Virtue and Understanding

Devotional Classics, Theologia Germanica, Excerpts from The Theologia Germaica of Martin Luther

"It may be commendable to ask, hear about, and gather information concerning good and holy persons, or how they have lived and how God has worked and willed in and through them. But it is a hundredfold better that people deeply within themselves learn and understand the what and the how of life. They need to learn what God is working and doing in them and how God wishes to use them and not use them." (p. 150)

"Nothing succeeds like success" the saying goes. So I find myself looking around myself, surfing the internet, or reading the latest personal or even church growth books, looking for success in virtue and getting things right. Somehow I think that the last bit of info didn't take because I didn't get just the "right" answer. I have read many a devotion book like a recipe or instruction manual, hoping that if I just get the proper procedure, I will break into that new and wonderful life and escape my old dead habits.

The temptation to accumulate knowledge is strong nowadays, since so much information is available and easily accessed. Really, that is only what it is: "gathering information." Somehow intelligence and success have been tied to this practice of gathering information. The other night I asked my family, "What does a really smart person look like?" I must admit that being full of information and facts came quickly to my mind.

I think James would agree with the writer of the Theologia in his assessment of this gathering of information. "Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such 'wisdom' does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, and of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice." (3:13-16) Gathering information generally does not go deep enough or inside enough to be useful.

Virtue cannot be learned or achieved in this way. The hard, fast throw of gathering information skips across the water of my mind, leaving little waves that quickly disappear. The writer suggests three things to submerge virtue and the right way to live into my life.

First, I need to learn and understand deeply. This sort of learning comes from reading and rereading material. I find that this precludes either skimming or merely quoting a mere phrase. Skimming and retaining quotes can remind me of things I have learned, but cannot replace learning and understanding. So I find that merely reading the Bible without studying it or memorizing verses without pondering or memorizing the surrounding context yields little understanding. However a person finds it, this deep understanding takes time and effort to work it from the surface of the mind into the "inner parts" of the mind, where it can influence a person's heart. The slowness of this kind of learning frustrates me when I am in a hurry and impatient for change, but without it, knowledge can never go deep enough to effect virtue at all. With spiritual knowledge, which is necessary for virtue, prayer must accompany my efforts because, as James says, such wisdom "comes down from heaven" and is not attainable merely through my own thinking.

Second, the content of my learning must embrace "the what and the how of life." I think of the "what" of life as the everyday, moment-by-moment occurrences I experience and effect. Whatever good things I may think about must be true to real life as it happens. I have children, a wife, a job, and I live in the presence and creation of God. Many seemingly "great" thoughts leave out or run over the "what" in life, making them impracticable. Virtue must be framed by real life to be real virtue. Now I find that virtue always involves real changes in my life, but they are changes that have more to do with my habits and expectations than with my circumstances.

The "how" of life is that most things do not happen just because I want them to. Prayer leads to action and action back to prayer in my experience. Virtue must be approached with much thought, but it must not stay there. It must be practiced. But one the realities of virtue is that it generally cannot be practiced directly without falling into hypocrisy or despair. I cannot merely practice being humble, or stopping anger. These sorts of things have to be approached indirectly. Studying them helps me a lot. I follow it by studying myself in God's presence, observing what leads me into virtue or away from him and his virtues (called the Examen of Conscience and Consciousness).

This leads into the last suggestion. He says I need to learn "what God is working and doing" in me. When I understand that virtue can only come to me through everyday life, I must learn to see it coming through my everyday life. When I learn that virtue comes only with practice and discipline, I must seek and find disciplines and practices that will address my specific problems and strengths. This requires walking with God. He addresses me as I pray and study as well as when I reflect on my day in the evenings and helps me to find certain holy habits that will indirectly deal with my barriers to virtue.

Lord, it is so nice to see continuity in so many writers who address developing a virtuous life. I like writing about it. Would that I was better at doing it. So many things come through "fits and starts," but you are faithful in driving them deeper into my heart by your grace. Let me not work too hard, forgetting your love and kindness. Let me not be lazy, forgetting your desire for Christ to live in me. May I live up to my words and up to your hopes, Father. Amen.

This reminds me about how I need to practice my personal reflection (Examen) more faithfully. This is one of the great things about reading writers like this and pondering them is that I can more easily see when I have left something important behind. In our family, we sing a song, "You've got to look behind you, before you move on to the next thing" so that we don't forget our things when we go somewhere else. Perhaps I'll being using that for my prayer in the evenings, so I don't leave anything important behind.