The Virtues in Three Parts

These divisions are far from watertight, but I find them helpful because they help me to pinpoint where I or other people are having difficulty. And they encourage me when I fail because I see that these things are in fact marvellous, and hard.

Please overlook these categories if they send you towards legalism. The last thing I want is for people to be approaching virtue as a series of tasks to accomplish. Better to learn that our living is for God’s glory, and that all things – even the most humble – are to this end. Then who will stop us from being simply, extravagantly, unpredictably, joyfully virtuous.

Part the First: The Good Virtues

These are the virtues of avoiding temptation and resisting evil, and choosing good. They may sometimes appear passive, but, in truth, are nothing of the sort. Each person has some easy, pleasant or habitual wrongs that take great moments of courage and control to be thwarted, as well as a great love for what is right and good.

Part the Second: The Kind Virtues

These are virtues sometimes of deed and always of manner. They are the virtues of not only choosing rightly, but also choosing kindly. These virtues clothe the Good Virtues with humility, kindness and gladness. They are the virtues that say yes. They are the virtues that see a need and meet it.

Part the Third: The Extravagant Virtues

These virtues can be the hardest to learn, for they are foolish and demanding, knowing only the wisdom of the extravagant God who gave up his Son. These virtues are disproportionate, sometimes opposite to what is deserved. They love bountifully, they care happily for another even when this brings suffering. These virtues befriend the unlovely and open hearts to the unkind. These are the virtues that show mercy and forgiveness to anyone.

And then there are the other virtues of discernment, of rebuke, of perseverance, of defending truths. And of all the virtues, the most excellent is love. I can have all else, but if I have not love, I am nothing. And this is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

Plagiarism: Real Sex

I was lent this book and read it to be nice and because I thought it might be good to give to other people. Ha! my arrogance has been floored! It's a great book.

"What sits at the center of Christian sexual ethics is not a negative view of sex . . . Rather, the heart of the Christian story about sex is a vigorously positive statement: sex was created for marriage.
. . .

God's vision for humanity is established in the Garden of Eden, and the uniqueness and one-ness of the marriage relationship between Adam and Eve is inaugurated in Genesis 1-2. In the first chapters of Genesis, we learn that God created a relationship between Adam and Eve. . . . In a graphic speech, Adam speaks of his and Eve's becoming one flesh.
. . .

The no to sex outside marriage seems arbitrary and cruel apart from the Creator's yes to sex within marriage.
. . .

Marriage . . . instructs the church in what to look for when the kingdom comes - eternal, intimate union.

And singleness prepares us for the other piece of the end of time, the age when singleness trumps marriage. Singleness tutors us in our primary, heavenly relationship with one another: siblings in Christ.
. . .

Singleness tells us . . . of a radical dependence on God.
. . .

In singleness we see not only where our true dependence lies, but also who and what our real family is. Singleness reminds Christians that the church is our primary family.
. . .

Single Christians remind the rest of us that our truest, realest, most lasting relationship is that of sibling: even husband and wife are first and foremost brother and sister. Baptismal vows are prior to wedding vows."

From Real Sex: the naked truth about chastity by Lauren F. Winner

The Government's Aboriginal Reform Program

The government's Aboriginal reforms are fascinating, but I doubt this is new. There has probably been much fascinating research and ideas before now. However, these reforms seem to be, at the very least, a step in the right direction – because they are a step and because that step is more good than bad (or so I see it). I have no doubt it is all complex philosophically and no doubt it will prove even more complex as it works out (or doesn't) on the ground. No doubt it's one of those things you can't say much about unless you know the situation and the people intimately. So I'll just comment on one thing.

As I understand it, Aboriginal people will be convicted for the sins they have committed. Men will go to jail for abusing children. Parents will have their welfare payments controlled by someone responsible if their children are neglected or don't go to school. This is right and good.

As I understand it, the idea and hope behind the reforms is that people will end up taking responsibility, that they will recreate a purposeful life for themselves and their families, that they will regain the confidence and ability to redefine social norms for this time and place. This is all good, but its full realisation is unrealistic. Aboriginal people are messy, screwed up people, in exactly the same way as Anglo people are, or people of any other race. Those of us, Aboriginal and Anglo, who have been fortunate to grow up with a clear identity and a solid moral framework and with parents taking good care of us might be a bit more 'together'. But even when we're given the best of everything we're a sorry lot.

What Aboriginal people need more than a new structure (though that is sorely needed) and what Anglo people need more than a good society is forgiveness and new life. We all need forgiveness for our perverse and uncaring thoughts and deeds. We all need something other than ourselves, something greater and better than ourselves to help us be kind, to help us act with love.

And praise God! we have it in Jesus, in his dying on the cross for us, in the Middle East two thousand years ago. He died for the Jews of the Middle East, for the Aborigines of Australia, for the English who later settled/invaded this land, for all men of all nations, today. He is hope and joy and comfort and healing for everyone.

Paul's Passion*

“A man has his father's wife.” “There is jealously and quarreling among you.” “Some of you have become arrogant.” “One brother goes to law against another.” “When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk.” “If it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?”

What would we think of and say to a church like this? What do we say to people like this, people who call themselves Christian?

Are we as harsh as Paul? “Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.” “I will come to you very soon, if the Lord is willing, and then I will find out not only how these arrogant people are talking, but what power they have. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. What do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a whip, or in love and with a gentle spirit?” “If you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church! I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers?” “In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good.” “Brothers, stop thinking like children.” “Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God—I say this to your shame. But someone may ask, 'How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?' How foolish!”

How can the same man write the following things? “I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus.” “I am not writing this to shame you, but to warn you, as my dear children.” “I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the teachings, just as I passed them on to you.” “My love to all of you in Christ Jesus.”

Do we see that it is out of love that he is so angry and blunt? Do we see that he's not just some arse-kicking guy, but that he cares deeply for these people and for his God's honour?

And we? Do we so love our brothers and sisters, those under our care, that we are as troubled by their sin, that we speak so bold?

And are we as confident that all will be well? Do we also say, “He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ”?

I know I don't, but I pray that I will.

* Quotes all taken from 1 Corinthians

Teaching Children

“What people will remember is what you're passionate about.” That's what Don Carson says about preaching. I agree and I think it extends further than that. I've been thinking about growing up in the church and about what children and teenagers are taught. I believe there is a great danger in just teaching true things. The danger is that kids will come away with a miscellany of truths without knowing how those truths connect or what their foundation is. They may even know that the cross is the central thing, but they won't necessarily figure out how.

This is dangerous because a kid's world is all about good and bad, punishment and reward, rules and consequences, so when they look at the miscellany, they will likely see a call to be good. Our children will not see grace unless someone shows them. They may grow up with the great blessing (I mean this) of knowing what is right and wrong, but with little grasp of the righteousness of God, with little awareness that God is familiar with our sin and has already answered it, without the motivation of doing good from security and out of thankfulness, without the knowledge that the Lord Jesus will help us in our struggle and that it will all be over and better in heaven. Let's do our best to teach these things to our kids.

Not that it will ever be safe – for even if our teaching is right and true and as it should be, there is the danger of neglecting to model it. And there is also the danger of all our preaching and living being before little ones whose hearts are yet hard. We must pray that we will speak and act as we should and that they will listen and act (and in their turn speak) as they should.

Plagiarism: The Trouble with Principle

Stanley Fish is a generally sharp thinking atheist, who here hoes into pluralism. It's all been said before, but rarely so well. Enjoy the clarity of his prose, I bid you.

" . . . [R]eligion can be part of university life so long as it renounces its claim to have a privileged purchase on the truth, which of course is the claim that defines a religion as a religion as opposed to a mere opinion.

It's a great move whereby liberalism, in the form of academic freedom, gets to display its generosity while at the same time cutting the heart out of the views to which that generosity is extended . . . . [It] asks you to be morally thin; and it does this by asking you to conceive of yourself not as someone who is committed to something but as someone who is committed to respecting the commitments of those with whom he disagrees.

. . . .

[T]he strong multiculturalist faces a dilemma: either he stretches his toleration so that it extends to the intolerance residing at the heart of a culture he would honor, in which case tolerance is no longer his guiding principle, or he condemns the core intolerance of that culture (recoiling in horror when Khomeini calls for the death of Rushdie), in which case he is no longer according it respect at the point where its distinctiveness is most obviously at stake.

. . . .

[And besides,] [h]ow respectful can one be of 'fundamental' differences? If the difference is fundamental - that is, touches basic beliefs and commitments - how can you respect it without disrespecting your own beliefs and commitments? And on the other side, do you really show respect for a view by tolerating it, as you might tolerate the buzzing of a fly? Or do you show respect when you take it seriously enough to oppose it?"

Stanley Fish, The Trouble with Principle, pages 40, 41, 61, 66

Plagiarism: These Bodies and World

"I suspect that our conception of Heaven as merely a state of mind is not unconnected with the fact that the specifically Christian virtue of Hope has in our time grown so languid. Where our fathers, peering into the future, saw gleams of gold, we see only the mist, white, featureless, cold and never moving.

The thought at the back of all this negative spirituality is really one forbidden to Christians. They, of all men, must not conceive spiritual joy and worth as things that need to be rescued or tenderly protected from time and place and matter and the senses. Their God is the God of corn and oil and wine. He is the glad Creator . . . . To shrink back from all that can be called Nature into negative spirituality is as if we ran away from horses instead of learning to ride. There is in our present pilgrim condition plenty of room (more room than most of us like) for abstinence and renunciation and mortifying our natural desires. But . . . . These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as ponies are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some day we may ride bare-back, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and world-shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the King's stables. Not that the gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else - since He has retained His own charger - should we accompany Him?"

C.S.Lewis, Miracles