Why Have We Started Answering for Other People’s Interpretations?

How a Religious Reading Helped Create a Culture of Moral Surveillance

Photo by Mitosz Klinowski

Few forms of social control are as effective as those that persuade people they are responsible not only for what they do, but also for how others might interpret what they do.

When this happens, surveillance no longer depends on institutions, rules, or visible authorities. It migrates into the conscience itself. Individuals learn to monitor their gestures, words, choices, and even imagined intentions. It is no longer enough to act rightly. One must constantly calculate how every action might be received, perceived, and judged by others.

At first glance, this demand seems reasonable. After all, we live in society. Our actions have public consequences. No decision exists entirely apart from the effects it produces on those around us. The problem emerges when this legitimate concern crosses a subtle but decisive threshold and transforms other people’s interpretations into a permanent tribunal over human life.

At that point, something fundamental changes. Individuals cease to be judged primarily by what they have done and begin to be judged by the suspicions, projections, prejudices, and narratives others construct about them. It is no longer enough to avoid wrongdoing. One must also avoid the possibility of being mistaken for wrongdoing. It is no longer enough to preserve integrity. One must preserve the appearance of integrity.

The result is an impossible burden. No one has complete control over how they will be interpreted. No one governs the cultural horizons, moral assumptions, personal experiences, or expectations through which others perceive the world. Yet much of contemporary life seems organized around precisely that expectation.

Social media has transformed this phenomenon into a daily reality. People are routinely judged not merely for what they said, but for what others believed they meant. Not merely for what they did, but for the meanings that others attached to their actions. Interpretation has become one of the central battlegrounds of public life.

Yet this phenomenon did not begin with social media. Its roots are much older. One of its most revealing expressions can be found in a biblical phrase that, for decades, helped shape the moral imagination of millions of people: the expression “the appearance of evil.”

For generations, countless Christians were taught to avoid not only evil itself, but anything that might appear evil in the eyes of others. The phrase became a general principle of moral prudence. It was not enough to distance oneself from wrongdoing; one was expected to distance oneself from the possibility of being associated with it.

The intriguing possibility is that the problem may lie not only in how this passage was applied, but also in how it was read. And this is precisely where the discussion ceases to be merely theological and becomes philosophical.

What is ultimately at stake is not simply the meaning of a biblical verse. What is at stake is a far larger question: why have we come to answer for the interpretations that others produce about us?

There Is No Neutral Gaze

Hans-Georg Gadamer offers an important clue. In Truth and Method, he argues that there is no such thing as a neutral gaze. Long before we begin interpreting the world, we already belong to traditions, languages, histories, and expectations that shape what we are capable of seeing.

What we call evidence is often nothing more than familiarity. What we call natural is often little more than habit. What we call obvious is frequently an interpretation so old that we have forgotten its origin.

This insight radically alters the way we think about appearances. What appears inappropriate to one generation may seem perfectly ordinary to another. What appears scandalous in one cultural context may appear insignificant in another. Appearance is not a raw fact of reality. It is produced through interpretive horizons. This is why the history of the phrase “the appearance of evil” is so fascinating.

When the Appearance of Evil Became a Way of Life

The word used by Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:22 is eidos (εἶδος), a term commonly associated with form, kind, type, or manifestation. For this reason, many contemporary translations render the verse as “abstain from every form of evil” or “avoid every kind of evil.” The difference may seem small. It is not.

In one reading, the focus is evil itself. In the other, the focus shifts toward the perception of evil. In one reading, responsibility remains attached to action. In the other, responsibility migrates toward the interpretation of action. From this subtle shift emerges a profound transformation.

Gradually, a particular reading of the passage helped produce a particular kind of subjectivity. A subjectivity trained to anticipate judgment. A subjectivity educated to view itself through the eyes of others. A subjectivity perpetually concerned with the interpretations that might arise around it.

What is most interesting is not that an interpretation prevailed. That happens constantly in the history of religion, politics, and culture. What is most interesting is that it produced a way of life.

Communities have always faced the challenge of preserving their identity against external pressures. To do so, they rely on symbolic boundaries capable of distinguishing belonging from deviation, fidelity from transgression, conformity from dissent. The reading of “the appearance of evil” offered precisely such a mechanism. It expanded moral vigilance beyond action itself and extended it into the realm of possible interpretations.

As a consequence, generations learned to evaluate behavior not only according to what it was, but according to what it might appear to be. In many contexts, the question “Is this wrong?” gradually began to share space with another, often more powerful question: “What will people think if I do this?” Morality increasingly found itself accompanied by reputation management.

The phenomenon becomes even more revealing when viewed from a broader perspective. What was at stake was never merely a verse. It was the production of a particular moral psychology. Individuals learned to monitor themselves through imagined judgments. They learned to anticipate suspicions before they emerged. They learned to organize conduct around perceptions that had not yet been formed.

Few forms of social control are as effective as this one. Explicit prohibitions generate resistance. Constant surveillance demands resources. Direct coercion produces conflict. The internalization of the gaze of others, however, accomplishes the same task far more elegantly. Individuals begin to police themselves. They censor themselves. They arrange their lives around interpretations that may never even occur.

The most remarkable aspect of this story is not that a specific interpretation became influential. Interpretations become influential all the time. The remarkable aspect is that it succeeded in producing a particular mode of existence. Over decades, millions of people learned to monitor not only their actions but also the possible readings of those actions. Concern with evil gradually became accompanied by concern with the perception of evil. And once a community begins organizing its life around possible perceptions, the gaze of others ceases to be merely a gaze. It becomes discipline.

Suspicion Is Not Knowledge

This is where Paul Ricoeur becomes indispensable. Throughout his work, Ricoeur insisted that interpretation is not the same thing as understanding. Meaning never presents itself directly to consciousness. Between what we observe and what we understand there is always mediation. There is language. There is context. There is narrative.

For this reason, interpreting another person is never an innocent act. To interpret someone is to assign meaning to their actions. It is to place those actions within a narrative framework. It is to participate in the public construction of what those actions signify. Interpretation does not merely describe reality. It actively contributes to shaping it.

The problem begins when we forget this. It begins when interpretation presents itself as knowledge, when impressions function as evidence, and when suspicion circulates as truth. Few descriptions capture contemporary public life more accurately than this process.

Many of today’s conflicts are not born from a lack of information. They are born from an excess of certainty. People encounter fragments of behavior, isolated statements, carefully selected images, or decontextualized remarks and quickly convince themselves that they possess sufficient evidence to render complete moral judgments. Suspicion takes the place of understanding.

This dynamic reveals one of the deepest pathologies of contemporary discourse. We increasingly confuse the confidence of our interpretations with the certainty of knowledge. We mistake narrative coherence for truth. We mistake familiarity for evidence. What appears obvious is often merely an interpretation that has forgotten it is an interpretation.

The consequences are profound. Communities become organized around suspicion. Listening gives way to judgment. Investigation gives way to impression. Understanding gives way to condemnation. What begins as a reading of reality gradually transforms into a mechanism for producing reality.

When Interpretation Becomes Power

It is precisely at this point that Jürgen Habermas enters the discussion. Interpretation is not merely an act of understanding. It is also an exercise of power. Every interpretation that seeks public influence implicitly advances a validity claim. It does not merely say, “This is how I see things.” It also says, often silently, “This is how things are.” And every validity claim carries responsibility.

One of the central insights of Habermas’s work is that legitimacy cannot arise simply from conviction. Sincerity is insufficient. Intensity is insufficient. Certainty is insufficient. A claim becomes legitimate only when it can be justified through reasons capable of withstanding public scrutiny. In other words, validity does not emerge from confidence. It emerges from justification.

This distinction profoundly alters the way we think about moral judgment. There is a significant difference between experiencing suspicion and transforming suspicion into accusation. There is a significant difference between finding something strange and declaring it morally wrong. There is a significant difference between interpreting an action and publicly defining what that action means. The passage from perception to condemnation is neither automatic nor innocent. It demands reasons. It demands accountability.

The culture of the “appearance of evil” frequently obscures this distinction. Interpretations begin to circulate as though they were self-evident. Impressions acquire the status of evidence. Suspicion acquires the status of knowledge. What should remain open to discussion becomes insulated from discussion. What should require justification begins to function as though justification were unnecessary.

The consequences are not merely theoretical. Every interpretation that acquires social authority begins to shape reality itself. It influences reputations. It structures relationships. It determines belonging. It creates exclusions. It distributes trust and distrust. What begins as an individual reading often ends as a collective judgment.

This is why interpretation cannot claim moral neutrality. When someone attributes meaning to another person’s actions, that act is never merely descriptive. It is productive. It contributes to constructing the public identity of the person being interpreted. It participates in defining who they are, what they represent, and how they will be perceived by others. Interpretation does not simply discover meaning. It helps create it.

The irony is that communities often demand extraordinary responsibility from those who act while demanding remarkably little responsibility from those who interpret. Actions are subjected to intense moral scrutiny. Interpretations frequently are not. Individuals are expected to justify their behavior, while interpreters are rarely expected to justify the narratives they construct around that behavior.

This asymmetry reveals one of the most overlooked forms of power in contemporary life. We have become accustomed to thinking of power primarily in terms of institutions, laws, governments, corporations, and technologies. Yet power also operates wherever meanings are assigned, identities are constructed, and narratives become authoritative. In this sense, interpretation itself becomes a site of power.

This realization helps explain why so many contemporary conflicts feel simultaneously moral and political. Public controversies increasingly revolve around competing interpretations rather than competing facts. Social media outrage, reputational collapses, ideological polarization, and digital mob dynamics are often struggles over the authority to define meaning. The central question is no longer merely what happened. The central question becomes: what does it mean?

Who gets to decide? Who possesses the authority to interpret? Who bears responsibility when an interpretation destroys a reputation, excludes an individual, or reshapes a public narrative?

These questions expose a deeper problem hidden beneath the language of morality. The issue is not whether human beings should interpret. Interpretation is unavoidable. The issue is whether interpreters themselves can be held accountable for the meanings they produce. The issue is whether those who assign significance to the actions of others are willing to submit their own interpretations to scrutiny.

At this point, the discussion begins to move beyond interpretation and toward government. Because whenever a particular interpretation becomes sufficiently authoritative, it ceases to function merely as an explanation of reality. It begins to regulate reality. It begins to organize behavior. It begins to influence choices before those choices are ever made.

The Tribunal of Other People’s Eyes

And this is precisely where interpretation becomes discipline. Michel Foucault spent much of his intellectual life investigating a question that continues to haunt contemporary societies: how do human beings learn to govern themselves? His answer challenged one of the deepest assumptions of modern political thought. Power, he argued, does not operate exclusively through laws, institutions, prohibitions, or visible acts of coercion. Some of its most effective forms operate through something far more subtle. They shape perception. They organize expectations. They teach individuals to monitor themselves long before any external authority intervenes.

This insight becomes particularly illuminating when applied to the culture of the “appearance of evil.” What emerges from this tradition is not merely a set of moral rules. It is a specific technology of self-surveillance. Individuals learn to observe themselves through imagined audiences. They learn to anticipate judgments before judgments exist. They learn to regulate possibilities before possibilities become actions.

The remarkable efficiency of this mechanism lies precisely in the fact that it rarely appears as domination. It presents itself as prudence. It appears as wisdom. It often disguises itself as maturity, discernment, or responsibility. Yet beneath these respectable names lies a powerful transformation: the gradual relocation of moral authority from the action itself to the anticipated interpretation of the action.

Once this shift occurs, behavior begins to orbit around perception. Decisions are no longer evaluated solely according to their truth, justice, or goodness. They are increasingly evaluated according to how they might be received, framed, interpreted, and discussed. The question quietly changes. Instead of asking, “Is this right?” individuals begin asking, “How will this look?”

The distinction appears insignificant. It is not. Entire forms of life can emerge from that single substitution. A person who organizes life around truth remains accountable to principles. A person who organizes life around appearances becomes accountable to audiences. A person guided by conviction asks whether an action is justified. A person guided by anticipated interpretation asks whether an action is safe. Gradually, conscience ceases to function as a site of moral reflection and begins to function as a site of reputational management.

This dynamic extends far beyond religious communities. In many ways, it has become one of the defining characteristics of contemporary culture. Social media platforms have amplified it to an unprecedented degree. Millions of individuals now live under conditions of permanent visibility. Every statement can be recorded. Every image can be extracted from context. Every gesture can be transformed into a narrative. Every narrative can circulate independently of the reality from which it emerged.

Under such conditions, interpretation becomes one of the most powerful forces in public life. The most influential figures in contemporary public life are often not those who possess the greatest knowledge, but those who possess the greatest capacity to impose interpretations. Political struggles increasingly revolve around competing descriptions of reality. Cultural conflicts increasingly revolve around competing narratives. Public controversies increasingly revolve around competing interpretations of the same event.

What matters is no longer simply what happened. What matters is whose interpretation prevails. And once interpretation becomes the primary battlefield, visibility itself begins to function as a mechanism of discipline. Individuals learn to anticipate outrage. They learn to anticipate suspicion. They learn to anticipate moral judgment. They begin adjusting behavior not in response to what is true, but in response to what is likely to be interpreted as true.

This is why the issue explored throughout this essay ultimately exceeds the boundaries of biblical interpretation. The question is not merely whether generations of Christians misunderstood a Greek word. The question is whether modern societies have become increasingly incapable of distinguishing action from interpretation, reality from narrative, evidence from suspicion, and understanding from judgment.

The danger is not simply that people interpret. Human beings cannot avoid interpretation. The danger emerges when interpretations cease to recognize themselves as interpretations. It emerges when suspicion presents itself as knowledge, when narratives present themselves as facts, and when judgments present themselves as self-evident truths.

At that moment, power reaches one of its most sophisticated forms. It no longer needs to prohibit. It no longer needs to punish. It no longer needs to coerce. Individuals become active participants in their own surveillance. They carry the tribunal within themselves.

Perhaps this is why the debate surrounding the “appearance of evil” remains so revealing. Beneath what appears to be a dispute over a biblical phrase lies a much deeper question about the structure of social life itself. What kind of community do we wish to build? A community organized around understanding or around suspicion? A community that demands responsibility only from those who act, or also from those who interpret? A community that treats appearances as evidence, or a community capable of recognizing the limits of its own judgments?

Perhaps the deepest danger was never the appearance of evil. The deepest danger lies in the appearance of understanding. It emerges when we become convinced that our interpretations are identical to reality itself. It emerges when we forget that every act of interpretation carries moral consequences. And it emerges when we refuse to recognize that interpreters, no less than actors, must answer for what they do with their own eyes.