The Seven Virtues #7: Faith

Faith is a virtue that is difficult to grasp, even by Christians.  As a borderline socially autistic individual who tends to reason things out naturally, I admit that my faith is difficult to obtain.  Trust me, for someone like me, it took God Himself to intervene in my life to make me understand that there was more than just what I saw and heard.  This is not something that I think most people will experience, because God handles all of us in our own way and in His own time.

Christian Faith has two parts, according to C.S. Lewis.  The first part is the part that most people have trouble with: belief.  Believe requires us to reject the shroud that has been pulled over our eyes by the Kind of this World and accept that there are things that we cannot reason away.  That is an extraordinary rejection of personal pride in oneself and it does not come easy.  Those of you who do not believe in God or anything supernatural, I certainly sympathize with you.  We do live in an ordinary world where our mundane lives have little to offer us in our day to day rituals.  To hear that there is something more than this does seem a bit offensive to me and I can see how it would make people defensive and angry.

Everyone believes that something is wrong with humanity.  The Statist Utopian and the individualist anarchist both agree that there is something wrong with human beings.  And while the causes are often debated over and governmental policies are often prescribed to “fix” things, in the end there is no shortage of wrongs done in this world.  The standard by which we live is often times violated given specific factors and circumstances.  It almost seems like we can’t help ourselves to behave irrationally and hurt others in the process.

Christian Faith starts with the belief that we are all sinners.  To sin is to violate the Will of God for us.  God’s Will extends beyond just a simple set of rules (far much simpler than the government’s, by the way) as it is about living as a creation of God rather than a creation of this world.  This is a hard concept to accept.  It requires that you believe in a supreme being, that He created you, that you are a sinner prone to evil, and that evil is a violation of said being’s Will.  Already many agnostics and atheists have huge issues with this concept.  Many Christians do as well.  The primary reason is that it requires us to accept that we are wicked and evil.  It takes a lot of humility for someone to admit they are wrong, let alone prone to evil and corruption.  I have yet to meet a rational non-Christian admit that he or she is prone to evil.

The next part of Christian Faith is the belief that God sent His Son, His very Word incarnate into flesh, to this planet for the sole purpose of showing us what a life as God’s creation should be and to ultimately experience death by torture for the sake of our redemption.  So now, not only do you have believe that you are a sinner and despicable before the eyes of God, your creator, but you have been redeemed before Him through faith in His Son, who died for us all.  While some who fall into despair at the very notion of no hope for redemption will joyfully embrace this wholeheartedly, there are others who will want an explanation as to why.  To be honest, I can’t answer this entirely, which is where the faith part comes into play.

Finally, and this is where things get really ridiculous in a rational, down-to-earth sense: we believe that he came back from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and will be coming back to judge the whole of mankind, whether living or dead.  For the ordinary individual with no concept of things supernatural beyond what is seen in fiction, this is probably the most outrageous article of Christian Faith.  To think that a man who was tortured to death by being beaten, stabbed, and hung from a cross in order to be exhausted to death would come back where all others have failed beforehand is just downright unscientific and completely irrational.  The only guarantee in life is death and nobody ever really beats that.  Of course, he conveniently isn’t around anymore to explain it because he ascended (whatever that means) into Heaven (where ever that happens to be).  But don’t worry, he’ll be back to embrace those who believe in Him and to cast those who didn’t into Hell, where ever that happens to be.  There is no rational or logical sense to any of this and yet many people embrace this as the ultimate truth of our existence.

You can see why it took someone like so long to wrap up my blog series on the Seven Virtues.  Faith is a difficult concept to grasp for someone like me, despite the wisdom God has granted me and the intelligence I have gained through His Spirit and my own hard work.  To believe all this, to embrace that I am a child of God through Jesus His own Son, is quite a leap into unknown and unperceivable territory.  But Christian Faith is all about this and it brings us into the knowledge of the truth about humanity.  I can tell you that it is much easier to predict what people are going to do or say given the knowledge that comes through faith.  Not that I’m not surprised from time to time, of course.  I don’t claim to have absolute knowledge through Faith as it tends to cover only the nature of my life in relation to God.

Ultimately, God desires obedience more than sacrifice.  He makes this clear in the Old Testament on several occasions.  As disobedience to God’s Will is the very definition of sin, this certainly is not surprising.  Even worse is that we are unable to be completely obedient to God 100% of the time we are here in this life.  So God orchestrated the perfect sacrifice of the only man who was 100% obedient to Him in order to allow us to share his own connection with God.  No comes to the Father except through Jesus.

This is what Faith is for the Christian.  It is the ultimate expression of things that have come and things that will come.  It is knowing that God is Holy, that His Son has redeemed us, and that He is Lord not through some complex algorithm or some scientific study, but through Faith.

And thus, we have Faith as the Seventh and final virtue.  From it, all other virtues can flow out as obedience to God through Faith in Jesus will gradually make you a better person.  Take my word for it, I’ve lived it and witnessed it myself.

The Seven Virtues #6: Justice

The fourth and last cardinal (or pivotal) virtue is Justice.  Now Justice is not what is commonly seen on courthouse dramas.  That is only a small part of it.  The virtue of Justice extends to integrity, fairness, and honesty.
Integrity is doing the right thing when no one else is watching you.  Whether or not you believe in God and trust in Him, integrity is incredibly important for your prosperity.  In the short term, doing the right thing can harm you, but in the long term, you will benefit because of your attitude.  The world’s richest people have remained so because of their excessively high sense of integrity.
Fairness is not some selfish, childish desire.  Often times, the concept is invoked by children who are denied their own pleasures or by greedy people who live on the government’s whim (like welfare junkies or government union “workers”).  It is the sense of dealing with each and every person or situation with a sense of adequacy.  This does not mean that people are treated equally, but individually.  God does not treat us the same so why should we treat others the same?
Honesty is probably my personal standard of excellence.  If you are not honest in your dealings, I will lose all respect for you and I will refuse to deal with you.  In my opinion, if you cannot be honest then you are borderline subhuman.  As Kain said to Raziel in the video game Soul Reaver 2, “Hate me, but do it honestly.”
Justice is not about the equal distribution of income.  Social justice is anything but real justice because it fails to address the root of real justice.  Instead it is handled by people who administer based on their own personal preferences rather than true fairness.
Justice is not always served in the court system.  While our system of courts, where the accused are innocent until proven guilty in theory, is probably one of the more enlightened systems in human history, it still manages to fall prey to humanity’s sinful nature.  The O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson cases is probably the most prominent.  In both cases, human nature played a larger part in the courtroom rather than some higher sense of decency.  While both men were judged to be not guilty, the antics in the court make it nearly impossible to determine the real truth of the matter.
But you can practice the virtue of Justice each and everyday.  Simple matters of integrity, being honest with others, and seeking out a reasonable sense of fairness when dealing with others is the best way to deal practice justice.  If you hold to this virtue, you will live a life to be admired by others.
So be honest in your dealings and encourage others to do so.  It will make this world a more pleasant place to live in.

The Seven Virtues #5: Charity

Charity is often equated to giving to those in need.  While this certainly is Charity, it is merely a part of it.  When you help others, you are demonstrating the virtue of Charity, but it so much more than that.

Charity is a theological virtue, meaning it is one that is essential for Christianity, but not necessary for non-believers (though it is probably a good idea for everyone to practice it).  Charity these days is what we may refer to as love for your fellow man.  It is love in the general sense and it is part of the second commandment Jesus gave us when he said, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (though I think this was in the Torah too).

In the old English, this kind of love was referred to as Charity.  Somewhere along the way, our usage of the English language changed, as most languages do, and we began equating the word “charity” as giving money to the needy.  Again, this certainly does qualify as love for your fellow man, but it is only a small portion of the scope by which you can practice the virtue of Charity.

For Christians, the virtue of Charity is essential for us when relating to the rest of the world.  There have been countless individuals who have rejected the Gospel because of the behavior of Christians.  I’ve heard a story, probably not true, where Ghandi went to a church while he was seeking and said to himself when he left that he really like this man Jesus but not his followers.  True or not, it does drill home the importance of Charity as a theological virtue and it’s necessity.

Being a Charitable Christian means you must love everyone, even if you don’t really like them.  To “like” someone in this day and age usually means you share their interests or find that person pleasant to be around.  It is a relational comparison where you “like” someone more than you “like” another person.  Within clergy (and probably church inner circles), people who are difficult to “like” are labeled “EGR” which means “Extra Grace Required.”  While this seems a little insulting, our charge is love our neighbor no matter how exasperating he or she can be.

The essence of Charity is to be a servant to your fellow man.  The Parable of the Good Samaritan was probably the best example that Jesus could provide that exemplified this virtue.  But there are always smaller things you can do to be charitable to other people.  I’ll leave it up to you to figure them out, but they are all fairly obvious, even if you are sociopath.

Charity is an essential virtue for Christians.  It is probably the theological virtue that deals with our relationships outside of God.  This virtue gives us the tools we need to spread the Gospel.  People generally don’t respond well to being told they’re going to Hell.  They don’t enjoy being told that their actions are evil and sinful.  They don’t like it when you bring up Jesus is unrelated topics of conservation.

But when you practice Charity, people wonder and ask why you are doing that.  And you can simply respond that you are practicing what Jesus taught you and doing the best you can to follow His example.  That way, they will seek Him out of their own accord and you’ll have the satisfaction of leading them there.  Even if they don’t accept Him as Lord, you can at least find satisfaction in knowing that you were given a chance to provide someone else a path to salvation.

In the end, that’s really what is important in this life.

The Seven Virtues #4: Fortitude

Fortitude is a crucial virtue for anyone trying to follow the seven virtues.  Like the others, it is fundamentally linked to every other virtue so that if you lose this one, the others will disappear shortly afterwards.

Fortitude is mental and emotional strength in when facing difficulty, adversity, danger, or temptation.  It means that you stick to the principles you believe in and hold fast to what you know to be true.  You must have a strong will because there will be things that will push you away from the virtues you seek to uphold.

Fortitude is another cardinal virtue and thus is something that non-believers and believers alike should put into practice.  For believers, it adds resistance to the temptations and trials we will face, as the enemy tends to step things up in this life after we committed our lives to the Will of God.  It is through our faith in Jesus that we become enemies of the fallen ones and they will attempt to undermine our faith in Jesus.

The greatest example of mental Fortitude in the Bible is when Jesus was tempted by Satan.  Being only a man at this point, though with the Spirit, he was led into the desert and spent 40 days of fasting.  Basically, he was going to die soon if he did not eat since that is about how long you can survive without food.  Fasting also opens a lot of doors for Satan and his ilk to attack you because you tend to lose a lot of your resistance.  So Jesus was tempted by the devil three times and in all three cases He withstood Satan’s assault on his mind and spirit.

As Christians, we have come to appreciate this story, but I doubt that many Western Christians can truly fathom the struggle He must have gone through.  This is because most Western Christian hardly ever fast.  I admit to having done it only a few times and only for a day or myself.

For non-believers, Fortitude is equally important in that you will face trials yourself, even if they aren’t from fallen angels.  Christians, of course, face the same kind of trials as non-believers, but I don’t think fallen angels are all that interested in turning non-believers from Jesus.  They may try to use non-believers to serve their own ends, though, but most non-believers don’t understand what is truly happening.

Fortitude enables us to withstand our troubles and ensure that we maintain our principled set of beliefs.  When you don’t have this virtue, you will become subject to the will of others, natural or otherwise, and you will lose your sense of identity.  Because if there is something you know to be true and are willing to stand up for it, it is one of the signs of individuality.

I can personally attest to witnessing what happens when someone doesn’t have the fortitude to stand up for himself.  It is very tragic to witness such a thing and I have nothing but sympathy for someone like that.

Practice Fortitude and stand up for yourself.  Fight for the truth you know and you will prosper in the long run.  Otherwise you may find yourself lacking in the other virtues, both cardinal and theological.

The Seven Virtues #3: Temperance

The cardinal virtue of Temperance is one that is rarely practiced in modern culture these days.  It is the virtue that dictates you moderate your behavior and lifestyles.  Unfortunately, many in our society have taken to going from one extreme to the other.  There is hardly a portrayal of someone who is able to moderate their behavior.

American culture is one of excess.  We take great pride in being able to go overboard in all things.  Whether it’s alcohol, food, sex, or just stuff we are obsessed with buying, we go to great extremes for many of these things.  This virtue is designed to prevent us from going too far and keeping our extreme behaviors in check, without denying us the opportunity to enjoy them.

That’s the other extreme that violates this cardinal virtue.  The idea that we must abstain from certain things completely.  While there are some things that, as a Christian, we must abstain from because there are boundaries set up by God.  Sex is only acceptable when it is between a man and a woman who are married.  Within that boundary, they are free to engage in whatever sexual acts the two feel comfortable with.  In marriage, we have a formula for temperance when it comes to sexual relations.

But to completely abstain from things that one doesn’t need to abstain from can be just as damaging as engaging in excesses.  This world has so much for us to enjoy, and when do so with a disciplined heart, we can thoroughly enjoy all God has given us.

For Christians, Temperance also prevents us from falling into idolatry.  Idols are anything that we put before God in worship.  Temperance allows us to enjoy food, alcohol, sex, and so much else without falling into the worship of these things, which is what the Seven Deadly Sins basically are.  Indeed, this virtue is the counter to at least six of the seven deadly sins, as those sins are basically our instincts in overdrive.

For non-Christians, this virtue is still pivotal because it allows anyone who practices it to keep within certain boundaries and allows them to maintain their own lives without destroying them in the process.  Basically, it is the same with non-Christians as it is with Christians, only non-Christians don’t have as many boundaries that they need to follow since they have not chosen to follow God (I know I’m probably enraging some fellow Christians by saying this, but you need to disregard the sin of the sinner when spreading the Good News).

Temperance is not an easy virtue to practice, especially if you are prone to addictions and obsessions.  The goal of this virtue is to find a kind of balance in your life so you can enjoy things and not let those things destroy you in the process.  There is no perfect balance, however, and it takes prudence to know where the line is when engaging in a certain kind of behavior.  Every person has their own limits and no two people can enjoy the same thing to the same degree.  We are all like snowflakes, after all.

So you will need to know what your limits are.  If you have problems with overeating, then you may have to keep yourself out of the kitchen and instead find something else to do.  If you struggle with lust, then you will need to redirect your passions elsewhere so you don’t end up making an embarrassing visit to a doctor someday.  And so on and so forth, I think you get the idea.

The Seven Virtues are all linked together, although they are separate concepts.  See how Prudence aids in supporting Temperance?  Both are cardinal virtues that are vital for everyone, including non-Christians.  Temperance itself allows us to engage the world and discover its many pleasures and wonders while keeping our other virtues intact.

And don’t worry, it doesn’t take much self-discovery to know our limits nor does it require any experimentation.  It just requires a little prudence and a little bit of another virtue I will discuss in the future: Fortitude.

The Seven Virtues #2: Hope

Hope is one of the seven virtues and is not a cardinal virtue, but a theological one.  As such, non-believers have no hope to worry about (just kidding).  No, the hope I refer to is the hope in the promise God have given us.

Remember how I said that life is nothing but a struggle.  I said that a man struggles against the world and that woman struggles against man.  Generally, this is the case among all of us, whether we believe in God or not.  Hope is there to help us understand that there is more after this life and that the struggles now are nothing compared to the joy we will have.

With hope, we are continually looking forward to the eternal world and not engaging in wishful thinking.  For everyone has a desire for Heaven within them, otherwise we wouldn’t have secular Utopians trying to ram their twisted worldviews down our throats.

Anyway, this desire is found in so many things in our own lives.  We find in the fulfillment of our jobs and finding something we enjoy doing.  We find in love for others.  We find it in entertainment.  But ultimately, all these things give some level of disappointment.

No matter how much you love your job, there is always that day where it is like any job you might hate.  No matter how much you love your spouse, there are always days where you’d rather not be around him or her, unless it is necessary.  And no matter how entertaining something is, at the end of the day it isn’t the reality of your life.

And so, despite that tinge of longing, we often find ourselves disappointed in Earthly things.  Now, I am not calling for you to abandon such things, just because they are perfect.  Indeed, you’ll still have the desire to engage in such things and those lesser desires will be filled.

But the greater desire will remain.  This desire for heaven is innate in all of us and drives us to do extraordinary and sometimes horrible things.  As Christians, we have to recognize that this desire was placed in our hearts by God.  Call it His strategic invasion into the spiritual world.  Our world, after all, is ruled by Satan, by sin and disobedience to him.

Yet He has planted on our hearts a desire for Him, a desire that cannot be satisfied by any Earthly thing.  Instead such things arouse this desire and make it burn even more.

And so we must hope for the satisfaction of that desire.  This is the hope that I speak when I refer to this virtue.  It is what Paul writes about when he mentions hope.  It is not silly, trite, or delusional, but Godly.

Western Christians are not taught this virtue because we have so much wealth and tend to lack nothing of substance.  Poverty is non-existent in the United States, only people with misplaced priorities in their spending and working habits.  As such, we live a life of leisure and comfort, not having to worry about chopping wood so that we can heat our bedrooms, wondering where our next meal will come from, or wishing that our roof wasn’t made of hay.

While there is certainly a great benefit to all this and I wouldn’t trade any of it unless God told me to, it does diminish this heavenly virtue because we become complacent in our lives.  While we still have the desire for Heaven in us, we lack the training to properly deal with it.

This is probably the biggest problem with secular schooling for us.  It has caused us to focus on the earthly things rather than heavenly things.  To understand that this existence is temporary and that greater things are to come.

The Seven Virtues #1: Prudence

I remember when I was in the sixth grade and we were all outside for a fire drill.  Some kids were running through a puddle, splashing water all over themselves because everyone else was doing it and it was apparently the cool thing to do.  Then one of my teacher walked and yelled at them saying, “Common sense tells you to not do that.”  The look of disgust at the idiocy of my fellow students was priceless.
Unfortunately, these days I find that just about of those we place in authority lack one of the cardinal virtues: prudence.  Prudence is common sense and one who has prudence has the ability to utilize their wisdom and discipline to their fullest extent.  As King Solomon wrote in Proverbs 19:25, “Flog a mocker and the simple will learn prudence; rebuke a discerning man, and he will gain knowledge.”
These days our culture has rejected harsh discipline for some strange and incomprehensible reason.  Harsh discipline and strict punishments for those who commit crimes have go the wayside and as a result we get repeat offenders more often than rehabilitated, productive members of society.  This latest episode with Clemens who killed four police officers should be a chilling reminder of why we should dismantle all parole boards and make criminals serve their full sentences.
But I think it runs much deeper than simply imposing harsh discipline.  People need to develop the virtue of prudence otherwise they will see their intelligence and their wisdom go to waste.  I asked people what the opposite of an idiot savant was and no one really could give a proper term for it.  Somehow, intellectual moron just doesn’t seem to fit with me.  But we have to agree that there are plenty of people out there who have an IQ many people would sell their souls for and lack all semblance of prudence.  Don’t worry, they usually work in colleges where they do the least amount of harm.
Prudence is one the seven virtues that are opposite the seven vices (or deadly sins).  It is not a Biblical virtue, any more than the seven deadly sins are Biblical, but it is pivotal to believers and non-believers alike.  Without out, we become subject to the control of others who have it.  In essence, we lose our individuality, our sense of self, without it.
A lack of prudence is probably the primary reason for all the insane laws that governments at levels pass in order to protect us from ourselves.  How many laws are passed involving fire safety, when this should be common knowledge to everyone?  How many laws are passed for  driving on the roads, when most car crashes can be avoided by simply driving sensibly?
The fact of the matter is, most people lack prudence in big ways and when they do, they end up voting for Statists.  This is because the Statists promise them things that most people would normally not even trust with their own parents.  And so a lack of common sense is the primary reason for the expansion of government in our modern era.  Most people recognize that everyone else lacks sense except for themselves and so they assume that the government will fill in the void for them.
I am not saying that I am perfectly prudent all the time.  But I do have a good sense of things more often than not.  It really isn’t hard once you start applying your own thought processes to everyday situations and not letting your emotions rule your mind.  No, I am not a robot and I do feel emotions.  But I don’t let them consume me and my own thinking, anymore than I let my own logic rule over me.  While both are never in perfect equilibrium, both have a healthy balance in my life, for the most part.
This is what we should strive to do.  We should all strive for common sense.  The best way to attain it to start reading up on it.  If you are a Christian, then I would recommend reading the book of Proverbs in the Bible (incidentally, I find that most Christians only read the New Testament to their own detriment).  If you are a non-believer, then you’ll have to look elsewhere and unfortunately, I have nothing I can recommend.  It’s not that I haven’t read non-Christian books before, it’s simply that I haven’t been interested in reading anything on the subject.
But you must obtain prudence because from it, all other virtues flow forth.  Because our society is full of greedy, selfish individuals (not really much different from the rest of the world), it takes strong prudence to deal with them.  If we are to save our society from tyranny, then our only course of action is to encourage and grow prudence in others.