The question of how we should then live can never be separated from the moral framework we adopt. Our character, our beliefs, our moral frameworks all affect how we behave towards other and how we behave in difficult situations. However great the rules, unless patience, compassion, steadfastness are built into us we will react out of our base unreformed character. Our ethics come from the heart. Anything else is deception and manipulation: an attempt to disconnect the heart from the actions, which creates pretence.
Our ethics emerges from the formation of our character. Even if I set up rules, and decide that a particular way of behaving is something that should become a universal law, what I consider universal depends on my character and views. There is no sense in which it is universal or objective. It depends on my motives, my selfishness, my wish to exercise virtues. So there is a link: what I do, how I behave, what I consider ethical is connected to who I am.
I depend on my past, on who I consider examples and mentors. It depends on the community I’m in and the culture of that community. Logic, thought and reflection enter into the ethical equation. But it is no good deciding that a course of action is right by reason if I lack the character, the motivation, the exercise if virtues to act. It is like deciding I wish to walk, making the mental decision when my muscles are atrophied and I have no power in my legs.
Virtue and character come before duty and rules because duty will never get started if virtues such as truthfulness, honesty and humility are not exercised. Regardless of what reason says, I will quickly find new reason, new logic pathways, however convoluted to justify an alternative act.
And ethical rules can never be comprehensive or compete enough. They will always break down, when faced with new situations and exceptions which they cannot adapt to. A rule-driven ethical life is impoverished and bound to collapse because of the inevitable limitations of those rules and the inability of humans to stay the course and exercise them.
So it is the virtues and the development of character that has primacy. And character if developed by practicing virtues. Patience requires the practice of restraint in difficult and frustrating situations. Courage requires the stepping our when we are possessed by fear and every sinew wants to run away. Compassion involves putting ourselves in positions where it is required and learning to resist our natural tendency to focus on self.
Christians clothe themselves with compassion, kindness, humility and gentleness. It is an act of the will, a learnt action, learnt in community. We learn by example, in schools, in churches. We look up to the more experiences, we imitate other people; we follow the wisdom and advice of mentors. By doing this we build up character, we practice virtues. And therefore we are equipped to act ethically in familiar situations and then in more challenging situations. We move from a general act of respect to other whereby we do not steal their possessions, to more complex ethical situations, say in medical practice. We learn from our professional practice.
What person should we then be? It is not a matter of setting rules, or negotiating with other individuals to minimise damage. It has to start internally, with moral decision I make about who I am. And who I am is expressed in my character, in the virtues I exhibit and in my daily patterns of behaviour.
The virtues I practice are built up, developed from childhood and practices and learnt throughout my lifetime. I never stop learning, developing, drawing from my community and contributing to it. My ethics, my actions derived from my moral framework result from the influence of family, community and society. My parents and the effects of generations before are influential. My school background, the influence of media, of peers is all a contributor. Whether I am aware or not I seek mentors, examples of virtuous characters who, because of wisdom, practice and example influence my virtuous development.
This is not a blind adoption of the virtues of the communities I exist in. It is influence my reason. I assess and reflect on the ethical behaviour. But the problem is: where does the ethical behaviour come from? Who are my examples? Where do the ethics of my community come from? A community with an ethics of cannibalism, with mentors who accept that eating people is not wrong will result in virtuous cannibalism which I might adopt as I follow my mentors, as I develop in the virtues the community responses. Herein lies a problem. Virtues, as much as moral rules may be determined by who has the power in the community to decide what is right and what is wrong.
The whole point is that the ethics, which might be ‘normative’, is determined by human power and hubris. And the human argument is that this is flawed, tainted, broken, because the human state is one of selfishness and pride.
So if we are to practice virtues in a community, seeking mentors and the wise examples to follow we will inevitably fall short. The example we follow must come from outside the human state. It must come from God and the character of God. In order to set an example, to see the character of God and the virtues practice which is unflawed, God must enter the world. There needs to be a mentor whose virtue, while full human is uncontaminated by the pride and selfishness which infuses the human state. We need an example that expresses the moral framework and the ethical completeness to provide a reliable mentor. That example is Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the image of God, the expression of the character of God. He had compassion for the crowd, for the sick, the poor. He had courage to stand up to the Pharisees and to endure the lonely road to the cross. He had infinite patience with a group of disciples who never quite got it when he taught them. He pursued the truth because he was the truth. He set stands in the Sermon on the Mount that he lived up to. He was a man of humility. He knew who he was, he was strong and yet he did not promote himself. Because he was sure of his identity he did not need to make a fuss, persuade cajole, try to be superior. He loved and served. He did not withhold healing form anyone, he healed all. He sought to do the will of his Father regardless of cost. He did not put demands on anyone else that he would not accept and act on himself.
His ethics flipped the ethics of the world upside down. The poor and the bereaved are blessed. The meek are the new powerful. Mercy, peace-making and hunger for justice are the important virtues. He required a righteousness from us that is from the heart. He understood the fact that our ethics emanates from our heart. Lustful looks are adultery, oaths are evil, And love turns the cheek, loves those who curse, gives in secret. Do not worry, do not judge: the example of the virtuous Christ, the embodiment of the character of God provides us with the absolute moral character and ethical standards we require to live a good life, to live morally in any society. We are not looking at a set of rules, limited to a small community or culture, ill-adapted to changing society. We are looking at the pure moral and ethics of a virtuous character whose stability, robustness and resilience are more than enough to encompass any moral dilemma, any ethical decision in any society at any time.
But there is a problem. Living a virtuous life is difficult. A virtue ethics approach is seen as a difficult mountain to climb. Ethicists are bound to retreat to the safety of cost / benefit analysis, the comfort of logic, the boundaries of moral rules. Given rules only led the Jews to the pursuit of greater comfort and safety through the proliferation of more and more rules.
If living a virtuous life with any human mentor drawn from our flawed communities is difficult, living a virtuous life in the light of the absolute virtuous character of Christ is an impossible mountain to climb.
It turns out to be a hopeless exercise because the purity of Christ sets standards I will fall sort of. And although I can delude myself as to the virtue of my character, I will be painfully aware of the flawed nature of my character. Seeking Jesus as my mentor will only increase my awareness of my inadequacy. Mere existence in his presence elicits a shocked response. Peter cries, ‘Depart from me I’m an evil man’. The mob coming to arrest Jesus shrink back when faced with the beauty of virtue.
It seems unjust to offer the hope of a virtuous life only to snatch it away. And so it would be unjust and unfair of Jesus to offer a mirror of virtue just to mock our failure. But Jesus never did that. And this is the heart of Christianity. Jesus understood the human argument: that the human state is degenerate, flawed, and downright evil. That there is no possibility of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and being good: that this is the atheist delusion. That by ourselves we will never even get to the starting point. I cannot make my character virtuous by sheer effort of will. I will burn out, lose the thread, take a wrong turn. So Jesus provided, through the cross, a route for the perfect to coexist with the flawed. The gap between the virtue of Christ and the vice of man is spanned so that Jesus can live in us and next to us and around us. And hence enable us to live the virtuous life of Christ.
This is at its heart a mystery. It is hubris and pride to expect a life where there is no mystery, where everything is cold logic. We cannot explain ourselves, we cannot understand our own motives, we cannot unravel our own lives. Nobody is asking anybody to discard reason. That is a recipe for being conned and led astray. Reason is needed to comprehend the Christian faith, to wrestle with historical truths, to understanding the logic and flow of the Christian message which stands up to scrutiny. But at some point there has to be a submission, an acceptance that I need God inside. I need to accept my human limitation, admit human flaw, own up to the human argument.
And at that point I find that Christ helps me be whom I’m meant to be. I begin a new journey, a new narrative to understand my true identity and to develop a new character. Drawing on the character and power of Christ who in some incomprehensible way lives in me, turns me into a light, sets me on my feet and takes me on a path of pilgrimage.
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