CHARACTER, TRUTH, AND SELF-ACTUALIZATION

What does “character” mean to us today? What personal traits and goals do we value? For the late psychologist Abraham Maslow, it was a matter of self-actualization - "fulfilling themselves and doing the best that they are capable of doing".

Another website listed 13 personal goals worth pursuing:

1. Becoming the person you aspire to be.
2. Fixing your priorities
3. Specifying your values.
4. Determining your lifestyle.
5. Defining your ethics.
6. Improving your knowledge, potential and awareness.
7. Enhancing the quality of your life by being more spiritual and healthy.
8. Developing strengths, learning techniques or methods to achieve wisdom.
9. Fulfilling aspirations.
10. Building human capital.
11. Defining and executing personal development plans.
12. Developing spirituality.
13. Improving health.

Both sources have a lot in common – self-fulfillment. However, different eras esteemed different goals and traits. Historian Daniel Walker Howe highlights the differences:

• In the development of Western political thought, the control of passion by reason has been an issue of critical importance. Stephen Holmes’s Passions and Constraint shows how the creation of free political institutions required that people control such strong passions as tribal hatred or the resentment of social slights by the exercise of sober rationality… “The principal aim of [early] liberals who wrote favorably of self-interest was to bridle destructive and self- destructive passions, to reduce the social prestige of mindless male violence, to induce people, so far as possible, to act rationally, instead of hot-bloodedly.” (Making the American Self)

While today, we esteem self-fulfillment, yesterday, self-control, a virtuous character, and rationality were praised. Jacksonian historian George Bancroft’s laudatory description of George Washington is very revealing of what had been esteemed:

• His faculties were so well balanced and combined, that his constitution, free from excess, was tempered… [with] the power of self- control, and enabled him to excel in patience, even when he had most cause for disgust.

Why the sharp difference and what does it mean? Why has self-fulfillment replaced self-control along with the other Christian virtues? With the onslaught of secularism and its denial of an afterlife, there is nothing to live for but the “now.” Therefore, “character” – honesty, integrity, courage, and other-centered-ness – has become only a means to an end, a payoff in the now. Virtue has become a commodity to barter as the changing situation requires.

However, our Founding Fathers, even the least religious among them, could not conceive of this American experiment working without the Christian faith and its virtues as its foundation.

The Unitarian and our second President, John Adams, wrote:

• “The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principals of Christianity… I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”

• "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." (October 11, 1798)

• "I have examined all religions, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means, and my busy life, would allow; and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more philosophy than all the libraries I have seen." (December 25, 1813 letter to Thomas Jefferson)

• "Without Religion this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned in polite Company, I mean Hell." (John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, April 19, 1817)

Even our Deist President, Thomas Jefferson, wrote:

• “Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern which have come under my observation, none appears to me so pure as that of Jesus.”

• “God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift from God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever.” (excerpts are inscribed on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in the nations capital; Source: Merrill . D. Peterson, ed., Jefferson Writings, (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984), Vol. IV, p. 289. From Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII, 1781.)

Were they right? Can our liberties remain secure as the Christian faith continues its exile into the margins of American life? How can they! When we deny objective moral truths and the afterlife (and the pursuit of gratification fills the gap) we will care less about abstract and distant principles such as liberty until its disappearance begins to impinge on our pursuit of immediate gratification.

Also, this pursuit will set us against each other in competition for scarce resources, whether they are advancements, recognition, influence, pay-increases, or even legislation that will favor our side. Consequently, we will resent those competitors and wish them ill.

Even now, we are inheriting the fruitage of our values and goals – polarization, division, distrust, economic decline, and bitterness. Instead, when our lives are other-centered and not self-centered, peace, trust, and cooperation reign. When we are seeking the benefit of our neighbor, how can they argue! This pertains even to our spouses, as Alexis de Tocqueville had observed almost 200 years ago:

• There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is so much respected as in America, or where conjugal happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated. In Europe, almost all the disturbances of society arise from the irregularities of domestic life. To despise the natural bonds and legitimate pleasures of home is to contract a taste for excesses, a restlessness of heart, and the evil of fluctuating desires. Agitated by the tumultuous passions which frequently disturb his dwelling, the European is galled by the obedience which the legislative powers of the State exact. But when the American retires from the turmoil of public life to the bosom of his family, he finds in it the image of order and of peace… While the European endeavors to forget his domestic troubles by agitating society, the American derives from his own home that love of order which he afterward carries with him into public affairs. (Democracy in American, 199)

Nor should Western society argue against the benefits of the Christian faith, but they do! Indian scholar, Vishal Mangalwadi, attempts to understand this peculiar auto-immune response:

• This good news [of the Christian faith] became the intellectual foundation of the modern West, the force that produced moral integrity, economic prosperity, and political freedom. If moral integrity is foundational to prosperity, why don’t secular experts talk about it? The reason is that the universities no longer know whether moral laws are true universal principles or mere social conventions made up to restrict our freedoms. And why don’t they know? Economists have lost the secret of the West’s success because philosophers have lost the very idea of truth. (Truth and Transformation: A Manifesto for Ailing Nations)

Truth has died. Only self-fulfillment remains. God help us!

The New Secularism and the Death of a Nation

We will live or die, sink or swim, according to our beliefs. The progressive is poised to remove religion from the public, arguing that this has always been a secular nation. However, the “secularism” of today bears little resemblance to the secularism that had once made this nation great. A few quotations might bring this fact home.

In his Notes on Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, arguably the most un-Christian of our Founding Fathers, observed:

• Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not violated but with his wrath?”

Instead of removing or marginalizing our Judeo-Christian foundations, Jefferson, along with the other Founding Fathers, insisted that these were necessary for the preservation of our liberties.

His words were prophetic. As we have seen the weakening of the influence of the church and the strengthening of those who hate it, we have also seen the removal of our liberties by a new militant and secular religion. Here are just a few of many examples:

1. Christians fired for expressing their ideas about marriage, even outside of their job.

2. Mayors threatening to not allow businesses to come into their towns because of the owners’ beliefs about marriage.

3. Women threatened with dismissal from graduate counseling programs because they expressed disapproval of same-sex marriage.

4. Businesses fined, the owners required to go for “re-education,” and threatened with closure because they wouldn’t perform acts that their faith forbade.

It had been the vision of secularism to allow everyone a seat-at-the-table with free expression. In contrast, the “secularism” of today forbids Christians a seat. Instead, they must conform to a new religion if they want to be heard or even to work.

This “secularism” claims to be neutral, unlike other religions, and maintains that the “separation between church and state” requires that the Christian voice be kept silent in the public. However, this hadn’t been the thinking of our leading secularist, Jefferson:

• No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be.

Historian Robert Royal affirms that the secularism of the Founders was never supposed to impose a new monopolistic religion:

• The generation that led the American Revolution knew clearly that a secular government designed to take care of secular affairs did not mean a society in which secularism was in effect the official religion. Church and state were separated so that each could do it job better. (The God that did not Fail, 207)

In his Farewell Address, President George Washington warned that the nation’s welfare depended on its religion:

• Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports… Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for prosperity, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Meanwhile, today’s secularists are naively convinced that morality and law can easily be maintained apart from the roots that had sired them.

Washington’s words have also proved prophetic. As the Christian faith has been degraded in the West, especially beginning with the early sixties, crime, drug use, depression, and loss of economic vitality escalated.

The new “secularists” have also rejected other lessons. They are convinced that our social problems are best addressed by big, powerful and over-reaching government – the very thing that the Founders had feared most.

• That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness… But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. (Declaration of Independence)

How long can a free people endure “a long train of abuses and usurpations… to reduce them under absolute Despotism” to a new and militant religion? How can a vast segment of a nation tolerate coercion designed to force them to violate their most precious faith? How can this not produce contempt for the government that coerces them in this unjust manner?

Six Reasons why Objective, Transcendent Moral Law is Necessary to Preserve Equality

When we think about equality, we think of many different issues:

1. Equality among all Life Forms
2. Equality of Role among the Various Age and Sex Groupings
3. Equality of Income

The list can be extensive, and so I want to limit my discussion of equality to those things that the vast majority of Westerners value – The Bill of Rights reflecting our unalienable human rights, equal protection under the law, and the value of all human life.

What is necessary to provide an adequate rationale and foundation for these kinds of equality? Many offer the rationale of “majority rules” based upon pragmatic considerations – what works in terms of providing the maximum benefit to the greatest number of people.

While I don’t reject such pragmatic considerations, I want to argue that more – objective transcendent moral law - is necessary for any legal or ethical system. Let me try to explain. If moral law is not objective, it doesn’t exist outside of our own thinking. It’s merely a human creation without any reality of its own.

In contrast to this, the sun has an objective and independent existence apart from what I might think about it, while those who claim that morality is just a matter of our own decision-making deny that morality has any independent existence of its own.

(Moral law must also be transcendent. It must transcend all of our conflicting thinking and feeling and hold us all accountable. As such, it must be higher and more authoritative than our philosophies and cultural biases. It must also be immutable and not subject to changes in culture, human thought, and the opinions of humanity. It must partake of the same immutability and universality as do the laws of physics. Finally, it can only be authoritative if it comes from and is enforced by an all-just and wise Being.)

Let me just focus on one aspect of moral law – equality. The principle of quality is incoherent and therefore unsustainable without objective moral law for several reasons:

1. Without objective transcendent moral law, there is no rational basis for equality. We certainly do not find equality in nature but rather the survival-of-the-fittest. When the Transcendent is rejected, we are left with philosophical materialism. From a material point of view, there isn’t any equality even among humans. So are taller, stronger, smarter, better educated, and more popular than others. More importantly, some contribute to the common welfare, while others detract. Therefore, from a materialistic point of view, some would therefore be more deserving of rights and privileges than others.

On an interpersonal level, we believe that everyone is entitled to respect. As a probation officer, I would try to treat everyone in a way that respected his/her dignity as a human being. However, the material world does not provide any basis for such respect. Some of my probationers had arrest records yards long. Yet, as a Christian, I knew that they still bore the image of God and consequently were endowed with certain unalienable rights. If I had been a materialist, I would have been constrained to treat them in accord with their past performance alone.

2. Pragmatism is inherently selfish. The secularist denies Transcendence. He must therefore base his morality on pragmatic considerations – on what brings benefits. However, we all want benefits. We are all pragmatists. Pragmatism has been the default morality of humanity, and it has borne bad fruit. Whenever a nation has denied the Transcendent – the communist nations are a prime example – we observe unmitigated horrors. This is because pragmatism, the quest for benefits, is inherently selfish. As such, it can bear good fruit but also the worst imaginable evils.
   
   Most secularists will admit this problem and will respond that pragmatism has to be an enlightened and egalitarian pragmatism. However, this is just what communism had boasted to be. Even “enlightened” pragmatism is doomed to failure simply because pragmatism is based upon self-interest and not on immutable, transcendent moral law.

3. Pragmatic idealism will eventually run out of steam and not motivate the sacrifices necessary to make this ideal work. Without the confidence that we are serving the God of all truth and love, we will not be able to continually take risks to save Jews and merely to be a whistle-blower. The stresses of life will eventually lead us to the “why bother” philosophy.

4. Without the biblical revelation that we are special and created in the image of God and therefore possess indelible worth, we will not be able to counter the charges that our morality is chauvinistic – man-centered. Why should our laws favor humanity and not cows or even termites? What makes us any more valuable than the termite? Some would answer, “our intelligence.” However, such an answer undermines the very human equality we wish to protect. If we are valued according to our intelligence or creativity, then we must value the more intelligent and creative above others.

Even the Deist, Thomas Jefferson, was unable to conceive of our rights apart from God: “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?” (Notes on the State of Virginia)

The anti-Christian philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche acknowledged the connection between the Bible and equality: “Another Christian concept, no less crazy: the concept of equality of souls before God. This concept furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights.” (Will to Power)

5. Subjective secular morality is arbitrary, culture-based and changeable. How then can anyone take it seriously if we regard our laws as merely the product of the cultural elite or the majority. Such laws and ethics lack the power to motivate in a positive direction. For example, take the testimony of serial-killer, Ted Bundy:

• Then I learned that all moral judgments are “value judgments,” that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’…I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable value judgment that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others?’ Other human beings with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad’? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me – after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self. (Christian Research Journal, Vol 33, No 2, 2010, 32)

6. Without the biblical sanctity-of-human-life orientation, we inevitably move in a quality-of-life direction, where we are valued, not according to our God-given value, but according to a cultural assessment of value. Under this form of valuation, some humans will inevitably be considered more valuable than others – the less esteemed members of society. These might include criminals, odd-balls, or even republicans or democrats. Such a system of valuation will only regard certain members as “equals.”

In addition to the problem of denying the Transcendent’s impact on moral law and equality, is the problem of finding a purpose in life. Without the Transcendent, there is nothing higher into which we can plug ourselves to derive any sense of purpose and dignity. We are relegated to living according to our feelings for our commitment to family or any other ideal. However, our feelings are highly changeable. Therefore, if our lives depend on our feelings, our lives will be characterized by instability and confusion. In order to escape this confusion, we will have to turn off our minds. And this is just what this generation is doing.