|
Other blogs of El Gato |
|
|
|
Ebook - Molly the White Mare |
|
|
|
Homepage |
|
|
|
Values or Virtues? |
|
|
|
The Goose & the Princess |
|
|
|
Man's Strength |
|
|
|
Apathy & Christian Worldliness |
|
|
|
Waiting |
|
|
|
Christians Who Hurt Themselves |
|
|
|
|
|
| |||||
|
|
|
| ||
Values or Virtues?
He came up to the kiosk I work at and asked a few business questions, but I could see that he really just wanted to talk. It was extremely slow and having been through a few things myself I've never minded listening, so eventually we got some coffee and chatted. He told me he'd left his wife a while back. He had lots of friends and enjoyed going out and she never wanted to do anything. When his friends would come over she acted awkwardly and they never stayed long. She just wasn't "cool" enough for his friends, I guess. He said he still loved her, but he started thinking that he would spend the rest of his life sitting at home watching TV just to suit her, and a less happy future he couldn't imagine. So he left.
Over the last generation or so our society has begun to place a great emphasis on values. Things like tolerance and not judging others lifestyle choices are cases in point. In general, these are moral and fine sounding things, but the problem with values is that they are not permanent. Either over time or when pushed by outside pressures values can be tossed aside as easily as a .99 cent Bic lighter. The same people who had been taught both culturally and religiously for all their lives that the murder of the innocent was the highest travesty could chuck it all in an instant and scream for our Lord's crucifixion when the crowd around them turned ugly. Peter, who valued his place at the Lord's side greatly, found it quite easy to later deny him when he thought his life was in danger. And so it goes for us all.
In America, the pursuit of happiness is enshrined in our Declaration of Independence as one of our most cherished values. Nonetheless, it has always been understood that this right, God-given though it may be, has numerous limits, and that is why I refer to it as a value. A parent's responsibility to support and tend to their children, for example, far outweighs their right to pursue their personal happiness at the local tavern until the wee hours of the morning. Why? Because the giving of ourselves for our children's sake is a virtue, not merely a value. It has permanent moral status and cannot simply be thrown aside whenever we think our personal happiness might be threatened by it.
As Christians we know many of these things (or we ought to, if we've been paying any attention at all!), but we have our struggles in the matter as well. Huge emphasis is placed on tithing in most churches, and tithing is fine, but what God seeks is not just tithing Christians but people who are generous by their very nature. So tithing in this sense is a value, while generosity is a virtue. The first is letter, but the latter life. Human nature being naturally self-serving as it is, the law of tithing is stressed to regulate the impulses of our flesh, but God's aim with us is to transform our merely human nature into a divine one. The divine nature gives cheerfully and unsparingly simply because that is how God has remade it, while the merely human gives its 10 percent out of obligation and hope for reward and contents itself in thinking that it has properly obeyed the rules.
The Bible always emphasizes virtue over values. Tolerating those of other cultures and beliefs is a nice value, but long-suffering service in the face of constant opposition is a virtue. Staying in a Christian group or relationship where we feel comfortable and gain spiritually is an excellent value, but it pales immensely in comparison to the divine virtue of striving with all our might to maintain unity in the bond of peace. Sociability and community are great values, but laying down one's right to life for the sake of others is a virtue par excellence. Values speak to how we think, and as such are quite useful, but virtues are about who we actually are by instinct, and it is there that God reveals His greatest work and exerts His utmost power.
I have lots more to say here, but I need to get back to the man I mentioned at the outset. The problem he was having was that since he'd left he couldn't find any other woman to whom he could give his heart the way he had with her. Evidently she and he had been ideally suited for each other in some special way that I couldn't discern from our short conversation. He had gained the desires that he was born with by nature, and at first he said that he had enjoyed himself immensely, but what he had traded in return was something much deeper and more permanent, something he couldn't define for me but knew was missing. So his pursuit of happiness resulted ultimately in unhappiness and extreme discontent. I said I'd pray for him.
His problem is indicative of our society as a whole. While the church has something better in this regard, we too are heavily infected with it. What he had done is flip flopped everything. Personal happiness he had taken as a virtue, while matters of loyalty, fidelity, honoring one's promises and, most important of all, true and abiding love, were for him just values that could be tossed when his prime virtue of pursuing happiness seemed threatened.. Now he has neither. God permit that we learn a lesson from his story.
Gato
Blogs of El Gato: http://community.cfaith.com/blogs/yankeegato
| Site Tools |
|
|
|
Verse of the Day |
