Examined Christian Faith 'Charity' 3.8 What is Christainity

Much has been on my mind lately, as the Christmas season begins to rush by.  It would seem that this is the perfect time to address one f the three Theological virtues that I mentioned in one of my earlier postings ('Cardinal Virtues' 3.3 ) if you will recall I mentioned that the three theological virtues were Faith, Hope and Charity. I will address ‘Hope’ in my next posting and work my way to ‘Faith’ before I close this series, but for now I would like to return to Charity.  Charity was dealt with partially in the posting ( 'Forgiveness' 3.6 ) but there I stayed focused primarily on that part of Charity called ‘Forgiveness’.  I occurs to me that I should add some more to the topic here.

First, as to what the word ‘Charity’ means, in our culture Charity now means simply what used to be referred to as “alms” that is, giving to the poor.  However, originally it had a much wider meaning, the true meaning of ‘Charity’ means “Love, in the Christian sense.” But I must remind you again that love in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion that one feels.  Love is not, nor has it ever been a state of feeling, but rather of will; that state of will which we have naturally towards ourselves, and must learn to have about others.

If you recall in my posting on Forgiveness I pointed out that our love for ourselves does not mean that we like ourselves.  It means that we wish our own good.  In the same sense, Christian Love (Charity) for our neighbors is quite different from liking or affection.  Speaking only for myself, I like some people, but not everyone.  I’s important to understand that is not a sin, or a virtue, but simply a natural response, just as I like some types of food, and dislike others (spinach for example).  It is just a fact, however it is what we do with it that is either sinful or virtuous.

If I like someone it is easy (make that easier) to be ‘charitable’ towards them, it is thus our responsibility to encourage our affections to “like” people as much as we can.  Not because liking is itself the virtue of charity, but rather because it is a help to being charitable.  While natural likings should normally be encouraged, it would be idiotic to think that the way to become charitable is to sit and try to manufacture affectionate feelings. We are not to waste our time concerning ourselves about if we ‘love’ our neighbor or not, we are to act as if we do. 

Love is a choice, it is an action, and here lies one of the great secrets to life: when we behave as if we love someone, we will find our self coming to love them.  As much as popular culture may tell you otherwise, Actions lead feelings, never the other way around.  Think about this, if you hurt, someone you dislike, you will discover that you dislike them even more, however if you do him a favor, if you forgive him, show grace towards him (not out of a selfish desire to show him what a great person you are, or t make him owe you one), you will discover yourself liking him more.  Whenever we do something good for another ‘self’ just because he or she is a ‘self’ made (like you) by God, and that ‘self’ desiring it’s own happiness as we desire ours, we will have learned to love that self just a little more (or at least to dislike it less).

So while those who live solely in this world treat certain people kindly because he or she ‘likes’ them; the Christian trying to treat everyone kindly, finds him or herself liking more and more people as they go on – including many whom he or she could not ever imagined themselves liking at all in the beginning. Day by day becoming more loving, FOREVER.  

The exact same spiritual law works horribly in the opposite direction as well.  The more cruel you are, the more you hate; and the more you hate, the more cruel you will become – and so on in a vicious circle - FOREVER.  All the while thinking that you are a ‘good’ person, for those who live in the dark choose not to see their own evil, until it is forced upon them, when they realize the steps coming to claim them are not those from heaven.  At which point it is too late, Forever is a very long time. 

Good and evil both increase at a compound interest rate.  That is why all those little decisions you and I make everyday are of such infinite importance.  The smallest good act today is the strategic beginning point that in a few months you may be able to achieve victories you never dreamed of.  Conversely, a trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the bridgehead from which adultery, fornication, divorce, slander, murder and all forms of evil is launched from.

Before I leave this subject I feel I should address one last point, we are all told that we ought to love God, yet there are times when we can not find it in ourselves to do so.  For some this is a fleeting moment, for others it can be a haunting everyday presence.  It causes great duress to those in those times.  What then? It is the same answer as before, do not sit around trying to manufacture feelings, rather ask yourself “If I were certain that I loved God, what would I do?” When you find your answer, go and do it. 

God’s love for us is a much safer subject then our love for him. Nobody can always have devout feelings, and even if you could, feelings are not what God principally cares about.  Christian love towards others or towards God is an affair of the will.  If you are trying to do His will, you are obeying His commandment, “Thou shall love the Lord thy God”.  Regardless of your feelings, His love for you is constant.  It is not wearied by your sins, or indifference.  Therefore, His love is quite relentless in it’s determination that we must be cured of those sins we choose, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him. 

Next Posting in this series 'Hope'

Previous Posting in this series 'Sin of Sins'

2011 Video Christmas Card - The Nativity

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and today begins the Christmas season.  The stores and malls will be filled to overflowing as in America the shoppers wait in lines for hours to save a couple of dollars on the latest gadget that they absolutely need, or Christmas will be ruined.   With that in mind I post this years video Christmas Card, with a prayer that you do not let the real reason slip through your fingers.    

To view last years Video Christmas Card go to the Video's page

Examined Christian Faith 'The Sin of Sins' 3.7 What is Christainity

I have heard more people than I can count (almost daily) admit that they have a bad temper, or that they have a hard time not lusting after women, or that they have a drinking problem / drug problem and even a few who admit that they are cowards.  Yet I do not think I have ever heard anyone who is not a Christian accuse him or herself of this vice.  Most have no idea that they could be guilty of such a thing.   There is however no fault that makes a person more unpopular and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves; ironically the more we have it in ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.

The vice I am writing about is PRIDE and Self–Conceit; and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals is what we call humility.  According to Christian scholars, the essential  vice. The utmost evil is Pride.  Anger, greed, lust, drunkenness, adultery, and all the rest  are mere mosquito bites in comparison; it is through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: if is the complete anti-God state of mind. 

In my opening paragraph I pointed out that the more pride one had, the more one disliked pride in others.  In truth, if you want to find out how proud you are, the easiest way is to ask yourself, “How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, ignore me, patronize me or show off?”   the reason is, that each person’s pride is in competition with everyone else’s  pride.  Pride is essentially competitive  by its very nature, while the other vices are competitive only.  By accident Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having MORE of it than the next person.  We say that people are proud of being rich, or cleaver, or beautiful; but in truth they are proud of being richER, cleavER and MORE beautiful. If everyone was equally rich, smart and beautiful there would be nothing to be proud about.  It is the comparison that make s you proud , the pleasure you derive from being above the rest. 

Here is the point, nearly all evils in the world that people attribute to greed, selfishness, weakness, and the like, are in reality just the symptoms of the result of PRIDE.  For it is power that Pride really enjoys, there is nothing that makes a person feel so superior to others as having some sort of power over them.  What makes a beautiful woman spread misery wherever she goes by collecting admirers (even after she is married)? Pride!  What is it that makes a political leader or a entire nation go on and on and n demanding more and more and more? Pride yet again.  If I am a proud person then as long as there is another person who is more powerful, or richer, cleaver, beautiful, or more desired then I, he is my enemy and my rival.  

Other vices may sometimes in a sad way bring people together: drunks hang out with drunks, addicts with addicts,  adulterers and liars with other adulterers and liars.  However Pride always means hostility or mutual hatred and not just between man and man, but between man and God.  Because in God you come up against something that is in every singly respect immeasurably superior to you, and thus you are nothing in comparison.  As long as you are proud you can not know that, you cannot know God.  A proud person is always looking down on others, and of course as long as you are looking down you cannot see something above you. 

This then raises a horrible question.  How can a person who is quite obviously consumed with pride, say they believe in God and appear to be very religious?  The only answer is that they are worshiping an imaginary God.   They in theory admit to being nothing in the presence of this phantom God, while really imagining how much He approves of them and thinks them far better than other people. 

Luckily God has provided us with this simple test:  Whenever we find our religious life is making us feel that we are  good-above all, that we are better that someone else – we can be sure that we are being acted on, not however by God, but by the Devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is that you see yourself for what you are, as a small dirty object., or you have progressed to forgetting  about yourself completely (which is the goal).

Make no mistake about this, there are many who claim to be spiritual, who claim religion, who claim forgiveness, who claim that they are a Christian. There are many who have simply out of their own pride invented a imaginary God (not the one who talks to us through the Bible)  To these the Devil laughs, for while other sins come at us from our animal nature, it is pride that comes directly from hell, and to those who embrace pride, hell will take them back.  To these I believe Jesus addressed when He said that many will claim him, however  “Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”  Matthew 7:23  Pride is THE spiritual cancer – it eats up the very possibility of love, faith, hope, contentment, honor, loyalty, courage, commitment,  repentance and forgiveness, honestly or even common sense. 

Previous Posting in this series : "Forgiveness"

Next Posting in this series: "Charity" 

Examined Christian Faith 'Forgiveness' 3.6 What is Christainity

I believe that without question, the most unpopular of all Christian Virtues is the one I am going to address today: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself”.  Because Christian morals mean that “your neighbor” includes “your enemy”, thus we are pushed up against this terrible duty of forgiving our enemies.   Nearly everyone you ask will tell you that forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.  Then to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with distain and anger.  It isn’t that people think forgiveness is too high and difficult a virtue; it is that they think it hateful and contemptible.   Most of who are reading this have already decided to ask me “I wonder how you would feel about forgiveness if you had a family member inside the World Trade Center on September 11^th, or if your spouse had betrayed you with cold and calculated malice. 

So do I: In answer to the first question I wonder very much, in answer to the second it is a battle I fight each and every day.  Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion to save myself from death or torture, I wonder what I would do if it came to that point.  Do not mistake me for one of those who writes a book telling you that I have mastered the Christian doctrine of forgiveness – I am simply telling you what Christianity is.  I did not invent it, yet right in the middle of it, we find “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”  It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we will not be forgiven.  There are no two ways about it.  So what are we to do?

It is going to be hard, but I think I there are at lest two things we can do to make it easier.  First, just as when you start learning math, you did not begin with calculus, you began with simple addition (1+1=2) In the same manner, if you really want to learn how to forgive (but you have to really want to forgive) perhaps you should start with something easier then those things that repulse everyone with any morals, those things that there can be no justification for.  Start instead by forgiving something someone has said this week, and continue to build on top of that.

Second, I think we should try to understand exactly what loving your neighbor as yourself means. I have to love him as I love myself?  Then exactly how do I love myself?  I can only speak for myself but I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself.  Nor do I always enjoy my own company.  So apparently “love your neighbor” doesn’t mean “to feel fond of him, or to find him attractive” Do I think I am good, think I am a nice person?  Honestly, sometimes I do (and those are no doubt my worst moments).  But that is not why I love myself, in fact it is the other way around: my self love makes me think myself nice (thus those who argue that they are a good person are without doubt the most narcissist of all) but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself.  So if you extend that, that loving your enemies does not mean thinking they are nice either.  Which at least to me is a great relief as forgiving my enemies does not mean that I have to say they are not such bad people, when it is quite plain that they are.

Taking that one step further, in my most clear sighted moments not only do I not think of myself as a nice person, but know that I am a wicked one.  I can look at some of the things I have done with horror, which apparently means that I am allowed to hate some of the things my enemies do.  Remember Christian theology teaches that we are to hate the evil person’s actions but not the evil person.

For a long time, I thought that was just hair splitting, how could you hate what the person did and not hate the person?  However, with time it occurred to me that I have been doing this all my life – namely with myself.  I might dislike some of what I have done, yet I went on loving myself.  In fact the reason I hated the things was because I loved the man.  Because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of person who did those things.  Consequently Christianity does not want us to reduce our hatred we feel for cruelty, treachery, deceit, and self-fishiness.  We should hate them, but we are to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves.  Being sorry that the person could have done such things, yet hoping that somehow, sometime, somewhere, someway, he or she can be cured and mad human again. 

 

Does loving your enemy mean not punishing them?  No, for loving myself does not mean that I should not subject myself to punishment for my sins.  If one had committed murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and accept your punishment, even if that meant death.  Thus what is the Christian thing for a thief to do, or an adulterer, an unscrupulous businessman?  The modern church has removed punishment, (JUSTICE) from its teachings.  But I do not think God has suddenly, due to popular demand ceased being JUST.   It is therefore in my opinion perfectly right for a Christian Judge or minister to deal swiftly with perpetrators, demanding justice for both the perpetrators and the victims.   Mercy is measured by Justice.

Some (more often then not those who are guilty of things that repulse the average moral Chrsitian) will say “if one is allowed to condemn the enemy’s acts, and punish him, what is the difference between Christian morality and the secular view?”  All the difference in the world.  Remember, Christians think man lives forever.  Thus what really matters is those twists on the central inside part of the soul which are going to turn it in the long run into a heavenly or hellish creature.  We may punish, if Justice is necessary, but we are not to enjoy it.  The ‘feeling’ of vengeance must simply be killed.  

Even while we punish we must feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves – to wish that he or she were not bad, to hope that he or she may in this world be cured; thus in fact to wish him or her good.  That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing for your enemy good, not feeling fond of him or her, nor saying he or she is nice and a good person when they are not.

I admit that I struggle with this myself, because it means loving people who have nothing lovable about them.  But then again do I have anything loveable about me? I love me, simply because I am 'me'.  God intends us to love all “ME’s” in the same way and for the same reason.  I find it easier to do, when I remind myself of how He loves me.  Not for any nice, good attractive qualities I think I have, but because I am me.  Because really there is nothing in us to love: we are creatures who actually find hatred pleasurable, and that to give it up is like giving up alcohol or cigarettes. 

Previous Posting in this series "Marriage" 

Next Posting in this series; "The Sin of Sins" 

Examined Christian Faith 'Marriage' 3.5 What is Christainity

If your faith can not save you from your own self-centeredness, your own selfishness, then it will not save you from Hell.  

No where is it more obvious and painfully clear to both those who claim Christianity and those outside the faith to readily see the true nature of a person’s heart, then by observing their response to the Christian viewpoint on marriage.  Christ’s teachings on this matter are clear and absolute; as a result this is where pretenders and hypocrites are sorted out, where the wheat is separated from the chafe.   This is where those who are a ‘good person’ and a ‘nice person’ have their selfish, self-centered, self serving heart exposed.

These next sentences are critical to those who claim the Christian faith.  The Christian idea of marriage is based upon Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single creature (one-flesh), and that Jesus was not expressing a sentiment, but rather a fact – just like a lock and key are one mechanism.   When God created humans, He created them in two halves, the male and the female, they were made to be combined (joined together) not just on the sexual level, but totally combined.  The monstrosity of sexual “relations” (as we like to call it) outside marriage is that those who live that lifestyle are attempting to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which are intended to go along with it and form the complete union.  

As a consequence, Christianity teaches that marriage is for life.  There are no if’s, and’s or but’s.  Divorce plus remarriage, equals adultery.  You will hear a lot of ‘Christians’ who will take issue with that statement, but it does not alter Jesus’ teachings on marriage.  He was crystal clear and left no wiggle room.  Christians and all Christian churches following Jesus’ teachings, regard divorce as something like cutting up a living body, as a kind of surgical operation that is so violent that it cannot be done.  That divorce is more like having both of your legs and arms cut off with a rusty dull saw, than it is like dissolving a business partnership.  Christians follow Jesus’ teaching that disagrees and condemns  the modern viewpoint that divorce is a simple readjustment of partners, to be made whenever someone feels they are no longer in love with the other, or when either of them “falls in love” with someone else. 

One must not forget to consider this in relation to another virtue that I wrote previously about, “Justice”.  Justice as I mentioned in a previous posting includes keeping promises. Everyone who has been married in a church has made a public solemn vow to stick to his or her partner until death.  The duty and responsibility of keeping that promise has no special connection with sexual morality: it is the same as any other vow or promise.  If as some would have us believe that the sexual desire is just like all other desires; then it should justifiably be treated like all our other desires; and as our other desires are controlled by our promises, so should this one be.   If it is as I believe, it is not like all our other desires, but is rather one that is morbidly inflamed, then we should be especially careful to not let it lead us into dishonesty. 

Now I freely admit that there are those who make this promise as a mere formality and never intend to keep it.  Who were they trying to deceive, the groom, the bride or the in-laws, or just the public?  If so their words and heart is treacherous.  Or perhaps he or she is trying, when they make the vow to deceive God, if so they can only be counted among the foolish, the very - very foolish.  These individuals want the benefits and the respectability that is attached to marriage without ever intending to pay the price that is required.  They are imposters, they are liars, they are cheaters and God calls them adulterers.  If they remain contented to be a liars, and adulterer, then I have nothing to say to them (pearls before swine’s), who would urge the high and hard duty of chastity on someone who has not yet desired to be merely honest?   However if they have now removed the blinders from their eyes and truly want to be honest, then their promise, already made constrains them.  This then comes under the heading of Justice.  

The idea that some have that “being in love” is the only reason for remaining married, leaves no room for marriage as a promise at all.  If love is the entire thing, then the promise can add nothing, and if it adds nothing then it should not be made.  The curious thing is that lovers know this while they remain really in love, better than those who talk about love.  The Christian law of marriage simply demands what lovers already know, that they should take seriously something which their passion impels them to do.  

Of course, the promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to my beloved as long as I live commits one to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions.  No one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way.  You might as well promise to never have a headache or to always feel thirsty. 

Being “in love” is a glorious state, and in several ways is good for us, it helps us to be generous and courageous, it opens our eyes to beauty, and it conquers lust.  No one would deny that being in love is better than common sensuality or self-centeredness.  Being ‘in love” is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. It is a noble feeling, but it is till just a feeling, no feeling can be relied upon to last in its full intensity or even at all.  Principles can last, knowledge can last, habits can last; but feelings… they come and go.  However, ceasing to be “in love” need not mean ceasing to LOVE.  LOVE as opposed to “being in love” is not merely a feeling, rather it is a deep unity, maintained by will and deliberately strengthened by habit, and grace.  This LOVE can be kept even in those moments (hours, days, weeks, months) that you do not like each other, just as you love yourself even when you dislike yourself.  This LOVE can be retained even when each other would easily if they allowed themselves, to “be in love” with someone else.  “Being in love” is what moves one to a promise of fidelity until death, “LOVE” enables you to keep that promise.

This is one little part, I think, of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies.  Far too few people understand that if you decide to make thrills (being in-love) the definition of love, then over time the thrill will get weaker and weaker, fewer and fewer, until you at last end up a bored disillusioned old man or woman. However if you let the thrill go- let it die away- go on through that period of death into the happiness that follows (Love, honor, commitment, loyalty, faith, hope)- you will find that you are living in a world of new thrills all the time.  It is because so few people understand this that you see husbands and wives destroying themselves, their spouses, their families, their faith, when they are at the very point when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all around them. 

As I said in the beginning - If your faith can not save you from your own self-centeredness, your own selfishness, then it will not save you from Hell.  

If you honestly desire to fully understand Christian Divorce and Remarriage, you might want to consider my book   "I am an Adulterer"

Next Post in this series: "Forgiveness" 
Previous Post in this series; "Sex" 

Examined Christian Faith 'Sex' 3.4 What is Christainity

Morality in general is a hard enough topic, but now it is time to address specifics, and we might as well start with sexual morality.  Chastity is the single most unpopular of all the Christian virtues. The Christian believes in one rule “Either marriage with compete faithfulness to your spouse or else total abstinence.”   I will be the first to admit that it is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct has gone wrong.  It can only be one or the other, The Christian believes that it is the instinct that has gone horribly wrong. 

    

All human instincts have a biological purpose, the biological purpose of sex is children, just as the biological purpose of eating is to repair and refuel the body.  Using that as an example, if I we to eat whenever I want and as much as I want, it is true that I will probably eat too much, but not terrifically too much.  Maybe enough for two, but hardly enough for 10, 15 or even 20.  The human appetite goes a little beyond it’s biological purpose to ensure survival, but not grossly over.  However if a man were to indulge his sexual appetite whenever he felt inclined, and if each act produced a baby, then he would within a matter of years populated an entire town.  This appetite is preposterous to its function.   Yet everyone knows that if I were in fact to be a glutton either with food, with sex or anything, then my appetite grows by that indulgence. None of which are healthy or natural.

We have been told, until one is sick of hearing it, that sexual desire is the same as any of our other natural desire, and if we only stop trying to not talk about it, then everything will be restored, and perfectly natural, everything will be perfect in the garden of Eden again. That sounds nice, but it is the biggest bunch of crap being peddled.  If you look at the facts, and beyond the hype and propaganda you will see it for what it is;  a lie.

We are told that sex has become such a mess because it was hushed up. But get serious, all you have to do is open any magazine, listen to any song, or watch any television show, movie or commercial to realize that for the past 40 to 50 years, all anyone ever talks about is sex.  Yet it still remains a mess.  Maybe, just maybe, humans originally hushed it up, because it had become such a mess. 

Those of the current age are always saying “sex is nothing to be ashamed of.” They mean either one of two things, 1^st that there is nothing to be ashamed of that sex is the way the human race reproduces itself, and that it gives pleasure in the process.  If they mean that then they are right, and Christianity say the same thing.  It is not the thing, nor the pleasure that is the problem.  The problem is in the 2^nd way that they may mean it.  If when people say “Sex is nothing to be ashamed of.” They mean ‘the state into which our sexual instincts has fallen into is nothing to be ashamed of.’ Then they are wrong, there is every reason to being ashamed of it, if half the world made food the main interest in their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food dribbling and smacking their lips at all times; gorging themselves at the expense of others, no one looks at a glutton and thinks there is not something seriously wrong with him or her. 

With all the advertisements, all the propaganda for lust (sex sells) to make us feel that our desires that we are resisting are natural and healthy and so reasonable that it is perverse and abnormal to resist them.  Movie after movie, book after book, picture after picture, commercial after commercial  all associate the idea of sexual indulgence with health, youth, and normality.  All of it a lie, based on a grain of truth (that sex is normal and healthy).  The lie is the suggestion that any sexual act that you are tempted at any given moment is normal and healthy.  However surrendering to all of desires always leads to disease, lies, concealment, jealousies and everything that is the reverse of health, happiness, and truthfulness.  For any happiness in the world always involves a lot of restraint.  Every sane, logical, rational, moral person must have some set of principles by which he or she chooses to reject some desires and to permit others.  No one who claims to be rational and moral gives into all their desires, proving that a desire, even when strong counts for nothing.  

I am not so naive to assume that every Christian is perfect in keeping their chastity.  God knows our situation, what matters is our sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them.  Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself, but just this power of always trying again.  For However important chastity (or courage, truthfulness, loyalty, faithfulness, forgiveness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still.  Our illusion about ourselves are cured and we learn to depend on God, we learn on one hand that we can not trust ourselves even in our finest moments, and, on the other hand that we need not despair even in our worst.  The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.

Before I close, I want to make it clear that the center of Christian morality is not here.  While the sins of the flesh are bad, they are the least bad of all sins.  Those sins that are far worst are purely spiritual; the pleasure of harming another, of putting self before others, for slandering, lying, betraying others, the pursuit of power, greed, hatred, and selfishness.  Jesus comforted the prostitute, and offered forgiveness if she would repent, yet he left no doubt that the cold self-righteous ‘follower’ who saw nothing to repent of, was nearer to hell then the prostitute. Needless to say, it goes without saying that it is better to be neither.  

Previous Post in This series: "Cardinal Virtues"

Next Post in this series: " Marriage"

Examined Christian Faith 'Cardinal Virtues' 3.3 What is Christainity

Historically writers have categorized the seven ‘virtues’ into two different types, the first four of them are called “Cardinal” virtues and the remaining three are referred to as ‘Theological’ virtues.  The ‘Cardinal’ ones are those that all people recognize; the ‘Theological’ virtues of FAITH, HOPE, and CHARITY are those that usually only a Christian acknowledges.  I will get to the ‘Theological’ ones, but before I do we must begin with the four ‘Cardinal’ virtues.   The first thing one should know about ‘Cardinal’ virtues is that the word ‘cardinal’ comes from the Latin word meaning “the hinge of the door”,  they are called ‘Cardinal’ virtues because they are hinges upon which the door of the moral life swings..   They are PRUDENCE, TEMPERANCE, JUSTICE and FORTITUDE. 

Prudence simply means practical common sense, or taking the time to think out what you are doing and the likely outcome of it.  Today rarely do people think of Prudence as a ‘virtue’.  But in fact Christ told us to be prudent, when he instructed His disciples to be “as harmless as doves” but also “as wise as serpents.”  God is no more pleased with those who choose to slack off intellectually, then any other slacker.  True Christianity is something that takes all of you, brains and all.  Fortunately, anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will discover that his intelligence is being sharpened, no special education is required, Christianity is an education in itself. 

Temperance is one of those words that has had its meaning changed.  What we think of when we think of temperance is someone who does not drink.  However, originally ‘Temperance’ mean nothing of the sort, ‘Temperance’ referred not specifically to drinking, but to all pleasures; and it meant practicing self-control, abstention, and moderation.

One of the great missteps of Christians is to restrict their thinking of ‘Temperance’ to the question of drinking.  By doing so, it helps people to forget that you can be just as ‘intemperate’ about a lot of things.  A man who makes golf, or his motorcycle the center of his life, or the woman who devotes all her thoughts to shopping, her dog, or traveling is being just as ‘intemperate’ as the person who gets drunk every night.  

Justice means much more than what we see on our televisions as we watch police and lawyer television shows, or even the actual thing.  It is the proper moderation between self-interest and the rights and needs of others, it is the old name for everything that we call “fairness”; it includes honesty, truthfulness, keeping promises, giving as well as receiving and all of that side of our life.  

Justice is that virtue that we demand and expect from others as it applies towards actions directed at us. However the modern Christian seems to want to pretend that ‘Justice’ is a quaint old fashioned virtue when it applies to their choices, and their actions.   Doing so at their own peril, the modern Christian expects ‘Justice’ before forgiveness for the sins of others, but forgiveness without ‘Justice’ for  their sins.  As I mentioned before, there will be a great many surprises when we get to Heaven. 

Lastly, there is Fortitude, which includes both kinds of courage – the kind that faces danger as well as the kind that “sticks to it” under pain.  We would describe someone with ‘Fortitude’ as someone with “guts”.  Fortitude could well describe the thousands of Christian martyr’s each year, as well as the wife who will not divorce her husband, even as he betrays her, because of her sworn marriage vow to her husband and God.  You can not practice any of the other virtues for very long without bringing this one into play.   

There is one last point about virtues that needs to be noticed.  There is a difference between doing some just or temperate action and being a just or temperate person.  Someone who is not a good golfer, may every now and then make a good shot, but a good golfer ahs trained his eyes, muscles and nerves so that good shots may be relied on.  In the same way a person who preserves in doing just actions gets in the end a certain quality of character.  It is that quality, rather than the particular actions that virtue applies to.  

This difference is important, for we might think that if you did the right thing, it did not matter how or why you did it – weather you did it willingly or unwillingly, through fear of public opinion or for its own sake.  The truth is that doing the right thing for the wrong reason does not build the internal quality of character called a ‘Virtue’, and it is the character that really matters. 

While it is probably true that there will not be any occasion for just or courageous acts in the next world, there will be every occasion for being the type of person that we can become only as a result of our actions here.  The point that I am making, is not that God will not allow you into Heaven, if you lack certain qualities of character; my point is, that if you did not get at least the beginnings of those qualities inside you, then there are no possible external conditions that could make you happy with the deep, strong, unshakable kind of happiness that God intends for us in what we call Heaven.  

Examined Christian Faith 'Christianity vs Psychoanalysis' 3.2 - What is Christianity

Since I have now taken us into the area of morality, and since Christian morality claims to be a technique for putting the human right again, I think we should compare how it is related to another technique that makes similar claims – namely psychoanalysis.

When a person makes a moral choice two things are involved.  The first is the act of choosing, the second is the various feelings, impulses which his psychological makeup presents him with, and which are the raw material of his choice.  That material can either be one that we would call normal, in other words a feeling or emotion that are common to most people; or it is a feeling that is unnatural due to things that have gone wrong in his subconscious.   The fear of things that are really dangerous would be an example of the first, while an irrational fear of cats would be an example of the second.  Heterosexual feelings would be the first type, while homosexual feelings would be of the second; and so forth.  

Where psychoanalysis is designed to remove the abnormal feelings (to give the person better raw material for his acts of choice); morality is concerned with the acts of choice themselves.   Regardless of how much you improve the person’s raw material, you are left with something else: the free choice of the person, on the material presented to him or her, either to put his own self interest first or to put it last.  It is this free choice that morality is concerned with. 

What is important to realize is that human beings judge one another by their external actions; God judges them by their moral choices.  When a person who has been abused and perverted from his youth and taught that acts of violence is acceptable, does some tiny little act of kindness, or refrains from some violent retaliation against another, and thereby risks being insulted and ridiculed by his peers, he may, in God’s eyes, be doing more than I would do if I gave up my life for my daughter.

Put another way, some of us who seem to be very nice people may, in fact have done so little with a good upbringing and a godly heritage that we are really worst in God’s eyes, then those whom we regard as beneath us.   How certain are you of how you would behave if you had been saddled with  a horrible childhood, and thus  psychological scars, and then one day found yourself with the power of Stalin?  That is why Christians are instructed not to judge.

We see only the results that a person makes out of his raw material.  However God does not judge him on the raw material at all, only on what he has done with it.  When the body dies, and all that is left is that central core, that part of us that chose, that made the best or the worst of our material will be left standing before God, and we see everyone for who they really were.  There will be surprises.

Christian morality is not a kind of bargain in which God says, “If you keep a lot of the rules, I will reward you, and if you fail to, then I will punish you.”  Instead, it is more a matter of every time you make a choice you are turning that part of you that chooses into something a little different from what it was before.  If you take your life as a whole, with all your uncountable choices, all your life you are slowly turning into either a heavenly creature, or a hellish one; either into a creature that is in harmony with God or one that is in a state of war with Him.  Each of us at each moment of our lives is progressing in one direction or the other.

This then makes sense, when Christians talk about the importance of all sins, what Christians mean is that it is the action that leaves a mark on the tiny central self which none of us will see in this life, but each of us will have to endure forever.  One person may so misplace his anger that he kills another, while another misplaces his anger in such a manner that he only gets laughed at and scorned.  But the little mark on the soul may be nearly identical to both.  Each has done something to himself, which left unrepented will make it harder for him the next time, and so the cycle goes on forever.  Both of them if they turn to God and with Godly sorrow repent, can have that twist made straight, each of them is doomed if they will not.  The size of the thing as seen from the outside is not what really matters. 

That leaves me with one last point, the right direction leads not only to peace, but to knowledge.  When a person is getting better he understands more and sees more clearly the evil that is still in him.  When a person is getting worst, he understands his own wickedness less and less, a modernly bad man knows he is not very good, a truly wicked person thinks they are all right.  You see this played out in America  all the time,  the person who commits one act of adultery and repents from it knows they are wrong, the person who lives in a continuous state of adultery thinks there is nothing wrong with themselves.    

You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk.  Good people know about both good and evil; Immoral people do not know about either.