The Road to Virtue and Away From It

Devotional Classics, Benedict of Nursia, Excerpts from The Rule

"The ninth step of humility is to withhold our tongue from speaking, keeping silence until we are asked. . . . The eleventh step of humility is to speak with few and sensible words." (p.180)

"Do not be quick with your mouth,

Do not be hasty in your heart

To utter anything before God.

God is in heaven and you are on earth

So let your words be few." (Ecclesiastes 5: 2-3)

"First you say it, then you do it." (Bill Cosby)

I have found that there are some general steps on the road of wrong doing. The first steps have to do with what I think. I forget God. I choose to dwell on what I want mostly. I put other peoples' needs out of my head. I ponder what would feel the best. I think about how to hide my tracks the best. I also focus on how miserable I am without the object of my desire.

These actions of the mind are counteracted by Benedict's steps toward humility. He lists these activities for the mind: Reverence for God, Doing God's Will, Obedience to Others, Enduring Affliction, Confession, and Contentment. In practicing these, I cut at the root of a thought life that wanders into wrong doing.

Then there are steps on the road of wrong doing that I take more through actions. I tend to boast and talk about myself much. I look for ways to get out of doing what I should do. I look for noise and distraction. I try to find things that will make me laugh and feel good. I write and speak with great explanation and defensiveness. I become more concerned with how I look to other people.

Benedict also addresses these in The Rule with Self-Reproach, Obeying the Common Rule, Silence, Seriousness, Simple Speech, and Humility in Appearance. With these actions I find that humility begins to find a place to stay in my life. When my thoughts being to seek God presence and his will through obedience and sincerity, my body begins to follow suit with less boasting, more silence and simplicity.

In particular, my mouth indicates which road I am traveling. It is not uncommon for my mouth to speak what has been on my mind for quite some time. This is not surprising, but does take me by surprise. I am shocked at what I say a times. Further, my mouth also tends to predict what I will eventually do. It may not be literal, but it certainly is real.

So, I may find myself thinking that I deserve to be treated better than I feel I am being treated at work or at home. This will be followed by complaints about how I am treated. Such complaints will be followed by my actions to "get even" with those I see as my attackers. I neglect my work or try to make my kids do things to appreciate me more through laying guilt on them.

So these steps of humility are real disciplines that can bring about humility and steer me from wrong-doing. Such steps can never bring anything without a real desire to please God and a real intention to begin, but they do give some ideas about how my mouth can stop its part in wrong-doing.

I have found that holding my tongue can stop the progression of wrong-doing long enough for me to be reminded of God's presence or my contentment in him. These things can become habits that give space for virtue in my life. Being silent or content are not virtues in themselves, but rather create a path for virtue - a real desire for good - to come rest in my life.

Lord, help me develop thoughts and actions that will house virtue in my life. The desire for good is what makes this life worth living. You alone are good, Father. Let virtue be the tie that draws me nearer to you each day. Amen.

Each word I say or don't say can be a road on which God is invited into my life or sent away from my life. May my words be few and inviting of God and his good.

The Virtue of Humility

Devotional Classics, Benedict of Nursia, Excerpts from The Rule

"Friends, the Holy Scriptures cry out to us saying, 'Everyone that exalts himself shall be humbled; and he that humbles himself shall be exalted.' Therefore, they show us that every exaltation of ourselves is a kind of pride." (p.178)

Benedict's twelve steps of humility cover both the negative and the positive aspects of humility. The negative is putting to death self-exaltation and the positive, a right attitude toward God and oneself.

For all his severity, Benedict begins with the positive aspects: reverence for God, doing God's will, submission to others, enduring affliction, confession, and contentment. Some of these certainly push against my desire to exalt myself because they place me under God and other people, but the focus seems to be on recovering and enjoying my relationships with God and other people. I have found much freedom in submission and confession. Although the way can be difficult, the results bring joy and peace.

The negative aspects are harder to deal with: self-reproach, obeying the common rule, silence, seriousness, simple speech, and humility in appearance. Because of the great abuses of some of these, both in my personal life and historically, some of these steps are hard to use for me. For me, self-reproach and seriousness tend to move me toward self-obsession, which is far from God or humility. However, properly understood each of these can really aid humility by limiting self-exaltation. Silence and simple speech can be quite powerful in limiting self-exaltation.

Benedict locates humility and pride on opposite ends of the spectrum. Where pride is almost the ultimate vice, humility is a very important virtue. Jesus says it is required for entry into the kingdom of God (Matthew 18:3). Efforts toward humility, then are important both in their positive outcome - entry into the kingdom - and their negative outcome - overcoming pride. An interesting point is that pride can only be overcome with humility. Perhaps another way of understanding it is that pride is the absence of humility.

For some reason, it is more natural to think of humility as the absence of pride. Most likely, this comes from a typical cultural bias that sees virtue as merely the absence of vice, peace is no war, love is no hate, etc. However, as C.S. Lewis says in The Weight of Glory

If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive. . . . The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not of primarily securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if abstinence and not happiness was the important point.

And so humility tends to carry the idea of low self-esteem, self-hatred, and spinelessness. A lack of pride does not humility make.

Perhaps Benedict starts with the positive aspect of humility first because of this tendency. Just as love is not merely going without good things for ourselves, but more creating good in and for others, humility is not so much about cutting ourselves down as it is bringing others up. "Do everything without selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others." (Philippians 2:3-4) Humility is the freedom to let others (including God himself) succeed and to enjoy their progress and achievement with a lack of concern for myself. I guess more simply, it is letting God exalt me.

Following such practices as doing God's will, contentment, or confession will bring quick inner objections. So to practice these without inner turmoil and pain, Benedict suggests the negative disciplines to remove the heartache of pride. Humility pushes pride out of my heart and the pushing hurts. So pride must be deflated and destroyed. Self-exaltation inflames pride. Obeying rules, silence, seriousness, and simple speech encourage humility and limit self-exaltation, the primary food of pride.

Lord, what a wonderful promise you've given! You want to exalt me. You want to exalt everyone. You want to share your glory with each of us. I do not believe it most of the time and do not leave room for your pleasure. Help to let my defenses down through training in what I say and do so that I might receive your exaltation: being lowly like Jesus. Amen.

How timely! I have an opportunity to seek humility through enduring affliction and silence in dealing with a person who has not been kind to me. No doubt I will find ways in which I have not been kind to him as well. Funny how these things come up as I write this blog. It certainly brings a sense of realism to the rather "heady" discussion. Mostly, I find that God guides me each day so that these virtues do not remain dead in a book, but can come alive in practice. Perhaps I will find a way to confess to this person and grow out of my fears.

Virtue and Reverence

Devotional Classics, Benedict of Nursia, Excerpts from The Rule

"The first step of humility is to have a constant reverence for God before our eyes. We must shun our tendency of forgetfulness and be always mindful of God's commands." (p.179)

I am ashamed of some of the things I have placed before my eyes. There it is. Should I describe more? No need. Shameful images pollute everyday paths now.

How can I hope to bring a constant reverence before my eyes? I could have a cross before me like a donkey with cart has a carrot before it. Comical, but there may be something to it. Pictures are easily digested by the mind. I see some things and then they are burned on my mind as an image. I need to place pictures before my eyes that bring the image of God before my mind. Some pictures can help. Certainly the creation is one such picture if viewed rightly.

The image of God that Benedict uses are his commands. Not just pictures, but words can bring images to mind. "He makes me lie down in green pastures" or "[His commands] are more precious than gold, much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey from the comb." God's commands bring me the image of his fatherly love when I understand them correctly.

I am mindful of God's commands when talking about them, keeping symbols or words that remind me of them, and writing about them (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). Such concentration on God's commands brings reverence before my eyes as well. I see the world differently. With the "glasses of reverence," I see it as God's creation giving praise to him instead of as merely Matt's candy shop to satisfy whatever craving I might have.

This is good. Humility does come from this sort of viewing of the world. I see my place within God's kingdom as a son and a creation, who needs a Father's guiding hand. Virtue comes not from merely obeying God's commands, but allowing them to change my whole way of seeing into constant reverence and my whole way of being into humility.

Lord, I cannot hope to grow in virtue without such reverence and humility. I have spent long enough following the god of my stomach. I want to live in fear of you, that is, seeking your approval above everything else. Place your word continually in my mind so that a constant reverence might be before my eyes. Amen.

Virtue and Blind Faith

Devotional Classics, Blaise Pascal, Excerpts from Pensees

"I [Jesus] do not mean you to believe me submissively and without reason; I do not claim to subdue you by tyranny. Nor do I claim to account to you for everything. To reconcile these contradictions I mean to show you clearly, by convincing proofs, marks of divinity within me which will convince you of what I am, and establish my authority by miracles and proofs you cannot reject so that you will then believe the things I teach, finding no reason to reject them but your own inability to tell whether they are true or not." (p.174-175)

I have faced the tyranny of blind faith. I have been eaten alive with doubts and fears because I longed to hear God, to be near God. I was told faith did not need such things. Faith, I was told, is accepting what God has given and not demanding any more from God. We have the Bible. We have the promise of heaven. That is enough.

I found that such faith amounted to not much more than fatalism. Maybe I could make a few waves in my own little pool, but mostly I should just swim in the tank and not look beyond the glass. I found myself seeking to connect with other people since I obviously could not connect with God. He was out of the fish bowl.

Such tyranny has only been broken by the works of God. I could not have hoped in him unless the good news he preached worked. God needed to do something or say something to be real. A mere description of God is not enough; I need contact. So God came and changed things in my life I could not change myself. I saw him in the work he did in me. The good news made sense because it came to me: I could be like him and he could be with me.

God is not real like something I see and touch, but I do see him like I see the wind: by his works inside me and around me. What I am surprised about is that this is a surprise to me. But it is. Somehow I was taught to trust in God but not count on him. Since "his ways and higher than my ways," I could never be sure about him. What that translated into was this: only use God as a last resort. He probably won't come through. Go ahead and pray, but don't count on anything.

Yet, this same God, who probably wouldn't do much, demanded that I check in with him, or something bad might happen. Thus prayer and worship found their place. They were the cosmic time punch cards, to prove that I "believed" in God. This definitely looked like tyranny. No wonder I shook my fist at God when something bad happened and said, "Why me? I've been good!"

When God pulled me out of my muck and vice and put new and virtuous desires in my heart and mind, I found that he was not like that at all. He wants to be with me. (I hope that all the accusations I made against him will be overlooked because I really thought he was someone else.) He wants me to be like him. He wants to work with me as well. I certainly will not understand everything he is doing, but I will not be acting without reason or desire either.

Pascal's description of tyranny as the demand to believe submissively without reason really describes much of what I hear about faith. I am grateful to say it has little to do with God. His goodness is not just in a showcase or "mystery," it is meant to be practiced and used in life. Godliness and contentment that come from blind faith seem to look a lot like fatalism, but instead real contentment is the joy of knowing that the smaller things I am working with will yield bigger things I could not have dreamed when God's hands are at work over mine. Blind faith will not bring me virtue anymore than watching a football game will make me an athlete.

Lord, save me from the tyranny of this bland, blind faith! I want to see that you are real and work with you in real ways, not just in platitudes and empty sentiment. Let your kingdom come! Open the heavens and descend on me, on all who long for your coming and your work. Let the words without power dissipate and no longer distract anyone from following you with their whole life. Amen.

Virtue and Goodness

Devotional Classics, Blaise Pascal, Excerpt from Pensees

"To make us happy [true religion] must show us that a God exists whom we are bound to love, that our only true bliss is to be in him, and our sole ill to be cut off from him." (p.172)

I said to the LORD, "You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing." (Ps. 16:2)

I am delighted by this one thought: the gifts that God gives are so I can recognize and come to enjoy his goodness. What if God gave me good things, but was not really that good in himself? I would think he was bribing or tricking me. So his gifts are not good unless he himself is good.

Not only that, but that when I come to understand something true, it also brings me to love, admire, and worship God all the more. If the statement "The truth hurts" were always true, then I would not come to love the one who is the foundation of all truth and reality very much. The truth hurts only inasmuch as I come to find that reality and truth are what I run into when I am wrong. "True religion" brings me to a God I am "bound to love."

I can now seek him beyond and through the gifts he gives, taking them as pictures of his goodness. Without his goodness beyond the gifts, they could just as easily be bribes or distractions. When they bring me into a real relationship with him, they add to the bliss of knowing him by becoming signs and images of his great love for me and his great ambition to make me like Jesus.

A few months ago I gave Dawn a little statue of a couple dancing together after I had gone off to a spiritual retreat. I intended that the gift remind us both of the centrality of our relationship to my spiritual formation and work with God. I hoped that the gift would be a reminder of my love for her and my aspiration to be together in our life work for God.

When the goodness of God does not underlie the gifts I receive, I am always drawn to finding more gifts. They feed and exacerbate a hunger I have for true love and true goodness while not filling it. They can even blind me to God himself because of the intensity of my hunger. Somehow, my blind hunger for God becomes the very thing that keeps me from him when I try to live on mere desire. It is only when the consumption of mere gifts from God brings me to hopelessness that I can look beyond them and see that my "sole ill [is] to be cut off from him."

The continual embracing of God's goodness beyond his gifts begins with thankfulness. It moves on to worship. With worship comes virtue. Virtue is the imitation of the goodness of God admired in worship and embraced with thankfulness. If I do not walk with virtue, can I say that I have truly seen the goodness of God?

Lord, grant me a continuing vision of your goodness as I walk and live in this world. Let each breath, each sight, each word, each sound be the overtures to your goodness. As I become more aware of the goodness that lies beyond each thing, let me become good as you are. I know my gifts will reflect what is in me. Let it be virtue, my imitation of your goodness in the life you've given me to live. Amen.

Virtue and a Way Out

Devotional Classics, Blaise Pascal, Excerpt from Pensees

"Thus wishing to appear openly to those who seek him with all their heart and hidden from those who shun him with all their heart, he has qualified our knowledge of him by giving signs which can be seen by those who seek him and not by those who do not. There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition." (p.175)

It seems there is plenty of darkness about. I am distressed when I read the news. I talk with people who are unhappy, sick, and tired. Even the good things in life seem to require so much work. It seems there is more than enough darkness to justify a "contrary disposition" when it comes to seeing God. I sympathize deeply with people who just can't see.

There is a part of me that wants to see the darkness. I used to fantasize about what I would do if something really terrible happened to me, like losing my whole family in a car crash. Then I would really let people have it, I used to say to myself. I would really tell them what I think. Somehow the thought of losing everything gave me a certain pride, a sense of hurt self-righteousness. I would be excused for being mean and losing myself in whatever pleasure I wanted because I had lost so much.

I don't play that fantasy anymore. Yet I do find that the darkness that I dwell on still gives me that "contrary disposition" and often precedes thoughtless acts that hurt myself and others around me. Somehow I need to give myself permission to be mean or lustful. I've heard this is not uncommon.

I have begun to get into a different habit. When the darkness closes in, I have started to call out, "Help!" to God. Usually, for a while I dwell on it or muddle around in it. I am beginning to realize when I'm stuck though. I pull and complain and eventually begin to despair. So I yell, "Help!"

You know what? God comes. Sometimes immediately; usually soon. His words to me change everything, even when the circumstances don't change. That is the power of his words. They bring light into that dark place. It doesn't necessarily take a lot of light to brighten some of those holes. And light always means a way out.

So virtue becomes a way out of my present darkness. It is not a mere "good thing to do" or credit in heaven or points with God. Virtue reminds me to look up when I'm stuck in that hole. It is the habit and practice of looking up at certain points in the day because very likely very soon I will be looking down at myself buried in trouble. Reading the Bible. Saying a practiced prayer. Helping someone out. Hugging a crying child. Such deliberate acts, whether regular or habitual, cause me to look up and cry "Help" in the darkest hours.

On the other end, vices and sins and addictions may take me away from my problem for a moment, but I only find myself buried deeper when I come back. And the darkness deepens. Such things are what I do when I give up and feel despair. "Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die" is a statement of the utmost despair.

Lord, thank you for providing ways out of the darkness. There is indeed enough light to come after you. You are light; I need only look up. Lift up my eyes so I can see you each day, especially when the darkness is deep. Amen.

When a person is lost in the woods, they need to stay still and call out. What gets people killed is running around and trying to save themselves in a panic. What a good picture of virtue: stop and cry out. What a sobering picture of sin: run around until you fall off a cliff. Both lost. Both found. One alive and one dead.

Virtue and Pain

Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life, John Calvin, from Chapters 3-5

In short, knowing that whatever may happen is ordained by the Lord, he will receive it with a peaceful and thankful heart, that he may not be guilty of proudly resisting the rule of him to whom he has once committed himself and all his belongings.

Far be it from the heart of a Christian to accept the foolish and wretched consolation of the heathen philosophers who tried to harden themselves against adversity by blaming Fortune or Fate for it. They thought that it was foolish to be displeased with our lot, because there is a blind and cruel power in the world which deals blows to everyone, worthy and unworthy.

For he does not afflict to destroy or ruin us, but rather to deliver us from the condemnation of the world.

Scripture points out this difference between believers and unbelievers; the latter, as old slaves of their incurable perversity, cannot endure the rod; but the former, like children of noble birth, profit by repentance and correction.

For despair will be the end of those who let their patience slip into indifference and who contend that a man is strong and courageous when he makes himself a senseless block. On the contrary, Scripture praises the saints for their patience when they are severely afflicted by their adversities, but not broken and overcome by them; when they are bitterly distressed, but nevertheless filled with spiritual joy; when they are weighed down by anxiety and become exhausted, and yet leap for joy because of the divine consolation.

Nevertheless, our constant efforts to lower our estimate of the present world should not lead us to hate life or to be ungrateful toward God.

When we have come to this conclusion that our life in this world is a gift of God’s mercy which we ought to remember with gratitude because we owe it to him, it will then be time for us to consider its misery.

This we may positively state, that nobody has made any progress in the school of Christ unless he cheerfully looks forward to the day of his death and the day of the final resurrection.

For not only is a passion for earthly things accompanied by almost all other vices, but he who is impatient under privation will commonly betray the opposite vice when he is in luxury. This means that he who is ashamed of a simple garment will be proud of a glamorous one.

Pain is a great teacher, at least potentially. I do not say this because I see "lessons" in all pain or that it is handed out fairly, as I see it. I am speaking merely from my own life. Pain teaches me desperation. It peals back the curtain of this world to show the darkness that taints even the brightest moments. It makes me long for something else, something better, something relieving.

Pain is a great motivator. I do not say this because it always accompanies my wrong-doing. I can see how pain alerts me to the my needs. It can bring me to my knees in surrender or despair. It makes me see that something - maybe me, maybe this life, maybe someone - is wrong and needs fixing.

Pain pushes me into decisions. It forces me to my feet to find help. Pain makes me beg for solutions, answers, or at least relief. It only listens when its cause is addressed.

There's nothing really profound about this. What is surprising is that the typical answer to pain is consistent. Along with pain-killers for bodily pain, anti-depressants for emotional pain, there is philosophy for spiritual pain. Calvin calls such explanations a "wretched consolation" that "hardens" a person so that he considers himself "strong and courageous when he makes himself a senseless block" by saying, "There is a blind and cruel power in the world which deals blows to everyone, worthy and unworthy."

I am not against lessening pain. I take ibuprofen for all sorts of aches and pains. There is much pain that cannot be helped by medicine, however. If pain can only be lessened a little, then life is despair. Lessening pain only postpones this conclusion.

I think Calvin has a good point when he writes, "When we have come to this conclusion that our life in this world is a gift of God’s mercy which we ought to remember with gratitude because we owe it to him, it will then be time for us to consider its misery." Without the lens of grace, I cannot hope to work through pain and suffering. Unless I understand that God gives grace that overcomes all pain, even up to a tortured death, I will not be able to handle misery in this world. Whatever misery pain and suffering can deal out, God can trump with the good news of Christ.

Only in faith and trust in God to this degree can make suffering a teacher and a motivator. Calvin puts it better. Suffering in light of God's powerful grace can "deliver [me] from the condemnation of the world," make me "profit by repentance and correction," help me to "leap for joy because of the divine consolation," not lead me to "hate life or to be ungrateful toward God," but "cheerfully look forward to the day of [my] death and the day of the final resurrection."

This is indeed a powerful motivator for virtue in my life, especially when I realize how much of my pain is caused by sin and carelessness. Suffering quickly dispels "passion for earthly things" which accompanies "almost all other vices" when it is laid in God's hands. I will have my day when I call out in agony "Why have you forsaken me?" For that day I pray, "Deliver me from evil" and "May I never, no, never outlive my love to Thee."

Lord, I cannot explain nor understand all pain and suffering, but I do know that whatever suffering may come my way will not overcome your grace to me. Let me come to you, even when you do not take the pain away, and put my suffering into your hands to keep and watch as you comfort me on that day. I am never alone. You are with me forever. Amen.

Rather than panic in the face of suffering, I hope to learn how to pray and wait on God. Frantic solutions and fearful dreading are my usual responses. I want to learn how to put my pain in God's hands and not be led into sins that "deaden" pain or express my anger in the midst of pain.