Virtue ethics
- Commitment to truth, a recognition that external reality exists and a desire to become correct
- Humility before God, continual recognition that his ways are correct and ours are wrong
- Commitment to restoration, recognition that things are not the way they should be and the drive to fix them
- Love and respect
- Faithfulness
- Patience and hope
- Kindness, compassion, mercy, and generosity
- Gratitude and joy
- Forgiveness and peacemaking
- Integrity and self-control
Virtue ethics
Let’s talk about ethics. I’m not any sort of expert, but the great Dr. Anagonye once explained that there are three kinds of ethical systems: rule-based, virtue-based, and consequentialist. Either an action is right because it’s consistent with the rules, it is right because it is the thing a good person would do, or it is right because good things come of it.
Virtue ethics are particularly interesting. If you should, for example, be a brave person, the right action for you is the one that is bravest. And because we are creatures of habit, that action actually makes you a braver person. We live as the person we want to be, and it becomes easier and easier to be that person over time. We become better by acting better. We don’t exactly fake it until we make it, but it’s not far off.
I would suggest that Christian ethics should be understood as virtue ethics. The human problem, from this perspective, is that we are lacking virtue. It’s not that we are people who have done bad things, it’s that we are simply bad people. We can’t not do bad things, selfish things, short-sighted things, self-destructive things. Our nature is sinful. We need our hearts replaced or there is no hope for us to survive, and truthfully, is it even worth living as the creatures we have been?
But we can’t change alone, and God, hallelujah, in his mercy has not left us alone. He isn’t demanding perfection from us; he’s offering it to us. As Christians, the right action is the one that Christ would do (WWJD YODO and then face judgment), because that is the action that makes us more like Christ. These sad beings we are cannot survive; if you gave a human immortality and then said “BTW that one thing will kill you” we’ll do exactly that one thing. We have to change, or we will and must die.
So just for fun (because this is my idea of fun) I searched scripture for virtue lists. I came up with a couple dozen, containing about 200 distinct entries. I then grouped them. First I note there are three particular virtue clusters, which are almost meta-virtues:
Put another way, recognize that objective rightness does exist, everything (including you) is broken and dying, and God’s way is the way of life. The rest is just figuring out what that way of life looks like. And what do you know, the other virtues can be summed up under the fruit of the Spirit. Approximately:
So if you find yourself trying to understand Christian ethics as a giant list of detailed rules, maybe back up and consider that rules should be pointing you toward virtues. The central question is, who are you trying to be? Then go be that person.