Virtue Quest

The other day, I received in the mail The Sources of Christian Ethics, by the world-renowned Servais Pinckaers.

What do you mean, you’ve never heard of him?

Okay, so I’m more of a nerd than a geek, and I’m big on dudes in ethics circles. Sue me.

Anyway, I’m only about fifty pages in, but I already have so many reasons to love it:

1. He puts ethical and moral ideas into historical context – so you get a sense of why different people said the things they did
2. He sorts through the relationship between human ethics, which in theory can be known and applied by all people everywhere, and specifically Christian ethics, which is based on the revelation of Jesus Christ; this is a big question for me, since I’m after an ethical approach that can be applied universally
3. He takes head on the relationship between Greek philosophical virtue ethics and Judeo-Christian scriptural ethics, and specifically how Thomas Aquinas works with them both
4. I just love saying the name “Pinckaers” because it sounds exactly like “pink hairs” and makes me think of some Beverly Hills poodle

More to come on this, of course. But for now, I just want to cite his definition of Christian ethics:

Christian ethics is that branch of theological wisdom that studies human actions so as to direct them to the loving vision of God, which is complete happiness and our final end. This is done under the impulse of the theological and moral virtues, especially charity and justice, with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is effected through experiences of the human condition such as suffering and sin, and is implemented by laws of behavior and commandments, which reveal God’s ways to us.

Today was the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas! May he bless us all with his prayers for wisdom.

• Slept in till almost 9:00
• Prayed, don’t know for how long
• Yes, Tammie, I made my bed!
• Played cribbage with my dad
• Did some research for my other job
• Received a shipment of nummy books
• Had a couple good conversations with friends
• Made dinner for and watched a movie (“The International”) with a good friend
• Wrote a post for Virtue Quest
• Got some reading in
• Will make it to bed by midnight, probably asleep by 12:15

Building a habit of faith

It’s easy to see how faith is a theological virtue; but I think there is also a natural virtue of faith. It is the habit of believing or trusting in anyone’s ability to do any good.

I bring this up because I sometimes get depressed about my own failures or, more accurately, my not living up to my own expectations. I think, “By this time, I should be making six figures” or “Why haven’t I found Miss Right?” or “Holy crap, am I still living with my parents?”

When I’m in such a mood, it’s hard to trust anyone else. I reject compliments. I turn all Scrooge-and-Grinch-like. I get into arguments way too easily.

Faith and trust

It’s hard to trust others when I feel like I can’t trust myself. When I cease believing in my own ability to do good – or even to do any better than I have in the past – then I lose any basis for believing that anyone else can do good either.

I think there are two reasons for this. The first is that any experience of others I have is based on my own past experience; so, if I only have experience of disappointment, then I don’t really know how to believe or hope for something good.

The second reason is that I myself am the standard that I measure the world against. Sound kind of egotistical, but I think it’s just the nature of being a subject, of having a first-person perspective. So I look at others and I compare what I see of them to how I feel inside myself and then extrapolate to how that other person must feel or think or whatever.

So, if I’m feeling like a disappointment in myself, like I’m untrustworthy, then I don’t really remember those times when I actually fulfilled a trust placed in me, and I can only see people around me as better than me or the same as me.

Envy and lack of faith

When I see people as the same as me, or even as worse than me, it’s easy to understand why I don’t trust them. They’re even less trustworthy than I am!

But those I see as better than me, because I see them acting in good and noble ways, I tend to regard with envy. I tell myself that they’ve received some benefit, some gift or ability that has been denied to me. I envy them, and don’t trust them because of spite.

And I think that’s the ultimate problem I have in practicing natural faith: I keep referring to myself as the standard. But faith requires me to open up and let other people be other than I am – to let them be themselves. And to trust that they really can be themselves without conforming to my standard for myself. Moreover, to trust that they might have some insight into the world, even into me, that I don’t have.

Faith means remembering that the world does not revolve around me.

Theological faith

The gift of faith, as the Christian tradition articulates it, forms the basis for relating to God as a person. But it is not all that different from the natural virtue I’ve been describing. As Thomas Aquinas says somewhere, “Grace builds on nature.” (Anyone know where he says that? I admit I don’t know!)

Faith is the foundation of any personal relationship: trusting another to be him- or herself. And trusting that they also trust me to be myself: just one person among billions … yet still unique.

A New Year's Toast

About a year ago, I wrote a post about New Year’s resolutions on another, now-defunct, blog. The truth is, I’d been debating whether I should repost it here, and I’ve been afraid to because (like so many people) I didn’t really keep my resolutions very well. But a friend asked me about the post, so … here ’tis. It’s a reminder of where I was a year ago, and of the kind of progress I still want to make.

A quick disclaimer: the other blog was more explicitly aimed at my fellow Catholics than this one is, so in the post my assumption was that the readers were or knew something about Catholics.

For the Church, today, the First Sunday of Advent, is the beginning of the new year. It is also a penitential season, a time to repent, reform, and renew. Which puts me in mind of a more secular tradition: new year’s resolutions.

I’m going to make a new year’s resolution, and I’m going to begin now, at the beginning of the Church year. This is my resolution: to grow in my life in Christ. This resolution has three simple parts: pray, learn, and serve.

And I invite anyone to join me in this resolution. Grow in life with Christ: pray, learn, serve. After all, this is what we should be doing as Christians anyway.

Now, as for me, I know I’d fail by tomorrow morning if I left it as vague as that. So here are some concrete steps I’m going to take to fulfill this resolution.

Pray. I’m going to schedule half an hour of private prayer every day. I’m putting it in my schedule so that the time is protected, and so that I don’t come up with excuses to avoid it. I know myself well enough to know I’ll take any excuse I can find.

Learn. I’m going to read through at least one article of St. Thomas’ Summa Theologica every day. St. Thomas is still regarded as the most comprehensive theologian in the history of the Church, and he has a certain pride of place in the Dominican order. And moreover, he has a way of surprising me every time I read him closely. This will be a good way for me to make sure I’m growing in my knowledge of Christ.

Serve will be a bit trickier, since most of the Christian life can be seen as some kind of service. But the part I struggle most with is time management: I spend time I should be working for other people on distracting or entertaining myself. So I’m creating a fairly comprehensive schedule for myself, to hold myself accountable to actually spending my time serving other people. I’m also making sure that my leisure time is protected, and plan to use it in truly recreational activities — but more on recreation vs. distraction in another post.

In short, I’m focusing on one simple way I can improve my prayer, my learning, and my service. It won’t make me into the perfect Christian, but that’s not my goal right now. My goal right now is to grow in my life in Christ. Maybe I’ll grow more than I’m laying out here; but at least I’ll do this much. And I will trust that God will use all my efforts — and even my failures, since I know I’ll fall short from time to time — to draw me deeper into his life.

I’ll try to reflect on how it’s going for me over the course of the coming year. And I’ll welcome comments from you if you decide to join me. I’m doing it now, but maybe you’ll try it at some other point: for Lent, or starting on your fortieth birthday, or whenever. Just remember, the goal is simple:

Grow in life in Christ.

1. Pray
2. Learn
3. Serve

Good for the soul

I was going to confession once, and the priest pointed out to me that what my sins had in common was that they were sins against hope.

Not to excuse myself, but more to say “it takes one to know one,” I think I see a lack of hope – or even an opposition to hope – all around us in the American culture. And I think this “sinning against hope” is at the root of many problems in the world today.

Hope … for what?

Thomas Aquinas says that the object of hope is a future good, difficult but possible to obtain. This deceptively simple definition has four parts:

• Hope seeks a good - i.e., it looks for something truly desirable and worthy
• The good that hope seeks is in the future - it is not something we can have here and now, or even immediately
• This good is difficult to achieve – it is not something that will simply come to us, that we can take for granted
• Yet, it is possible - it is not a fantasy, or a daydream, but is something real and within the grasp of those who strive for it

Beauty is always worth striving after

For myself, I find I fail on every one of these points. For example, I hope to be a good bass guitarist. But there are times I just don’t feel that playing music is very important or worthwhile. Or I grow impatient and figure if I can’t be a rock star right now then I’d rather not play at all. Or I give up in frustration, not wanting to endure the effort and pain of practice. Or, worst of all, I despair of ever improving, imagining that I am missing some vital talent or gift.

In all these cases, though, the objection is summed up easily: “Why bother?”

Why bother?

I hear variations of this objection all the time. I hear it from co-workers: “Who’s going to find out?” I hear it from friends: “Eh, whatever.” I hear it from my own heart: “I’d rather just watch TV.”

The problem here is that we lose touch with reality. Whether we wallow in a wishful fantasy or settle for a lesser or easier goal, to lose hope is to let go of the truth that good things are worth pursuing. It is to forget that music really is beautiful, and that there is a unique beauty that can only come through my own fingers.

It is to believe the lie that this – whatever situation we’re in, whether personal or political or practical – that this is as good as it’s going to get, and nothing we do can make it any better.

Despair says: “It’ll never be perfect.” But hope says, “It can always be better.”

And the virtue of hope is repeating, reminding, building the habit in myself and others of always doing things even a little bit better.