I am presently reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin over the holiday break. I have not finished it yet, though aim to do so tomorrow. But I wanted to talk about the character who so has interested me the most.

No, not Tom himself. Nor the infamous Simon Legree (who only appears at about the three-fourths point in the story) nor the pious Eva St. Clare. It is rather Eva’s father, Augustine St. Clare, and the many contradictions around his character. If there is a single word which can pervades St. Clare’s entire nature, it is “hypocrite.” And yet, St. Clare serves as a sort of example about how sometimes, being a hypocrite is not the damning sin which it has become all too often in modern society.

For those who have not read the book: St. Clare is the black protagonist Tom’s third slave-owner. Yet despite being a slave-owner, St. Clare is not an outright racist in the way that others in the book, including his abolitionist cousin, are. He is indulgent towards his slaves, and largely lets them have the run of the place.

But this is not because he is compassionate towards his slaves. It is because he does not care. St. Clare understands that slavery is wrong. He mocks those who use the Bible or eloquent political arguments to justify slavery, and declares that if slavery became unprofitable, those same people would use the Bible and political arguments to advocate for its abolition.

But as he repeatedly states, what can one man do about an entire societal problem? So he instead chooses to do nothing. He plays games, reads the newspaper, and does what he pleases. It takes his daughter Eva and Tom to shake him out of his stupor. But before he can do anything, he is stabbed to death. His slaves are then sold by his widow to wicked masters, condemned to misery and horror.

On one hand, St. Clare stands as a condemnation of slavery’s hypocrisy. By not doing anything until it was too late, his sins of omission end up dooming his slaves and especially Tom. But St. Clare uses the excuse of his society’s hypocrisy as an excuse to do nothing, and this is what I want to get to.

In our modern society where it sometimes seems that Dostoevsky’s “Without God, everything is permitted” has become true, hypocrisy is the one sin not permitted. Heroes of the past are condemned for not living up to the lofty ideals which they preached but did not wholly practice. People of the present are condmned for wholly living up to whatever political ideology they practice.

This includes not just major politicians, but ordinary citizens. You support socialism yet have an iPhone! You think that climate change is a problem, but still eat meat! You support vaccines, but won’t wear a mask! Hypocrite! Hypocrite!

But here is the reality. Everyone has a moral system which he tries to live by. Yet at the same time, we never follow said moral system to its utmost. And all too often, that is not a bad thing. Most moral systems, when taken to absurd and logical extremes, end up in pretty crazy places. Does a vegan hesitate to kill a fly or mosquito or rat?

Furthermore, when we point out such hypocritical things, it is used as a weapon of inaction. When a person mocks a socialist for having an iPhone, he is not really saying “You should throw the iPhone away to be a better socialist.” He is saying “You should not be a socialist.” And that is true whether we talk about hypocrisy concerning socialism or any other ideology out there.

St. Clare looked at his slave society’s hypocrisy, and used it as an excuse for doing nothing until it was too late. We can condemn him for doing nothing. But we should also understand that St. Clare, in his own way, was trying to avoid being a hypocrite. He wanted slaves not because he wanted to make them more Christian or thought that by teaching them the value of hard work he would enlighten them. Rather than some hypocritical self-justification, he wanted slaves to make money.

And it is that desire to not be a hypocrite that caused him to be ennervative until it was too late. Do not condemn a man for being a hypocrite. Condemn a man for not doing the right thing, whether it is ending slavery or doing some other social or political action. That is the true sin. Do not be a Sophist, merely trying to shoot down a logical argument at the expense of the good and true.