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March 15 - March 26, 2020
With the Enlightenment and modernity came the collapse of a unified sense of moral standards in the West.
In other words, without an external, objective source of meaning and purpose, we are left with only our internal and subjective feelings.
Great books offer perspectives more than lessons.
No matter what, adhering to rules is much easier than exercising wisdom.
Prudence is wisdom in practice.
In fact, the word prudence comes from the word providence, which means, literally, the ability to foresee.
Satire is the ridicule of vice or folly for the purpose of correction.
One attains the virtue of temperance when one’s appetites have been shaped such that one’s very desires are in proper order and proportion.
Aptly, The Great Gatsby is set during a time characterized by the impulse to suppress: Prohibition.
“The past isn’t dead. It’s not even past.”
But there is a villain in the story that is not confined to past events, a villain ever present in human affairs: the vice of excess.
When the justice system becomes a form of entertainment, it surely is unjust.
The progress he undergoes that corrects the wrong lessons his culture has taught him is the essence of Huckleberry Finn.
Similarly, a colleague who is a New Testament scholar describes faith as having three primary elements: belief (cognitive), trust (relational), and fidelity (obedience).
To wish is not to hope. A wish is not a virtue. Hope is.
Progress is not the same as hope.
Diligence must also, like other virtues, represent a mean between an extreme of excess and an extreme of deficiency.
Sloth involves not only a lack of effort but also a lack of care.
There’s something about those promises offered to us in the Bible. They are always there, but until
life prepares us to receive them, they are just like the key Christian had in his pocket all along but didn’t remember until he was ready to use it.
Because Anne suffers virtuously, she doesn’t let her pain cause her to turn inward upon herself.
Patience is a virtue only if the cause for which that person suffers is good.
“As much as humility frees us from condemning ourselves, it also frees us from condemning others.”47
Humility is taking our place, no matter how small (or big), and fulfilling that place with a heart overflowing with love.
