By Jenna Ellis for THE CHRISTIAN POST
Stories once gave us moral clarity. There are heroes and villains in stories, real and fictional, and the difference was plain: villains do evil based on human conditions of greed, jealousy, betrayal, and selfishness; heroes choose good in spite of the evil and brokenness in the world and their own pain.
In the age of toxic empathy and no judgment, just affirmation, we’re now getting the villains’ backstories and a world and culture that sympathizes with evil.
Moral stories don’t suggest that only villains experience pain and suffering or need to be understood. The most compelling heroes are the ones that have suffered the most and still chose to put others’ needs ahead of their own — even to the point of laying down their life for another.
That’s something almost unheard of in today’s society, where even a mild inconvenience is cause for a lengthy social media post with the caption “this is my villain backstory.”
What does it say about a society that can relate more to villains than heroes, and is proud of it?
