CLASSIC CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: TEMPERANCE

  

Ethics is what we do. Virtue is why we do it.

Virtue ethics is the point where action and motive connect.

The Christian way is to grow into the likeness of Christ 

       through a life of disciplined practice of Christlike virtues.

It’s about the inner good of who we become, 

      not the external good of a reward.

 

But what’s the point of becoming virtuous?

There are three points: The first isn’t about us. It’s about others.

Virtue makes us better parents, spouses, neighbors, 

            communicants, and citizens.

It’s like wearing a mask after you have the Covid vaccine.  

You do it for the other person.  

 

But we do get two things out of it.

A virtue is an excellence at the art of living.

We are given just a few years on this earth. 

We don’t want to miss them.

The virtues bring us fully alive. 

 

With Prudence, we see reality.

With Fortitude, we have the courage to engage it.

With Justice, we can have authentic relationships.

We’ll see today that Temperance is equally vital to a life well-lived.

 

The second thing we get out of virtue is about Eternity.

The virtues shape our minds, and as Milton said,

            The mind is its own place, and in itself, 

           Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

Our experience of Eternity depends on who we have become 

            and becoming is what we are here to do.

William Blake said,  

            We are put on this earth a little space,

            That we might learn to bear the beams of love.

 

Christian virtue ethics holds that the core of the Christian life 

           – not all of it; but the core  – 

consists of 3 theological virtues: faith, hope, and love;

and 4 cardinal virtues: prudence, fortitude, justice, and temperance.

First we considered Prudence, the mother of all virtues.

Prudence is wisdom in practical affairs, seeing things 

          clearly as they are and acting sensibly. 

The 1^st Commandment of Prudence is:  Deal with the real.

 

Next, we considered Fortitude, mental and emotional strength 

            in facing difficulty, adversity, (or) danger . . .  courageously.

Last week, we considered Justice. 

The Christian virtue of Justice is about right relationship.

It starts with our relationship with ourself, 

            and out of that inner balance,

            we can relate to other people.

The starting point for right relationship is 

              to know others as real persons 

            who taste soup, dream dreams, and have feelings at sunset 

  -- not as tools, mirrors for our egos, or screens for our projections. 

We make a moral practice of empathy, 

            imaginatively seeing the world through other eyes.

 

These virtues are interwoven.

Justice is possible only if we have the Prudence 

               to see ourselves and others,

            recognizing the sensible action, and then the Fortitude to do it.

When I hear the things some people say,

            I think their head must be a scary place to be.

It takes Fortitude to say with Abraham Lincoln, 

            I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.

Prudence is possible only if we have the will to see reality,

            which is born of Justice, and the Fortitude to face facts.

Fortitude depends on the Prudence to see our challenges 

             and deal with them sensibly,

            and the Justice that cares enough to make it worthwhile.

 

Today, we consider Temperance – dictionary definition: 

            moderation or self-restraint in action, thought, 

            or feeling, self-control.

Its synonyms include:

             equanimity, calmness, serenity, forbearance, self-denial,     

                   judiciousness, measure. 

For Plato, Temperance included four elements, 

            none of which is sufficient in itself, 

            but all of which are necessary:

First, quietness of soul that comes from self-acceptance.

Second, the humility of knowing our limitations.

Third, minding our own business, being contented in our own life,

            instead of judging others and meddling in their affairs 

            or becoming consumed by ambition.

Fourth, self-awareness, the Delphic oracle’s adage, Know thyself.

 

Aristotle considered temperance the most important virtue

            and Euripides called it the noblest gift of heaven.

It is the virtue with the greatest cross-cultural consensus.

Confucius taught that modesty and self-control were essential 

            to a humane life.

Gautama Buddha included temperance in speech and action 

         in his 8-fold path. 

But it doesn’t come easy. Buddha said,

            Temperance is a tree which for its root has little contentment,

            but for its fruit, calm and peace.

 

Lao Tzu made moderation the center of the Tao Te Ching. He wrote:

 

            Filling all the way to the brim is not as good as halting in time.

            Pounding an edge to sharpness will not make it last.

            Keeping plenty of gold and jade in the palace 

                     makes no one able to defend it.

            Those who stand on their toes are not steady.

            Those who take long steps cannot keep the pace.

            Those who show off do not shine.

            Those who are self-righteous are not prominent.

            Those who boast are not respected.

 

Hinduism teaches, Even nectar is a poison if taken to excess.

Mohammed said, 

            Do good deeds properly, sincerely and moderately. . . 

            Always adopt a middle, moderate, regular course . . . .

 

The 17^th Century Anglican priest and poet Robert Herrick wrote,

            In things a moderation keep; 

           Kings ought to shear, not skin, their sheep. 

So did our American forebears toss moderation overboard 

          on their way here?

Apparently not. Lord Byron said, 

            America is a model of force and freedom and moderation 

            -- with all the coarseness and rudeness of its people.

Abraham Lincoln, the exemplar of American political temperance, said,

            The demon of intemperance ever seems to . . . suck the blood 

            of genius and of generosity.

 

 

In the 20^th Century, however, moderation and temperance 

              were widely repudiated.

 

Oscar Wilde said, Moderation is fatal. Nothing succeeds like excess.

 

            --  which leads to Barry Goldwater’s adage,

                        Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

                        And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Compare that to Aristotle who said,

            The virtue of justice consists in moderation, 

            as regulated by wisdom. 

Or as George MacDonald, the role model of C. S. Lewis, put it. 

            Moderation is the basis of justice.

 

 

But Ann Coulter disparages moderation per se. 

A leftist friend of mine agrees with her. 

He calls moderation complicity with evil.

Right wing Ann and my progressive friend agree 

             because both are following Eminem 

            who sum it up for the modern era: 

                        Yo, I can’t do anything in moderation. I don’t know how.

 

 

Let’s recall two historical examples of excess 

       as an intentional way of life.

First, there was the cultural revolution of the 1960s 

            – summarized by Ian Drury and the Blockheads 

             in their anthem for the era: 

            Sex and drugs and rock and roll is all my brain and body need. 

 

The 60s ended with several exclamation points.

One was a series of high profile drug overdose deaths 

        – Joplin, Hendrix, Morrison, etc.

Another was the Altamont Rock Festival 

        which featured four accidental deaths,

        five live births, a Hells Angels murder 

        of a gun-toting 20 year old,

        and their knocking out one of the Rolling Stones            on stage.

Finally, came the Manson Family murders 

         intended to incite a race war.

In reaction to the hedonistic excess of the 60s, 

       we got the religious excess of the Christian right.

That brand of religiosity organized around two things:

   maximizing the intensity of emotions 

   associated with religious ideas; and 

   devotion to religious celebrities like Pat Robertson,             Jerry Falwell, and James Dobson.

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll were out. 

Family values were in.

The Christian right led to Eric Rudolph’s bombings 

        of Centennial Olympic Park 

         and a lesbian night club.

Then Scott Roeder murdered an abortion doctor 

         in a Wichita Lutheran Churc prophesying that  

        God’s judgment (will) sweep over America 

                like a prairie wind.

James Kopp murdered a doctor in Buffalo.

Then another Christian extremist murdered three people 

    at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood Clinic, 

    hometown of Focus On The Family.

Randy Weaver of the Christian Identity Movement,

        which advocated death for adulterers and gays, 

       shot it out with federal authorities 

            at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

The Adventist breakaway David Koresh 

     formed the Waco cult in which 76 people were killed     in a gunfight with law enforcement.

As revenge, Timothy McVeigh, 

       also of the Christian Identity Movement,

       bombed the Oklahoma City federal building 

       killing 168 people and injuring 680.   

Extremism in one direction leads 

      to extremism in the other.

It’s as if any extremist ideology is a pretext 

     for extremism itself, the passions running loose. 

Today, we are living with the implications of valorizing excess 

              over temperance. 

 

Thankfully, we have a few contemporary voices for moderation, 

            the best of which is Julia Child who said,
            Moderation. Small helpings. Sample a little bit of everything. 

            These are the secrets of happiness and good health.

 

There is a reciprocal relationship between virtues 

          and spiritual experiences.

Moral practices can open us up to spiritual experiences.

But spiritual experiences can also teach us virtues.

 

People use various ways to access spiritual experience:

            prayer, meditation, chanting, fasting, yoga, tai chi, 

             and psychedelic drugs.

I don’t presume to prescribe which is right for you.

But one day in 1569, Michel de Montaigne had a profound experience 

            by a method I do not recommend. 

He fell off a horse, hit his head, and lost consciousness

            but his body was convulsing and thrashing about.

His companions, in a panic, took him home, 

            where the horrified household 

            rushed around, crying and wringing their hands.

But Montaigne felt as if he were floating above the whole scene 

           just watching it.

He could see his body flailing. 

He could see everyone in panicky distress.

Montaigne, however, felt utterly at peace 

            until the whole thing passed and he recovered.

 

From that point on, he had a new perspective 

           on his life and the world around him.

Out of that perspective he wrote his famous Essays,

            which became the philosophical backdrop 

           to Shakespeare’s plays.

The plays are full of passion.

Romeo and Juliet plunge into fatal romance.

Macbeth’s ambition leads to war, his wife’s suicide, and his own ruin.

King Leontes, in a fit of jealousy, jails Queen Hermione 

            and orders the murder of his best friend.

But Shakespeare is the author, in control, 

             writing the story and watching it performed

            like Montaigne watching the drama unfold in his bedroom.

 

Christian Temperance isn’t aloof detachment. 

It cares, but from a perspective of serenity. 

As T. S. Eliot put it in Ash Wednesday, 

           Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.

 

Temperance cares without losing the balanced, serene, 

             curious center of the self,

            which Eliot called the still point of the turning world.

Our total personality includes sub-personalities, passions, ideas, 

            and inclinations that are often in conflict with each other 

             and charging off in this or that direction,

            but the serene center holds us together.

 

We are always at risk of being taken over by a subpersonality 

            or a passion,

            especially if a situation or another person 

             is pushing our buttons.

The serene center does not deny those impulses, but it tempers them.

It moderates the staff meeting going on inside us.

It helps the parts of ourselves negotiate their compromises,

            so that we are able to behave moderately with others, 

              including in the public square. 

 

There are four playing fields on which we can cultivate Temperance.

First, our inner being, moderating our feelings 

             without denying or suppressing them.

Second, our personal life of family and close friends.

            These are the people who can press our buttons the most.

            So that’s where we most need our serene center to be still, 

                ask questions, and listen rather than react impulsively.

The third playing field is our voluntary associations 

              like our church, our HOA, 

            our bowling team, or our garden club.

One blessing of our voluntary associations is they develop 

        the civic virtues  necessary to public life.

The fourth playing field is the public square 

            where we structure our common life. 

 

Last week two things happened in the Southern Baptist Church.

Not all, but multiple, pastors called for repentance 

         for the Church’s complicity in the Capitol riot. 

In Texas, Jonathan Davis said,

            If you hold a ‘Jesus Saves’ sign while violently storming 

            a civic           building in a fear-driven,     anti-democratic 

            attempt for earthly political power, 

             the basis of your faith is way off.

In Knoxville, Pastor Bill Ireland cited Hosea, 

            Those who sow the wind, will reap the whirlwind.

 

The second event was an op ed in The Baptist News 

          by North Carolina Pastor Steve Shoemaker.

Pastor Steve said it will take two virtues to heal our nation.

The first is Justice. He said,

            We as a nation cannot move forward toward healing 

             without the civic virtue of justice.

 

But, Pastor Steve continued, we also need a second virtue. 

He called it Forbearance corresponding to what we call Temperance. He quoted St. Paul: 

            Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing 

             with one another in love. 

            Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit 

             through the bond of peace.

 

Justice and Temperance in the public life are a kind of paradox.

Pursuing justice requires compassion, which has passion in it. 

We need a powerful emotional motivation to do 

          the hard work of justice. 

But that can be a slippery slope into intemperance. 

Passions blow like a whirlwind in society and we can get lost in them.

 

Participating in the public square for Justice but with Temperance

            is a delicate balancing act.

Parker Palmer calls it a paradox. He says,

            If I didn’t have the idea of “holding paradox” to help me 

           understand myself and the world around me, I’d be more lost 

          than I am! . . ..  (H)olding paradox means 

           thinking about some (but not all) things as “both-ands” 

           instead of “either-ors.”

 

He says that paradox, two truths or two values, 

             both valid in themselves 

            --  but inconsistent with each other --

            creates a tension we are tempted to resolve too quickly.

We want to go with one or the other, 

               or to find a middle ground compromise.

He urges us instead to hold the tension, to honor both 

      until something new arises out of it over time.  

Temperance is intentional awareness of both sides of a paradox

            and the discipline of holding them in tension.

 

I will wrap up with suggestions for two forms 

           of practicing Temperance  -- inner and outer.

For Inner Temperance, pay attention to your feelings.

If you think you are thinking, 

         stop and find the feeling behind your thought.

Find it in your body and just notice it.

Don’t try to erase it or change it. Don’t even judge it. Just let it be.

Let the healing power of your awareness do the healing over time.

 

For Outer Temperance, get to know the other side.

Think of whoever it is that upsets you.

Then approach the other side with curiosity. Try to learn something.

 

Nelson Mandela started as a Gandhi devotee of non-violence 

            but just as a strategy.

He lost patience, became a violent revolutionary, 

          and went to prison for decades.

While he was in prison, he had a problem.

The food was ample, but they served the whole day’s food at once.

So his lunch and dinner were cold. 

He wanted to ask the guards for a hotplate.

But they were white so they wouldn’t speak with him.

 

So Mandela listened to their conversation with each other

            and discovered that they talked constantly 

            about one thing – football.

In those days, Black South Africans despised football 

          as a white man’s game.

But Mandela needed a hotplate.

So he went to the library, got the sports magazines, 

        and read up on current football.

Then, he’d call out to the guards, 

        How about them Broncos? Did you see so and so?

Next thing you know, they were talking and he got his hotplate.

 

In the course of that experience, Mandela adopted a new principle.

If somebody was saying something that made no sense to him,

            they must know something he didn’t.

So he asked the guards questions. 

He didn’t explain to them how wrong apartheid was. 

He asked questions and just by his open curiosity, 

         he converted the guards.

He kept on asking questions all the way 

            up the power chain to F. W. DeKlerk,

            until he had questioned South Africa out of apartheid.

 

So, practice curiosity. 

If Black Lives Matter marches push your buttons, 

            talk with a Black friend or read a Black novel.

Read Ta-Nahisi Coates, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, 

          Richard Wright, or Maya Angelou.

 

If the radical right strikes you as simply crazy,

            learn what makes them tick from some sociological studies like

            Strangers In Their Own Land by Arlie Hochshild  

            or American Fascists by Chris Hedges. 

 

Problematic passions in society, like problematic passions 

        in our own hearts, do not go away by being ridiculed. 

We start by seeing others from the serene center of our being. 

We can hold fast to our own sense of morality and still engage others

            with curiosity rather than moral indignation 

            or personal contempt. 

If you hear me saying just go along, or even compromise with evil,

            I’m not saying that.

I’m saying: just stay in your center and try to understand.

That’s Temperance in the public square.

 

CLASSICAL CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: JUSTICE

 

In the tv series, The Good Place, four young people 

    live faulty lives, die young, and are consigned 

        to the bad place.

But they negotiate for a 2^nd chance, are returned to life, 

    and behave impeccably.

But again, they are sentenced to the bad place, because 

    the motive for all their good behavior was selfish.

They were doing it for themselves to get into the good place.

So they negotiate for a third run at it.

There is no way to deliberately get the external good 

    of the good place.

Their only possibility is the internal good 

    of becoming good people.

 

Ethics is about what we do. Virtue is about the reason we do it.

Virtue ethics is the point where action and motive connect.

The Christian way is to grow into the likeness of Christ 

    through the disciplined practice of Christlike virtues 

        over the course of a lifetime.

It isn’t about external goods or rewards. 

It’s about who we become.

 

Christian virtue ethics holds that the core of the Christian life 

           – not all of it; but the core tradition – 

            consists of 7 primary virtues 

            – 3 theological virtues: faith, hope, and love; 

and 4 cardinal virtues: 

    prudence, fortitude, justice, and temperance.

 

First we considered Prudence, the mother of all virtues.

Prudence is wisdom in practical affairs, 

    seeing things clearly as they are and acting sensibly. 

The 1^st Commandment of Prudence is:  Deal with the real.

Next, we considered Fortitude, mental and emotional strength 

     in facing difficulty, adversity, (or) danger . . .  courageously.

 

Today we take up the cardinal virtue of Justice.

So much has been written about justice 

    from different perspectives 

– philosophical, theological, sociological, psychological, political.

Much of it has been tendentious and there has often been 

    a failure to see that the writers are coming 

        from different disciplines and are not so much disagreeing

             as talking past each other. 

The classical sense of justice as a virtue has gotten lost.

The word virtue still gets used and abused in justice talk 

       – but what they mean by virtue is something quite obscure. 

 

I do not intend to go down the rabbit hole

     of competing theories of justice.

I’ll just focus on the Christian virtue.

Even that isn’t going to yield anything neat and simple.

 

Justice can be understood as a set of principles 

         defining right and wrong.

Justice can also be understood as a social value, 

            something we care about.

But in virtue ethics, we are looking for a quality of character, 

            something we can practice and grow.

The virtue of justice is individual  

         – a quality of a person’s character.

It’s also social -- a quality of the community,  

            an attitude and pattern of behavior that a people share.

Social virtue can be expressed by the state as laws 

          but it isn’t limited to laws. It’s broader, more cultural.

 

Old Testament morality is more about rules than virtues.

But the Old Testament is nonetheless 

    profoundly interested in justice.

Deuteronomy

      Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue  . . . .  

      Cursed is he who distorts the justice due an alien, 

                   orphan, and widow. 

Amos: 

            Let justice roll down like the waters and righteousness 

            like an ever flowing stream.

Micah: 

            What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, 

            love mercy, and walk humbly with your god.

 

 

Two rival visions of justice carry on a sustained argument 

         throughout the Old Testament.

First, there is the Moses view, 

           a freedom and equality kind of morality.

It demands lending generously to those in need, 

                but don’t count on getting repaid.

All debt was cancelled every 7 years 

            and all land was to go back 

            to the family of its original owner every 50 years.

Aliens were to be welcomed, supported, 

          and included in the community.

There were no kings, only local spiritual leaders.

People didn’t need the law enforced top down. 

Law enforcement was vigilante style. 

The mob was assumed to be moral.

Better than having oppressive police like the Egyptians, 

             they thought.

            

The other side was the King David view, 

        a hierarchical nationalism.

The king was the adoptive son, the beloved of God.  

To love, honor, and obey the king was 

            to love, honor, and obey God.

The kings liked to build palaces and temples,

            to keep standing armies, and to wage wars 

            of imperialistic conquest.

This meant heavy taxes, forced labor, and the draft 

             -- but also law and order

            with more due process than the supposedly moral mob.

 

Moses’s view was taken up by the Prophets 

            – Amos, Isaiah, Hosea, Micah 

            – who defied the kings to their faces.

Two rival senses of justice argued their way 

         through the Old Testament.

But the contest was played out on the same field.

That field is the word both sides used, sedeq. 

We translate it justice or righteousness.

It means to be in right relationship.

 

The Ancient Israelites didn’t agree 

             on the political structure for their relationships,

            but they persisted in a conversation about it 

             for over a thousand years.

Contemporary philosopher Jurgen Habermas, 

            who wrote about discourse ethics and intersubjectivity,

            would say the point of the Old Testament 

            may not be who was right,

            but the fact of the persistent conversation.

Habermas says,

            We all live in a world surrounded by people of different 

             background and personality. 

            Relating with one another and settling our differences 

             is not always an easy task

            but it is a task we must embrace . . . . 

            Trust or suspicion, authentic communication or lies . . . , 

            unconditional love or self-interest

            are just some of the causes of strengthening 

            or breaking human relationship.

 

Persistence in relationship enriches our souls 

          and is necessary to our survival.

He believed Martin Buber’s attitude of I And Thou, 

          viewing the other person as a subject in their own right,

            not just an object to be persuaded into our view,

            is the foundation for authentic conversation. 

 

Turning to Jesus, the best place to start is the Beatitudes.

Matthew 5: 6 reads,

          Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for (Greek word) 

         “dikaisune” for you shall be satisfied.

We usually translate dikaisune as “righteousness” 

         but it could as easily be translated “justice.”

Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for justice . . . .  

Either way, it means right relationship.

            

Jesus told stories of relationship, often relationships 

             that crossed conventional boundaries

            -- the Good Samaritan, the Unforgiving Servant,

           the Prodigal Son.

And he gave specific examples:

            If you bring your gift to the altar and remember that your

           brother holds something against you, 

           leave your gift there and go be reconciled to your brother,

          and then come    back and offer your gift.

 

            Judge not that you may not be judged; 

            for by whatever judgment you pass you shall be 

           judged and whatever measure you measure 

           shall be meted out to you.

 

            Let the one among you who is without sin cast 

           the first stone.

            Be like your Father in heaven who causes the rain 

            to fall and the sun to shine

            on the good and the evil alike. 

 

Jesus’ disciples included a Roman collaborator 

           and a Zealot insurrectionist,

            the moralistic Pharisee Nicodemus 

            and the prostitute who washed his feet,

            the cynical skeptic Nathaniel 

           and the madwoman Mary Magdalene.

He not only befriended these diverse people, 

           he wove them into community with each other. 

 

Jesus envisioned a Moses kind of justice. 

He explained his mission by quoting Isaiah,

                    The Spirit of the Lord is on me, 

                    because he has anointed me to proclaim 

                    good news to the poor, . . . freedom for the prisoners

                 and recovery of sight for the blind,

                   to set the oppressed free . . . .

Jesus wasn’t neutral on power and wealth. 

But, having staked out his position, 

         he engaged people of all stripes in conversation. 

 

He resisted the idea that a merely political revolution 

            could create a virtuous society

            in which people could flourish.

Judah had done that before when the Maccabees 

            threw out the Greeks,

            but then their rule was so bad 

            that Judeans actually invited Rome

            to liberate them from their Jewish oppressors.         

Changing the state may help. 

But it is never enough to create a just society.

 

The definitive view Christian view of the social order 

             is from Augustine,

            but we need a bridge between Jesus and Augustine.

That bridge is Plato. 

What he said about justice is certainly flawed.

But there’s still something in it that is essential 

         to understanding justice as a virtue.

Plato taught that justice in the state 

           was merely individual justice writ large.

A just state was the product of just individuals. 

 

Let’s start with the state and work backwards.

Plato said there were three basic kinds of people: 

            rational philosophers, passionate warriors,

            and responsible workers.

The state was just when each fulfilled their proper purpose 

            -- the right person for the right job.

 

Likewise, each individual has three corresponding parts.

We have a mind to think, a spirit with the bravery for life, 

         and a body with its appetites.

Individual justice is an inner balance 

             of the three parts of the person,

just as justice in the state is each kind of person doing their job.

 

That’s obviously simplistic. 

There are more than three kinds of people 

         and our individual selves are more complicated.

But we do each have parts. 

Freud gave us Id, Ego, and Super-ego.

Transactional Analysis gave Child, Parent, Adult.

Norse mythology divided the individual into 4 parts.

Jung gave us Persona, Shadow, Animus, and Self.

Psychosynthesis gives each of us a whole inner community 

            of sub-personalities competing for space 

            in the same body.

 

But these psychologists all agree with Plato: 

We need to work things out inside.

What Plato called justice, 

          psychologists call inner harmony or integration.

 

That requires the different parts of our personalities 

            to stay in conversation with each other,

            respecting each other’s right to exist, 

            making room for each other.

We need the different parts of ourselves playing the role 

            for which they are suited, like keeping the passions 

            in the passenger seat and Mother Prudence 

            in the driver’s seat.

A just individual is self-aware and well-balanced.

 

The second gem from Plato is that just individuals 

       actively shape their community.

By bringing our internal balance into the community process,

            we lend sanity, dignity, and order to the common life.

The justice of the community is an outer network of relationships 

            that arises from the inner network of relationships 

            in individuals.

 

That brings us to St. Augustine.

Augustine wrote The City of God 

               as the Roman Empire was crumbling.

He might well have preempted Dickens 

        and titled it A Tale of Two Cities,

        because he described the world as inhabited 

         by two metaphorical cities,

         the Earthly City and the Heavenly City. 

 

Because the world is fallen 

            and sin isn’t about to disappear anytime soon,

            the Earthly City is governed by arbitrary, amoral, 

            dominating power.

The Heavenly City is God’s realm in which the virtues reign.

But we cannot escape the one to live in the other. 

We all have a foot in each city.

Augustine’s overarching metaphor for earthly life 

           is Jesus’ parable of the field sown 

            with a mix of wheat and weeds.

We cannot root out the weeds now 

           without destroying the wheat.

So the wheat and weeds grow together 

           until God sorts them out in the end.

The virtues sometimes manifest in the state, 

            just as the vices manifest in the Church.

 

Augustine taught that Christian participate in the world 

         -- the state, the market, and the social community -- 

        both as Christians as responsible citizens, 

       but with our ultimate allegiance not to any institution 

       or ideology but to God, and under God, to each other.

 

For Augustine, the virtue of justice is relational. He said,

            Justice is found where…the soul rules the body in all  

          (people) who belong to this City and obey God, and

           reason faithfully rules the vices in a lawful system 

           of  subordination … the association . . . of  righteous 

          (people) lives on the same basis of faith, active in love,   

          the love with which a (person) loves God as God ought to

          be loved, and loves his neighbor as himself.

            

Some years ago, I was wandering about the City of Jerusalem

            and found myself in a highly politicized 

            Palestinian neighborhood.

I stepped into a political bookstore 

        where every book was a diatribe against Israeli occupation.

I am not criticizing that, just describing it.

But then, I came upon a book that didn’t fit, 

            The New Religious Intolerance: 

            Overcoming The Politics Of Fear In An Anxious Age

            by the Jewish philosopher, Martha Nusbaum.

            .

Nusbaum said our fear-based experience of the world 

            narrows, shrinks, and rigidifies

            when we fail to practice participatory imagination.

Participatory imagination is empathy,

            imagining our way into someone else’s experience 

            to see things their way.

It doesn’t mean we agree with them. 

But we understand them as if from the inside.

 

Jesus said, Love your neighbor as yourself.

Enlightenment philosopher, Immanuel Kant, 

             echoed Jesus in his rationalist language.

            Never treat another person as a means to an end, 

            but always as an end in himself.

We can treat others as ends themselves, 

            we can love them as we love ourselves, 

            only if we know them, 

           if we see the world as our neighbor see it.

That’s in line with Martin Buber and Jurgen Habermas.

 

But it’s even more in line with Emanuel Levinas.

Having lost loved ones in the holocaust, 

         he asked how that happened 

         and concluded Western philosophy, 

         including utilitarianism. was immoral.

So Levinas called us back to relationship 

          with those who differ from us.

 

Levinas wrote about the encounter with the other, 

            the discovery that we aren’t the only ones here.

We are not even the center of the universe.

The very existence of other people gives rise 

         to an ethical demand. 

Nigel Zimmerman sums Levinas up this way:

            The Other – the suffering other – the poor one, 

             the widow, the orphan – is a subjective presence 

            who appears before the self .  . .  .(T)he other person 

            . . . . issues an ethical demand to one’s own self. . . .

 

Levinas saw justice as something that happens face to face.

But that kind of encounter is in a chicken and egg relationship 

       with a larger social context he called 

        the fraternal community.

It takes face to face encounters, one on one meetings, 

           to form a fraternal community.

But it takes a fraternal community to form us as people 

         capable of face to face encounters.

The fraternal community acknowledges we are each unique

            but we all share the same ethical duty 

           -- to see each other as selves,

            to acknowledge each other’s perspective.

 

That’s why Martha Nusbaum challenges us

            to adopt the moral practice of seeing things 

            from the other side.

Or as Tyler Hubbard and Tim McGraw put it 

            in their song Undivided,

            When we gonna learn to try on someone else’s shoes?

            When we gonna see through someone else’s eyes?

 

We can contrast Nusbaum’s approach to life with a passage 

            in Marcel Proust’s epic novel In Search Of Lost Time.

The protagonist, when he’s a teenage boy, 

           is obsessed with girls at this stage of life.

 

As he rides along the beach, 

            he sees each girl and wants to possess her,

            but it isn’t about sex.

He later explains that sex doesn’t work for his purpose.

What he wants to possess is her mind. 

He wants her to notice him, then think about him.

He wants to invade her consciousness with his own image 

             and turn her into a mirror for his ego. 

 

Contrast that to participatory imagination.

What if instead of trying to change her thoughts, 

              he had tried to see them,

            understand her experience as it was, 

                  uninvaded by his agenda.

The prayer of St. Francis seeks the grace, to seek

            not so much to be understood, but to understand.

 

The moral practice of a virtue grows us spiritually.

Instead of imposing ourselves on others, 

            Justice, right relationship, truly sees them, as they are, 

           an image of God -- a distorted image, but still an image.

The Vision of God enlightens our souls, 

            and it’s right there waiting for us 

            if we just practice participatory imagination.

If we see the world through many perspectives 

            instead of just our own,

            it becomes a vastly larger, more interesting place

            and we multiply many times over our capacity 

           to apprehend and appreciate reality.

 

Christian justice isn’t neat, but it includes unexpected elements.

From the Old Testament, we see that justice may reside

            not so much in rival visions of the social order

            as in our process of working with our differences.

Jesus gives us a picture of non-judgmental relationship 

        with people who are different from his.

Love your neighbor, he said, 

            then gave an example of a neighbor

            as a person of a different race, different religion, 

            different nationality.

Plato shows us to start by harmonizing our psychological parts,

            because whatever we have not integrated, 

           we will project on someone else.

Levinas shows us justice as recognizing 

            the other’s moral claim on us,

            and Nusbaum says that recognition begins 

            with empathy, seeing the world through the eyes 

                        of someone as different from us as possible.