When millions of pages of documents and photographs were released revealing who among the world’s so-called “elite” had been cavorting with sex-trafficking pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, many of those whose names and faces appeared in the caches scrambled to control the damage.

Lawrence Summers, for example, who once swayed world economic policy as a bigwig under President Obama, turned out to have been stalking a Chinese economist young enough to be his daughter (see here) while asking Epstein for advice on how to seduce her. Summers, a married man, honeymooned on Epstein’s twisted child-rape island for the stars. When the extent of Summers’s relationship with Epstein came to light, Summers apologized and eventually lost his cushy posts, too toxic even for godless celebrities and parasitic fame-hounds to touch.

But isn’t there something off about the shunning Summers received? Ditto for other creeps in Epstein’s orbit. The Andrew formerly known as “prince,” for instance, is more stomach-turning than even Summers, having apparently been a repeat molester of minors (see here). Now Andrew, too, has been given the cold shoulder in high society, not least of all by his older brother, a philandering rake whose prior accomplishments, before getting his head crowned as King of England, include running around on Princess Diana (who was also running around on him).

People like this, and virtually anyone else tainted by the Epstein touch who now pretend they wish they had never known him, are still welcome among a crowd that celebrates sodomy, communism, and the sexualization of minors. Obama’s venal lawyer (here), Trump’s Gordon Gekko-like commerce secretary (here), MIT’s star Trotskyite (here), Britain’s favorite lord (here), Palm Beach’s favorite doctor (here) — these and other reprobates flitted around Epstein like Kardashians around moneyed athletes and entertainers. Now they are left out in the cold by other people whose moral compasses appear at least as broken as theirs. What explains the moral calculation of distinctions on grounds of blamelessness among those for whom the only sins are those which public opinion cannot (yet) abide?

Part of the answer is that Jeffrey Epstein and those now forever tied to him were scapegoated. The so-called “elite” society that embraced Epstein before it disowned him is obviously trying to circle the wagons and act as though Epstein never had any business associating with them in the first place. I doubt whether anyone is convinced by this Captain Renault performance (here).

The much more important explanation, though, lies in the way that so-called elites use Epstein as a makeshift guardrail, a bottom to their depravity beyond which not even they would go (although they regularly joined Epstein in his sickening behavior before all of that was thrust into the public eye). This is precisely how many people in the United States and elsewhere approach moral questions.

The yardstick is the worst imaginable thing, the most reprehensible of all criminals. We all, in some way, scapegoat Epstein. It’s classic pharisaicalism. I thank thee, O Lord, that I am not like those miserable sinners over there. The sinner becomes the standard against which other sinners judge themselves, always somehow managing to find themselves clean by comparison. It is a pretended morality, a morality of compromise, a morality that can tolerate virtually anything so long as it does not cross some arbitrary boundary, typically determined by how people who watch evening news will react when scandalized.

Imagine if Epstein had preyed upon 19-year-olds instead of 12-year-olds. Well, he shouldn’t do that, but it was consensual, so what can you do… Bill Clinton still walks around in broad daylight, a sexual predator who was, at least, not *that* kind of sexual predator. The tabloids exonerate him even as they broadcast his depravity.

Or, imagine if Epstein had preyed upon men instead of girls. Democrat donor Ed Buck did just that, and was celebrated for doing it until, at some point, the death toll of Buck’s criminality got too high for even Democrats to tolerate (here). Why was it wrong for Buck to kill a few men, but not one? Why did no one care about those men until it became too politically costly to ignore Buck’s hateful predation? To ask the question is to answer it.

American society tolerates, even applauds, sodomy and fornication, unless it’s against someone below a certain age. And even then that arbitrary guideline feels to many Americans like a drag. Judith Butler, queer theorist extraordinaire, sure seems to think so (see here). And who’s to argue with her? If it’s okay to sin unless the victim is x years old, then why would it not also be ok at x-1, or x-2, or any other age?

Structurally, as a society, we scapegoat a certain bandwidth of sinners as a way to sanction the sinning that the rest of us want to go on doing.

Christ offers us a radically different kind of morality. It’s not even morality at all. It’s not a human-made law but a divinely revealed one. We are to take up our cross and follow him. We are to repent and believe in the Gospel. We are to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. We are to think of ourselves as lost sheep, in need of salvation that is foolishness to this world.

The thing about lost sheep is they tend not to be scapegoaters. Lost sheep don’t need to maintain the hypocritical “morality” that lets sin flourish by pretending to denounce some percentage of it as beyond the pale.

Those of us who look at the Epstein Files and the debauched “elites” who populate them ought not to fall for the fake, scapegoating morality in which the Epstein Files and news coverage about them trade. There’s another way to think about right and wrong. And that way is not human but God made man. The way points to the one who came to save lost sheep, and even scapegoats, from eternal destruction.