Sunday morning following the morning worship a young man who is in a rehab center for drug addiction, asked me to define virtue. I had mentioned virtues in my sermon. It dawned on me that we are familiar with values but not virtues. In our discussion of the coming elections we hear a lot about the values of the candidates, but not much is said concerning their virtues.

In its classical definition "virtue" means the power to accomplish a particular function. Hemlock could be referred to as a "deadly virtue". Some older translations rendered Mark's words "Jesus, immediately knowing that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press and said, Who touched my clothes" in a way that illustrates the classical definition of virtue as power

Eventually, virtue came to mean a man who is whole and strong, one who can fulfill his moral function in society. The Greek virtues included were four in number: justice, prudence, self control and courage. These four are embraced in the New Testament, and specific
Christian virtues of faith, love and hope were added to these so that in later history, these were the characteristics usually used to describe a virtuous man from a christian standpoint, while at least the first four were essential to all men and women. Virtues were about character formation and were learned in childhood from family and faith communities. In modern times virtue has fallen out of favor and has been relegated to a Victorian past. Instead "values" are in favor today. Values are fluid and depend upon the eyes of the beholder. Just as the buyer and seller will disagree about the value of a car, so we disagree about morality and neither of us can prove the other wrong because values are personal and subjective.

Virtue was not just a concern of Christians. Plato, Aristotle and Socrates discussed it. Confucius said (and he really did)that the superior man thinks always of virtue while the common man thinks of comfort.

I'm afraid most of us are more common than superior. Because the family is crumbling so are the foundations. Our children know the price everything and the value of nothing. It takes virtue to shape values.

To paraphrase C .S. Lewis, I would rather play cards against a man who is skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that "a gentleman does not cheat" that one who has a phd in moral philosophy but grew up among card sharks.

If you see an application to anything going on in the election process, well good for you. You might be virtuous after all.

rd