The Death of Virtue Part II
INTRODUCTION
In part one of this two-part series, The Death of Virtue, we saw that hypocrisy has become impossible in America today, meaningless. By and large, American society has ceased to be virtuous, no longer knows what virtue, and no longer cares. In the absence of virtue, a great void has filled the American soul, and with the void has come meaninglessness. Unable to see a great, overarching meaning or purpose to life in general, millions of Americans no longer see any meaning or purpose for their own lives. The void has replaced virtue. Even among believers.
What can be done to fill the void, to return to the virtuous life? In this, the second article in this two-part series, we examine the approaches proposed and practiced by secularists. We will also expose the inevitable personal and societal consequences of these techniques and the tools used by their practitioners to reinforce the techniques, and so, strengthen the prison-like walls of the void. Finally, we will present a “final solution” to the void, a way back to the virtuous life.
TECHNIQUE–SOLUTIONS
In his book, The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis describes the consequences of this seismic societal shift away from virtue to the void of meaningless:
“There is something which unites magic and applied science (technology) while separating them from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline, and virtue. For the modern individual, the cardinal problem is how to conform reality to the wishes of man, and the chosen solution is a technique.”
Finding no transcendent meaning in life beyond dystopia or their own fairy tale wishes (both dominant themes in movies and TV today), and refusing to look to God as the supreme Sovereign and personal creator, humans naturally look to technique-solutions to cope with their sense that life has no meaning. Like band-aids on cancers, they apply techniques to cover the void.
Kreeft describes three such technique-solutions much in vogue today:
1. “All virtue is subjective.”
If it feels good, do it. If it doesn’t feel good, flee it. All personal feelings and desires are virtuous.
What was once vice is now virtue – emptiness becomes fullness; death is life. It’s all in how you look at it. It’s all in how you feel about it. Ultimately, this technique denies the Creator and Truth.
2. “All virtue is personal.”
Whatever I can do, I am free to do. Personal power as virtue.
This technique-solution is power-as-virtue: there is no objective, universal right and wrong. This technique-solution denies the Sovereign Lord and Truth.
3. “All virtue is private.”
Whatever I want to do, I do; no one has the right to judge me. Try to judge me, and I will take you out. In the name of virtue, of course. Personal authority as virtue.
This option is designer virtue: what is right for me is right for me, and what is right for you is right for you. This technique-solution denies the Eternal Judge and Truth.
In a word, each person does what is right in his or her own eyes. (Judges 21.25)
FROM INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS TO THE CONFORMING COLLECTIVE
The irony of these techniques is that they do not affirm any inherent value or worth in the individual or society. They only enforce the collective – a cold, soulless machine that runs people’s lives in the name of “the greater good.”
Because collectives disdain transcendent virtue, they create a culture where ever-changing personal feelings and societal might are the new virtues. However, as the French Revolution and many other uprisings in history have demonstrated, collectives do not affirm any value in the individual or society. They do not serve the wellbeing of individuals or societies. Inevitably, every collective demands that individuals bow the knee in conformity. Individuality disappears into being “just another brick in The Wall.” Dissenting individuals are vanquished by the mob, or vanish into gulags, à la the Soviet Union decades ago or China today. Society and community are dissolved. Each is swallowed by the need to serve “the greater good,” a nebulous goal defined by those who have mastered the techniques of feelings, power, and authority. Sadly, the individual ceases to exist even as he thrusts his fist in the air and declares his freedom. Society dies even as it celebrates its liberation from the bondage of its own history. Brave new world. Papa Huxley would be proud.
It’s all made possible, even inevitable, by the removal of virtue and replacing it with the collective technique-solutions described above.
THE FINAL SOLUTION
The result of these three technique-solutions, this new system of “virtue,” is the necessary destruction of the individual. Individuals become not only meaningless but useless. They must conform to the collective or, to clear the way for our brave new world, they must be crushed. The individual loses his voice, surrendered to the shout of the mob. The individual loses his right to speak, ask a question, or even think independently. In the name of virtue, the collective demands that these most basic of human rights be sacrificed on the pyre of the collective Vox Populi vox Dei (“The voice of the people is the voice of God.”)
Further, because individuals have no sense of personal meaning, society also becomes meaningless, only an ever-changing construct, its virtue defined by power and the powerful. Without virtue, society has no internal strength to hold it together, no transcendent fabric to sustain it. Society is only a collective to be ruled with the tools of strong-and-ever-stronger technique-solutions: politics and power. Again, virtue lies dead or at least dying in the streets, trampled under the feet of the powerful as they march to enforce the edicts of the collective. All to the cheers of the enslaved.
Hello, atheistic-Marxist-new-worlders. Goodbye, each-person-uniquely-made-in-the-image-of-God.
THE TOOLS
The tools used in these techniques are several. They include two you will immediately recognize for their wide use today: values clarification and distorted tolerance.
1. Values Clarification
In the innocent-sounding “Values Clarification” technique, approved “facilitators” (not teachers) help individuals state, clarify, and then validate their own values. This is “facilitated” in the name of the individual’s health and wellbeing. But in fact, the individual is not permitted to state and defend his own values (and especially if identified as being in opposition to the facilitators’ declared values). Values are imposed on people to make them conform to the party line and give people a sense of being a part of the collective: “You are approved and accepted, whatever your values, as long as your values are not objective and conform to the party line.” This is a primary tool of fascists in schools, universities, workplaces, and “science” today.
And yet, even as people repeat the values mantra of the collective, in their souls, they feel the aching emptiness of The Void. The darkness that descends with the collective’s decreed “death” of true and transcendent virtue has robbed people of their personal sense of meaning, and their security about really awaits them in eternity. Silently, they still pray, “Is there something more? There has to be something more than this life emptied of all meaning.”
2. Distorted Tolerance
In the name of “fairness,” morality police hand out tickets to those who state or practice values outside the party line, i.e., the collective. It’s all done in the name of group health and individual wellbeing. But in reality, the purposes are, again, conformity to the party line and giving people a false sense of security: “Those who know best are watching out for the rest of us and will keep the monsters away from us.”
And yet, even as people “tolerate” vice as virtue, in their souls, they are haunted by The Void. Ironically, the emptiness that comes with bowing to the collective and its decreed death of virtue has robbed people of their sense of meaning, and their security about really awaits them in eternity. Silently, they still pray, “Is there something true, good, and noble? There has to be something true in life, something more trustworthy than this ever-changing and politically correct party line of virtues.
Both of these imposed tools are poor substitutes for internal virtue. And deep down, many people know it. Deep in their souls, they sense it. And silently, they scream for deliverance.
THE ETHICAL DILEMMA
But still, the societal temples of education and media continue to “facilitate” individuals with their technique-solutions, even calling this arm-twisting ethical: “We only force people to conform because it is the right thing to make people conform to the collective. We know what’s best for you.”
But they miss the essential point. The real source of ethics is not power. And the goal of ethics is not manipulation, i.e., forcing people to do what you want them to do. Instead, the source of ethics is virtue, life-giving, transcendent, and timeless virtue.
And the goal of ethics is helping people know, recognize, and live well in the life-giving strength of transcendent and timeless virtue.
To understand the relationship between virtue and ethics, and how, together, they help people find meaning in life, consider this analogy offered by C.S. Lewis in his classic work, “Mere Christianity.” In it, Lewis demonstrates how legitimate ethics helps people deal with three great questions in life and live well. He does so by likening people and their pursuit of wellbeing to the voyage of sailing ships:
1. First, ships need to know how to avoid collisions.
For people, this is “Social Ethics,” and this is being taught today (Social morés, sensitivity training, tolerance, political correctness, etc.)
2. Second, ships need to know how to avoid sinking.
For people, this is “Personal Ethics” (right and wrong, vice and virtue). This is not being taught today.
3. Third, ships need to know their mission, why they are at sea in the first place.
For people, this is “Personal Meaning and Ultimate Purpose.” This, Lewis writes, is not even asked, much less taught.
Little wonder then that most Americans today live without a sense of meaning or purpose in life. Little wonder that followers of Jesus Christ are, as Kreeft writes, “Rebels in our day, rebels in an age of relativism, of group-think imposed from the outside.”
THE VIRTUE-SOLUTION
In a society of squishy relativism and empty absurdism where nothing is understood as transcendentally true or having absolute meaning, there are no sound foundations upon which to build in the pursuit of individual or societal meaning and wellbeing. Virtue is meaningless, and ethics are empty, a mere moment-to-moment prescription imposed by those in power.
What then is the solution to such emptiness and hopelessness? The answer: a return to Biblical orthodoxy. Not better techniques or more skilled use of tools for these idols have proven themselves empty and impotent. Not even spiritual or religious experiences for, without biblical foundations, these experiences are user-defined and, as such, open the user to falsehood and grave eternal consequences.
The only solution for our time is a return to biblical orthodoxy: the knowledge of the eternal and transcendent truth as revealed by God in the Holy Scriptures. The only answer to relativism and its absolute emptiness is the transcendent revelation of God. The only solution to absurdism and its wake of hopelessness is the eternal truth of God. The Scriptures – Absolute, Bold, and Consistent. Only the Scriptures fully and accurately explain reality, and so, provide a basis for meaning.
Not a Collective-Faith defined by and for Big Brother. Not an I-Faith defined by and for me. What is required is a studying, understanding, teaching, loving, and living “the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s saints” (Jude 1.3) – working and walking with others on how that orthodoxy is lived out in this present world. To be orthodox is to, without apology, believe and consistently give active agreement to The Faith taught in the Scriptures, whatever the times, the culture, the demands of political correctness, and the commands of the powers that be.
To be orthodox is to join Daniel in not only refusing to bow to the idols of our day but in throwing open the windows to fully and freely following the One who fully and willingly laid down His life for us, Jesus Christ, the Creator-Savior. To be orthodox is heroic. It is to dare to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, the One who died for us. It is to dare to join the journey of the Twelve who lived – and died – to follow Him. It is to joyfully join the great cloud of history’s witnesses who have walked in The Way as revealed in the Word of God.
BACK TO HIGH SCHOOL AND THE DOOBIES
“What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits,” the Doobie Brothers told us. They had no idea what they were saying. The following year, they released their album, “Stampede,” followed by “Takin’ It To the Streets,” “Living On the Fault Line,” “Minute By Minute,” “One Step Closer,” and then their requiem, “Farewell Tour.”
Did you catch the progression in logic? The disintegration of life and hope? When vice becomes habit, farewell becomes inevitable for the individual and society. But let’s flip the thought.
What would happen if we could see virtue welcomed and reseated among us again?
What if the seven classic virtues could become habits? What if discretion, justice, self-control, courage, faith, hope, and love could become the “law of the land” and our hearts?
What if these seven virtues would again be welcomed and reseated among us in the church? Virtues for which we applaud rather than apologize?
“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” II Peter 1.5-8
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