Virtues and Values – The Road Less Traveled Jeremiah 6 16 (RSV)

Virtues and Values: The Road Less Traveled Jeremiah 6:16 (RSV)
By Foy Valentine

Virtue is purity, strength, valor, courage, uprightness of heart, integrity of soul, virility of spirit.

Values are those basic qualities commonly accepted among civilized people as constituting an irreducible minimum by which folks ought to live-anywhere, everywhere, anytime, all the time.

Virtues and values are of great importance to everybody. They are of special importance to Christians. The two are virtually synonymous, essentially the same thing. Both are concerned about our personal walk with the Lord "in paths of righteousness" and with our social behavior in morally responsible ways.

The cardinal virtues, the primary values, deserve far more attention than the people of God have been giving them in recent times. They may be understood as personal qualities with social applications and as social fruits with personal roots. These two dimensions, the personal and the social, need to be kept equally in focus, for one without the other is an oxymoron-incongruous, contradictory, impossible.

Robert Frost wrote in "The Road Not Taken" in 1916:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

And the Bible reference is Jeremiah 6:16 (RSV), "Thus says the Lord: Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls."

This, then, is a word about choosing to walk in "the good way," in the way where God leads, in "paths of righteousness."

Virtues and Values:
What in the World Happened to Them?

Today humanity is free-falling in an abyss of moral nihilism. Most folks don`t really believe anything anymore. They spend their lives in frenzied activism to keep from looking down into this black hole of meaninglessness. Our world seems determined to try to live life without discipline, enjoy plenty without work, experience pleasure without pay, wallow in adultery without love, commit crime without punishment, revel in sin without judgment, break out all the windows in order to breathe, and play tennis with the net down. Our world does not believe you have to reap what you sow, that you have to "dance with who you brung."

It is, as Dr. Johnson said of a man about to be hanged, a situation calculated wonderfully to concentrate the mind.

Multitudes in our country and in our churches have become almost totally alienated from any moral standards, almost completely uprooted from any ethical soil in which to put down steadying and sustaining roots, and almost utterly without any substantive commitment to reject wrong and to choose right.

What happened? Most of the important institutions in society have tended to focus almost all of their attention on reason rather than revelation, on things instead of persons, on the material rather than the spiritual, on the body rather than the soul, on the brain rather than the mind, on sensate pleasures rather than peace that passes understanding, on present gratification rather than future fulfillment, on spendable cash on earth rather than immeasurable treasure laid up in heaven, on time rather than eternity.

Few things have ever come down the pike in the history of hulmanity that are more incredibly destructive or more patently indefensible than the harebrained notion that education should be provided through a values-free curriculum and that life should be lived in a values-neutral environment. This noxious and noisome notion, this poison and stinking madness, deserves to be smashed to smithereens, like Moses did the golden calf before he mixed it in the water and made the people drink it.

If people do not learn about virtues and values in the home, in the school, in the media, through public policy, by the example of individuals in places of authority, and particularly in church, then humanity will move inexorably away from civilization and down into the pit of lawlessness, into a pit of barnyard morality where virtues and values are unnamed, unknown, unsung, and finally unwelcome.

Virtues and Values:
What on Earth Are They?

Virtues and values are, to use Alexis de Tocqueville`s felicitous phrase, habits of the heart.

Virtues and values have to do with morals, customs, habits, disposition, manners, manner of life.

Virtues and values are cherished beliefs that determine behavior.

Virtues and values are the integrating factor without which no human being can get it all together.

Virtues and values are the glue without which no nation can long endure; they are the sticky stuff without which no institution can long hold together; they are the centripetal force without which no organization can long defy disintegration.

Virtues and values are the integrating essence of which Paul Tillich wrote in Morality and Beyond when he said that without the imminence of a moral imperative, both culture and religion inevitably disintegrate for lack of ultimate seriousness.

Virtues and values are the essential qualities for which Saint Augustine looked in vain when he said that Rome perished for want of order in the soul.

Virtues and values have God as their source. Human reason does not fashion them or form them.

Virtues and values were what Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. And the substance of those two tables of the law of God have been more compelling through the ages than all the health and wealth claptrap ever concocted, or all the eat-drink-and-be-merry schemes ever devised, or all the silly striving ever done to discover some new nerve endings to stimulate.

Virtues and values do not spring from opinion polls.

Virtues and values are summed up in our Lord`s summary of the law and the prophets: love God with your total being and love your neighbor as yourself Jesus did not come to destroy the law and the prophets but to fulfill them. He did not abrogate God`s law but confirmed it. He did not repeal history but en-fleshed it. That is to say that God did not become a hedonist (wallowing in self-indulgence) or a Hindu (seeking ultimate liberation from all things physical and material) when he became a Christian.

Here are the virtues and values we affirm: wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, righteousness, peace, faith, hope, love, and freedom. We learn the names of the first four, wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice from the Greeks and the Romans; and the names of the next two, righteousness and peace, we learn from the Hebrews; and the names of the next three, faith, hope, and love, we learn from the early Christians. The last, freedom, is the trophy in some significant part of the American experience in general and Baptist Christians in particular. Let us consider them briefly but with care.

Wisdom has to do with the clearing of the mind so that distinction is made between good and bad, right and wrong, light and darkness, aspirations and appetite, discernment and desire, timeless values and transient whims. Wisdom perceives the true and moves forward in the development of the true. Wisdom has to do with prudence. Wisdom understands that you don`t burn down a cathedral just to fry an egg even though you have a ravenous appetite.

Courage has to do with the clearing of the mind so that when the distinction is made between good and bad, the good is chosen and the bad is rejected. Courage is the quality of character exercised to rise above tribalism, provincialism, racism, and sexism to do right and reject wrong. Courage has to do with the greatness of a noble spirit, the strength of an invincible will.

Temperance has to do with the clearing of the mind so that the harm of excess and the damage of excessiveness is avoided and the good of the golden mean is embraced. Temperance has to do with orderliness and moderation in everything that is said and done. Temperance has to do with understanding that we ought not to let it all hang out seeing as how it has taken us such a long time to get a little of it tucked in.

Justice has to do with the clearing of the mind so that everyone is rendered his or her due, and so that obligations assumed are obligations faithfully discharged.

Righteousness has to do with right-way-ness. When the mind is cleared, standards are accepted and ideals are acknowledged. Righteousness rejects wrong and chooses right. Righteousness affirms our understanding that revealed religion is a religion of ethical monotheism in which our God, who is one, is everlastingly concerned about ethics, our doing right.

Peace has much to do with the clearing of the mind for a focus on right relationships. Shalom was the Hebrews` word for peace, a word which encompassed the idea of wholeness, health, completeness, and order. When the Bible speaks of righteousness and peace kissing each other, it is saying that peace is always puckered when righteousness comes calling.

Faith is, as the author of Hebrews has taught us, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. As a factor in an appropriate focus on virtues and values, faith is to be understood as confidence in God, trust in others, and acceptance of our own place in God`s scheme of things. And faith is commitment to go with God, believing, being in life persuaded of God`s absolute trustworthiness.

Hope is yet another facet in the jewel of virtues and values with major light to reflect on how we clear our minds. Authentic faith requires authentic hope, an awareness of the importance of things yet to come, an eschatological itch, a realization that in this world we can never count ourselves to have apprehended, and an understanding that God`s people are always an exodus people, always moving out, always moving on, always seeking the city whose builder and maker is God.

Love, like faith and hope, has much to do with the clearing of the mind for an understanding of virtues and values. Love of God is vitally related to love of humanity made in God`s image. And love of humanity has to do with the exercising of our human will, our human energy, and our human resources to seek the good of others. Love is not so much emotion as it is energetic, active, sweating good will.

Freedom is a major step of the ladder of virtues and values. The greatest contribution of America to the world is our championing of the ideal of freedom. This freedom we prize, however, is not something we can take personal credit for: it is the gift of God. With God`s guidance and blessing, our forebears made our love of liberty an organic part of our Constitution; and our Bill of Rights spells out this value in the first 16 words of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" Liberty was not easily gained nor cheaply bought; and what our forebears secured at great sacrifice, we ought not now basely to relinquish. In the public arena, we ought not to relinquish our freedom to loquacious scumbags who use their radio and TV "talk shows" to twist the truth, pander to the lowest prejudices, and pervert public opinion; and in the churches, we ought not to relinquish our freedom to a majority vote of some demagogue manipulating a carried-away congregation or convention crowd. Remember that in Melville`s Moby Dick, Father Mapple mounted his high pulpit by means of a rope ladder and that for the preservation of his freedom, he always drew the ladder up after him.

Freedom is harder to hold than to acquire; but it is a pearl of great price. Let us never cast it before swine, throw it in the kudzu patch, or lose it by careless inattention.

So, there they are, the virtues and values the world needs: wisdom, courage, justice, temperance, righteousness, peace, faith, hope, love, and freedom.

Virtues and Values:
What Under Heaven Can We Do to Affirm Them?

Name them. The very first thing to do is to name them. Then we are able to think about them and to discuss them with some perceptiveness with others.

Absorb them. We can incorporate them into our vocabularies, assimilate them into our daily lives, grow comfortable with them in our routine activities, and utilize them as accepted factors in our daily lives.

Live with them. Long ago, God`s people were admonished to take the values and ideals of God, the Supreme Good himself as communicated in his word, and to speak of them in the daily walks of life, to discuss them when sitting around the supper table, to have them in mind when going to bed at night, and to keep them in focus when rising up in the morning This is the recipe for the food which our hungry world needs, indeed is starving for.

Propagate them. These virtues and values are worth learning. They are worth studying, teaching, preaching, and thinking about. And they are worth sharing.

So, I end this word where I began it with the prophetic utterance from Jeremiah 6:16: "Thus says the Lord: Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls."

It has been a word about choosing to walk where the good way is, where God leads, in paths of righteousness, in the road less traveled, in the way of virtues and values.

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