed unfounded assumptions and prejudices; and these unfounded assumptions and prejudices dulled his audience to the voice of Truth.

The rhetorical triangle of communication is anything but equilateral in our culture today. The angles of speaker and message no longer balance an audience-dominated, spectator mentality. Our culture is so obsessed with "relatability" and emotion that we view all of reality from the wide-angle lens of our own subjective preferences. As a result, we have flattened communication into an obtuse triangle that marginalizes ethical and logical considerations in favor of emotional ones. But, even when an effective speaker achieves a balance of ethical, logical, and emotional appeals, we tend to regard only his emotional appeal. Without a sense of objective truth, we make ourselves and our own egos the measure of reality. If we are pleased, the speaker's message is true. If we are not, it isn't. Rather than doubting our ignorance or humbling our arrogance, we celebrate our incompetence and disregard inconvenient truths as misinformation. We attack the speaker in order to cancel the message.

Confronting "Whataboutism"--An Exercise in Futility:

In short, we use the favorite political tactic of "whataboutism." See what I mean in the following comments, swiped from a discernment video by Jordan Riley, entitled, "Major New Problems with The Chosen." One woman wrote this in support of Jordan's video: "It is so sad that so many people want to believe in God and Jesus but they don’t want to live a Godly life, nor read and learn the Bible, or do anything that requires what God wants us to do. It is much easier to follow a false God and Jesus than to be a true Christian." I found this comment refreshing and liked it. But then my eyes popped when I read this reply by some man: "The only way to become a true christian [sic] is to believe in Jesus Christ. What you suggest is actually producing false converts since its [sic] all about works and not about faith." You're kidding.

This time we both responded, and I identified his viewpoint as the antinomian gospel of progressive Christianity. He replied, "You realize that you are not attacking me, but actually insulting God by what you say? He decided that humans get saved by believing and not by keeping the law, not me. And yes, i [sic] am as much antinomian as you are. Unless of course you wanna state you keep the law 100% and dont [sic] sin. The law is absolutely right in condemning me, cause i [sic] am guilty. Thank God Jesus paid for me, cause i [sic] dont [sic] have a chance of earning my own righteousness. I guess you believe you can do it; sounds like the pharisees [sic] in Jesus days."

Well, there it is. This went on for awhile, until I left him with an illustration: I said that one wise man said that the difference between a sheep and a pig is that, when a sheep falls into the mud, it bleats to get out, but when a pig falls in the mud, it rolls around in it. He wrote back and said I had called him a pig! Before this, I had summarized the gist of his nonarguments with a question: So, to be obedient is disobedient? He basically agreed. Reduction to absurdity, here we come! Even though I had already shared numerous Scriptures with him, he completely ignored all of them.

The whole thing tickled my funny bone before it was over because I was in the process of editing my last comment--the one about the pig--not knowing he had already replied, when I accidentally deleted it. Then I noticed his reply (of course, rolling my eyes), but, with my comment missing, it looked like he had replied to himself. This got me to giggling, and I didn't post any further reply. This whole thing must have disoriented him because, by morning, his reply was gone. Perhaps he wondered if he had imbibed one too many! This would all be quite silly if it weren't so sad. An eternal soul is at stake, but I couldn't help. Not one bit. He had his hardhat on, and he wasn't going to take truth for an answer!

There are so many problems here, I wouldn't even know where to begin. But I will focus on one. His entire "attack" rested upon his assumption that I have no right to quote the words of Jesus against sin because I sin. How he "knew" this, I don't know. Clearly, this is a classic example of canceling the message by canceling the speaker. But if you trace his logic, he contradicted his own argument that sin cancels a message because sin is no big deal because everybody sins. In fact, it's because everybody sins that it's no big deal, even though my sin is enough of a big deal to cancel the words of Jesus! If I contend that Jesus called us to live above sin, I'm a Pharisee, which is the worst sin of all (even though all sins are equal). To that, I would have to say, I would rather "sin" doing what is right than what is wrong. What did the Lord say about those who call good evil, and evil good?

But this man could see no difference between himself and his argument or between me and my argument. To him, the speaker is the message. So, he attacked me as the speaker, indirectly calling me names, thinking he had refuted my message. He also assumed that I had attacked him as the audience, when what I really had done was to address his message by naming the doctrinal position from which he was arguing. I tried my hardest to remove any negative connotations to avoid inflaming the point. He was completely unable to separate the truth of God's Word (the message) from me as the speaker, whom he took for granted was hopelessly flawed. The real issue, of course, which goes way beyond the intent of this post, is his fallacy of begging the question that his view of grace is correct. That view I had called antinomianism, which it is.

"Gotcha!" Games:

I have been following blog comments for several years about other major issues in Christianity today, and this pattern, unfortunately, is quite common. The "go-to" sock-stuffing argument is that I cannot say a word about anyone else's sin since I sin. That would mean, of course, that we are all entitled to live as we please without any accountability to anybody. It would also mean that there is no such thing as objective truth in God's Word; there is no standard. Rhetorically, that would mean that the speaker is the message and that, since the speaker is not credible, there is no message! Put another way, this pattern of nonargument assumes that, if you attack the speaker (ad hominem), you have refuted the issue. And this is the favorite "gotcha" tactic of antinomianism. This diseased line of "reasoning" actually denies the possibility of reasoning, for it assumes a false equivalence of all moral issues. For example, struggling with resentment over a wrongdoing is seen as no different than living in fornication with your significant other. It's almost as if the glittering generality (sin is sin) becomes the big lie (all sin is equal).

This supposedly "line drive" argument intended to hit me in the gut is really just a silly ping pong serve. Jesus sized up this play by saying, in essence, "First take out your own beam before addressing her mote." There is such a thing as a mote and a beam, and, no, they are not the same thing. I'm not exactly sure what beam he thought he was picking out of my eye--I guess the beam of Pharisaism--but he certainly seemed to think not only that he was entitled to have a beam in his own eye but that this beam actually entitled him to remove mine--even though neither one, apparently, can be removed! Actually, he was attempting to put a beam in my eye--the sin of quoting Scripture! So, he put a beam in my eye just so he could point it out to me and prove his point--that we are freely entitled to our sin and that, if we think we're not, we're insulting God. Let's not forget that he's the one who trolled this video, just itching to start a debate.

Conclusions:

If we can't approach such discussions Biblically, can we approach them logically? But how, when most people can't think? What happens when nonsense becomes pandemic? Late that night I had to give it up, realizing I had engaged in nothing more than a waste of time. I also remembered that I had written a post called "Walk Away," which is exactly what I should have done in the first place. The other woman walked away before I did, saying, "I'm saying one last thing [and] I'm done with this." We both had been very clear in our use of Scripture without being unkind. But this man's only line of reasoning was to attack both of us--classic whataboutism at its finest.

Such is the toxicity of shutting down all communication because all you can see in the world is yourself--your viewpoint, your sin, your interpretation of Scripture, your warp on reality. Scripture calls this blindness. A blind man couldn't care less when you turn on the light. It's just as dark for him now as it was five minutes ago. He doesn't even know what light is. And yet he walks in "the light of his own fire," as Isaiah 50:11 describes. I think our entire culture is there. With good reason did Jesus say, "When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8).