LIVING THE GOOD AND VIRTUOUS LIFE

Our actions matter. They affect our jobs, relationships, health, and even mental health. Even when we smile at others, we tend to feel better, and certainly when we do good for others. When we hurt others, steal, and cheat, we feel bad about ourselves and obsessively try to justify our bad behavior.

Many ancient philosophies have noted the great benefits resulting from living a virtuous life. While, I do not want to discourage the virtuous life in the slightest, I do want to point out certain unavoidable dangers. For one thing, the focus on our behavior is a focus on performance, and such a focus can eventually lead to disappointment and even depression.

Why is this so? Because our performance will never match our expectations! We will always fall short. Either we will tire or find that true virtue is just too difficult. It is like trying to stay on a diet, ending with disappointment.

There are also other problems with the performance orientation. It seems to always involve a comparison with others. It’s great to be a straight-A student (or Mr. Virtue) until we meet the straight-A+ student.

Virtue might even supply diminishing returns, as with any other kind of achievement. The richest man in the world, John D. Rockefeller, had been asked, “How much more money will you need in order to be happy?” His answer was very revealing – “Always a little bit more.”

This suggests that the practice of virtue requires more than simply a personal or pragmatic payoff. For one thing, we have to be convinced that virtue is truly virtuous and not simply a matter of payoffs. What then must prod us to continue in virtue? We need to know that virtue is not just an artifact of mindless and purposeless evolution serving to mold us into social creatures. If that’s all it is, some will correctly say, “I’m already a social creature and want to shake free from the social pressures to perform and produce.”

Instead, we need to believe that virtue is grounded in unchanging objective Truth and that practicing virtue is virtuous in itself. But what makes virtue virtuous?

I think we also need to be convinced that identity and significance cannot be based on performance and productivity. It is a consuming and obsessive occupation that eventually leads to workaholism and alcoholism, even if it’s a matter of practicing virtue.

Instead, I think that the matter of identity and significance has to be freed from performance. We need to be assured of our value apart from performance. When value depends upon performance, we remain self-centered rather than other-centered – the essence of virtue – and this leads to some very unvirtuous behaviors. How? Our need to establish our identities distracts us from the real needs of others in favor of our pressing need to prove ourselves to be a virtuous “somebody.” Therefore, there is a great probability that we might hurt those we are trying to help, perhaps by instituting entitlement programs, which almost inevitably serve to disempower.

Virtue needs to be virtuous and free from our grasping psychological needs. Consequently, the problem of our value and significance should ideally first be settled, but how? My 70 years have taught me that my five highly recommended psychologists, lifestyle experimentation, and a host of self-help books were not the answer.

The answer is in a relationship and not a psychological remedy or even in a relationship with someone who has the same needs that I have. To place such hope on another person is to place an unbearable weight around their neck.

I found that I could only begin to find the freedom to be virtuous when I knew that I was unconditionally and eternally loved and forgiven by the One who has died for our sins. This also freed my virtuous attempts from the concerns of winning the respect of others. Instead, I became almost exclusively concerned with pleasing my Savior. Only with His encouragement could I face the discouragements that are inevitably found in this package deal called “life.”