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January 16 - January 28, 2024
Yet love and compassion “cannot substitute for justice.”43 Compassion is individual and voluntary. It also has no cost.44 Justice, on the other hand, exacts a price. Because the world is broken, making what is wrong right is costly. In other words, justice requires sacrifice.
“Love your neighbor as yourself,” Scripture admonishes (Matt. 22:39). Implicit in this command is the idea that one must love oneself and that one cannot love one’s neighbor properly without such love. One cannot love one’s neighbor properly if one loves oneself too much—or too little. In an important sense, then, the virtue of justice begins with justice toward the self.
Taken to the extreme, selflessness is not less of self (which is generally good to a point) but the erasure of self (which is not good within any understanding of the intrinsic value of each human being).
The truth about justice in this world is that it can never set things exactly right. We never will, whether on the personal, the public, or the cosmic scale, be able to bring those delicate scales of justice into perfect balance.
Although the words just and fair are often used interchangeably, justice usually involves objective, universal standards of judgment, while fairness is often felt subjectively as a sense of right proportion within particular circumstances. In a perfect world, what is just is also fair. In a fallen world, however, justice does not always feel fair. In our fallen humanity we often bristle at the holiness of a God whose justice does not always strike us as fair.
Although bravery and courage are often used synonymously today, the history of the word brave has some interesting differences from courage. The older meanings of brave include some that are far from virtuous: “cutthroat,” “villain,” “crooked,” and “depraved.”1 The current meaning of brave is closely allied to the word bold, which isn’t attached to virtue or vice. Boldness can be bad just as it can be good. In a culture as fragmented as ours, nearly anyone who takes a stand on something can find support somewhere. Right or wrong, anyone who is bold will be considered brave by someone.
Courage is measured not by the risk it entails but by the good it preserves.
The person who is virtuously courageous displays not merely a single act of courage but the habit of courage. Courage—or fortitude, as it is often called—is defined most succinctly by moral philosophers and theologians as the habit that enables a person to face difficulties well.
The word courage comes from the same root word that means “heart.” To be encouraged is to be heartened or made stronger.
Courage requires putting a greater good before a lesser good. Courage is getting your heart in the right place at the right time despite the obstacles.
some choices we face are the result of our own doings, others completely outside of our control, most some combination of the two. How much nicer it would be not to face difficulties at all. Given the impossibility of that, the next best thing is to face hard circumstances with the virtue of courage.
There’s a little bit of the prosperity gospel in all of American Christianity, and this has been true ever since the country was founded upon the very idea of that pursuit of happiness we call the American Dream.6
that prayer isn’t about changing one’s circumstance but about changing one’s heart.
No risk means no difficulty. And no difficulty means no courage because, for an act to be truly courageous, it must entail a known risk or potential loss.
Courage exists only in relationship to something other than itself. Courage cannot “trust itself”11 but must refer to some outside, objective standard of goodness. A brave act must be for a noble end in order to constitute the virtue of courage.
But gall is not the same as courage. Men who swindle, cheat, and steal their way through life, no matter how brazenly, are far from virtuous, and therefore do not have virtuous courage.
Lest it create other and future dangers, courage must confront evil with moderation, “restraining fear and moderating acts of daring.”
Courage can be excellent only as it is “‘informed’ by prudence.”21 The truly courageous person “does not suffer injury for its own sake.”22 Courage “has nothing to do with a purely vital, blind, exuberant daredevil spirit.” The person “who recklessly and indiscriminately courts any kind of danger is not for that reason brave; all he proves is that . . . he considers all manner of things more valuable than the personal intactness he risks for their sake.”
“Enduring comprises a strong activity of the soul, namely a vigorous grasping and clinging to the good; and only from this stout-hearted activity can the strength to support the physical and spiritual suffering of injury and death be nourished.”
The problem for Huck—and all of us—is that his conscience is not an entirely reliable guide. In fact, one main target of Twain’s satire in the novel is the conscience that is malformed by a corrupt culture. Huck harbors distorted views of right and wrong, ones imparted to him by his flawed society. The progress he undergoes that corrects the wrong lessons his culture has taught him is the essence of Huckleberry Finn.
“One can follow one’s conscience, and in doing so honestly think in one’s heart of hearts one is acting well, and yet be acting wrongly,” as in the case of the “erroneous conscience” of the slaveholder.28 Such thinking demonstrates the seared conscience the Bible talks about in 1 Timothy 4:1–2, a conscience rendered insensitive by abandoning scriptural teaching for too long. Both individuals and societies can abandon biblical principles. When society does, then it plays a significant role in searing the consciences of individuals within it with unscriptural teachings and false values.
Vincible ignorance is avoidable if one is duly attentive. Invincible ignorance occurs when a person could not have known better. The difference in the two is in acting in good faith or not.33 These two kinds of ignorance illuminate the fact that it is possible to do “things we sincerely think are good, but which actually corrupt us, others, and society as a whole.”
Knowingly facing risk or danger is necessary for an act to be courageous.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “When a man takes guilt upon himself in responsibility, he imputes his guilt to himself and no one else. He answers for it. . . . Before other men he is justified by dire necessity; before himself he is acquitted by his conscience, but before God he hopes only for grace.”
But faith as a virtue has a particular meaning, one expressed in the Bible when it explains that faith comes from the grace of God, not from human works (Eph. 2:8–9). Faith is the “instrument” that brings us to the Christ who saves us.1
The theological virtues differ from the cardinal virtues because they are not attained by human power but come from God.
New Testament scholar describes faith as having three primary elements: belief (cognitive), trust (relational), and fidelity (obedience).
It is one thing to face the temptation to deny Christ to save yourself from suffering. It is another thing altogether to face this temptation in order to end the suffering of others.
Nothing that is truly “just a formality” would be so urgently insisted upon. We easily fool ourselves about the meaninglessness of such “formalities” or mere “symbols.” People who resist getting married by insisting that formal marriage is “just a piece of paper” ironically demonstrate just how important that paper is in their very desire to avoid it.
The virtue of faith, if God has given it, might be diminished by lack of exercise and nourishment like any other virtue, but that decrease does not mean that one never had it or that it has been lost. This question is the merit of the self-examination that the parable of the wheat and the tares elicits.
In his insightful examination of Silence, Japanese artist and Christian Makoto Fujimura likens Endo’s approach to the Christian faith within his own cultural context to that of Flannery O’Connor within hers: both authors were writing to a hostile culture in which Christ was either haunting or hidden.
“As secularization has advanced and man has had to learn to live without God, his solution for the most part has been to draw closer to other people, in unprecedented, ultimately untenable ways.”
“man attributes too much agency to himself.”
Christian tragedy differs from classical tragedy in its emphasis on “the next world’s destiny being determined in the present one,” thus making it “infinitely more intense and serious than any other mode of tragedy.”
While our works cannot save us, our habits can strengthen our faith.
An understanding of faith as not only a gift that is received but also a virtue that is exercised will emphasize any single moment less and the accumulation of moments more. Fortunately, the Bible gives a clear recipe for building on the foundation of faith, which can only strengthen faith itself: “Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor
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Sometimes our faith is great. Sometimes it is small. There are times for most believers when they wonder if it is there at all. But faith tests true (or not) over time. We can grow in faith only when we recognize that our faith is imperfect.43 Our faith is perfected only in Christ, not in ourselves or our understanding: “We may speak of the virtue of faith but only if we finish it by saying ‘is Christ.’ He must be the virtue of faith because he is the object of faith. There is nothing intrinsic to faith that makes it powerful. . . . It isn’t even the act of believing itself. Christ and nothing
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In revealing our present condition, traditional, religious apocalyptic literature directs our future hope. In a religiously based apocalypse, “the suffering and pain we encounter in this life gains meaning” and “hope is restored.”
Modern apocalyptic literature, which is largely secular apocalyptic literature, demonstrates the truth about the modern condition: because we have replaced God with ourselves as the source of meaning and the center of the universe, “all we see on the horizon is our end.”4
The four conditions of hope are that it regards something good in the future that is difficult but possible to obtain.
Theological hope “is a steadfast turning toward the true fulfillment of man’s nature, that is, toward good, only when it has its source in the reality of grace in man and is directed toward supernatural happiness in God.”15 As with all spiritual gifts, its source can be nourished or quenched.16 Thus, while it originates in God, theological hope is a “habit of the will.”
There are two kinds of hopelessness: presumption and despair. Presumption (or false hope) assumes that one’s hope will be fulfilled; despair anticipates that one’s hope will never be fulfilled. Both presumption and despair “are in conflict with the truth of reality.”21 Both “destroy the pilgrim character of human existence.”
People quit relationships, jobs, and churches over unmet expectations, often expectations that were never fair or realistic in the first place.
But the human spirit is amazingly resilient and adaptable. All across the world and history, people live, or have lived, with joy in conditions that other people find unimaginable.
Within a theological context, the vices of despair and presumption concern our posture toward God’s ability and willingness to forgive sin. To presume forgiveness is a sin against God in his justice.23 Aquinas says, however, that the sin of presumption is “less grave than despair”24 because to despair is a sin against God in his goodness and mercy.
Not only is despair a vice in itself, but it can lead to further wrongs, such as choosing the pragmatism of quick fixes rather than sticking to the principle of faithfulness over the long term.
the despair that has characterized the political landscape of America of late, particularly within some parts of the Christian community. Despair has encouraged some to place more faith in political leaders than in biblical principles.
Hope is “a desire for something good in the future,” as well as “the thing in the future that we desire” and “the basis or reason for thinking that our desire may indeed be fulfilled.”
Theological hope is an implicit surrender to the help of another—God—in obtaining a good. Theological hope requires a similar recognition of one’s own limitations as required by the natural passion of hope. The magnanimous seek greatness that is within their power based on a rational assessment of what is and is not within that power.70 The presumptuous, on the other hand, “habitually regard ourselves as capable of attaining through our own powers things that in fact are impossible without help from others.
Because transcendence requires “revelation and faith,”78 the desire for transcendence is, whether recognized as such or not, ultimately the desire for God.
