This essay may look very familiar to you. I posted this essay a few weeks ago, but it has since been expanded to reach the page limit for the Torrey application essay. I like this version much better than the previous one, and I hope you do too.
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C.S. Lewis once said, “No justification of virtue will
enable a man to be virtuous.” A
significant amount of weight lies in this single quote from Lewis’ essay, The Abolition of Man. For
instance, what is virtue? Once that question has been answered, more
arise. One such question is what Lewis
means by a “justification of virtue.” Another
question that demands to be answered is what will enable a man to be virtuous? In order to begin answering the last two of
these three questions, one must naturally answer the first. For many people, the nature of virtue is
ambiguous. For instance, many people
would agree that murder is wrong, but that lying is fine on occasion. This is perhaps why there are such firm laws
against murder but more convoluted ones on what constitutes lying, or fraud. But when all is said and done, the man himself
must choose whether or not to be virtuous, whether laws governing morality are
placed over him or not. Manmade laws
only serve as guidelines, not as concrete restraints. Whether or not a man is virtuous depends on
the choice of the man himself, though there are also ways to instill virtue in
him from a young age.
Virtue is not rational, insomuch as one cannot explain
what drives a man to die for his country without acknowledging the existence of
something outside of observable fact. The
act of being virtuous, or morally good, is not something mankind comes by
naturally. Virtue is prompted by the
conscience, God’s law of morality, which demands certain actions of man which
are morally good. In truth, every man
knows what is morally good, even if he does not always listen to the still,
small voice that teaches him. In a sense,
virtue has emotional as well as cognitive properties to it, since the heart
recognizes what is beautiful, and the mind seeks to copy that beautiful deed or
image. Returning to the example of a man
who is willing to die for his country, Lewis says in The Abolition of Man that such a man would not do such a thing out
of rationality. This is because a
rational man would seek his own preservation. Although the man could argue that he does so
for the benefit of future generations, he has not observed them and cannot
therefore say whether such a drastic action as his own death for his country
would, in fact, benefit them. Instead,
it is out of love that he does such a thing.
While virtue is not a rational concept, a man can attempt
to point out what is good and bad using his mind. He can make lists of moral and immoral
actions, but this does not make him virtuous. Such a man can be an excellent philosopher but
still be a scoundrel if he does not follow his own advice. This can be seen in the life of King Solomon. He became the wisest man alive, but acted
unwisely in following false gods. Becoming
virtuous is not just a cognitive action—one must integrate all the parts of
man: the mind, the body, and the heart. The
mind must listen to the heart when it tells him what is good, and the body must
act appropriately on what the mind knows is good.
In order to fully integrate these parts of man to become
virtuous, one should preferably begin learning and practicing virtue from a
young age. If a man starts learning to
become virtuous as an adult, he has already become so hardened in his ways that
it is difficult, though not impossible, for him to break his habits and follow
the calling of virtue. One good way to
learn virtue is to learn through example. Reading and hearing about virtue teaches about
the idea of virtue, but this only engages the mind. To engage the heart, selfless love from
another is required to awaken the heart to the beauty of virtue. By learning through example, the child does
not simply learn what virtue is, but also how it is to be acted upon. The child, or anyone who attempts to learn
virtue, should also saturate himself in the goodness, the truth, and the beauty
of God’s Word, and also in manmade art. The
latter of these is not as important as the former, but it helps the learner to
understand human nature and how virtue applies to it. After a while, such exposure to morally good
stories and images begins to rub off on the learner.
Literature is one of best ways to teach virtue from a
young age, or at any age, since a good novel has the potential to be both
entertaining and insightful. C.S. Lewis
himself wrote many novels that are still entertaining to both children and
adults, in the forms of The Chronicles of
Narnia and The Space Trilogy. These books explore many fascinating concepts
and give examples of virtue in action within imaginative settings that draw in
the reader’s attention. A young child
often can learn to be virtuous simply by reading such stories or having them
read to them. The trusting nature of a
child absorbs tales of virtuous knights like a sponge, aspiring to be virtuous
himself. An adult, on the other hand,
must generally make more of an effort to see and act on virtue in novels,
reverting usually to skimming over the goodness and truth of a novel to focus
on the beauty. Beauty is good, of
course, but a fixation on it, to the point where a man desires beauty for himself,
but does not seek it out for the benefit of others, is an erroneous desire. Theological and philosophical essays can teach
an adult about virtue as well, but stories teach what they cannot: how to hope
and dream for what is to come – for glory.
Parents must come to understand that no matter how much
they may attempt to shelter their children, their children will eventually be
on their own in the world and will inevitably encounter evil. Any child completely sheltered from evil
ideas, even if they have been saturated in goodness, having never been exposed
to the darkness before, could easily be overwhelmed by the enemy’s arguments
and succumb to them. A parent’s reaction
to this potential circumstance should not be to simply inoculate his or her
child’s mind with evil imagery but also to show the antithesis to the evils
shown to the child. There may not be a
rational counter-argument for every idea the child comes up across, but there
will always be a Biblical one. In
addition, a parent’s attitude in the face of an evil that he or she cannot
explain should not be to give up, but to seek out answers. Parents should also teach their children to
have this attitude of always seeking out answers, because if a person has this
attitude towards evil, he or she will be less likely to be overcome in the face
of a seemingly complete defense of sinful ideas. Even when exposing a child to evil in the
world, one should still avoid literature that dwells on evil to the point where
it is nearly glorified, like most teenage romance novels of the modern age. On the other hand, some books, like 1984, George Orwell’s dystopian novel,
portray evil in the proper form for such a purpose as exposing a child to the
evil of the world. Such a book shows
what evil truly is: something that should not be desired, something that should
be avoided in every case. Books that
portray evil as undesirable are important to read since they serve as warnings
against sin and, particularly in the case of 1984, apathy towards the evil actions of others.
Although everyone recognizes that there are moral and
immoral actions, there are those who would argue that virtue in the Biblical
sense either does not exist, or that it is unimportant. People who believe either case recognize morality
for their own purposes, seeking to promote it in others for their own benefit. Those who say it does not exist are generally
materialists, believing that this current, physical life is all there is, has
been, or ever shall be. They argue that
man’s capability for thought is merely an evolutionary advance, and that any
emotion he might feel is simply a chemical reaction within our bodies. People with this viewpoint must, of necessity,
deny the existence of a conscience, since there is no physical advantage of
having one. However, a conscience is
different from instinct in that it points out what is good for others, not what
is good for the self. To borrow an
analogy from C.S. Lewis, the existence of hunger proves that bread also must
exist, whether or not the hunger in question is sated by it. Following the same reasoning, because the
conscience exists in every person, whether or not it is heeded, it must exist
to promote virtue.
As to the second idea, that if virtue exists, it must be
unimportant, this is actually a common fault of many people who claim to be
Christians, and falls under the heresy of Epicureanism. Epicureans believe that, once they are saved,
it does not matter what they do since when they die they will receive the same
reward as Christians who do good works in life. As a result, Epicureans act on their fleshly
desires, living in the moment, and do not care for the good of others. The problem here is that a person’s actions in
life do matter in the long run. A man’s
actions are always taking him in one of two directions: down to Sheol, or to
eternal life with God. And even when a
man is saved, and the price of his sin has been paid, if he does not act on his
newly-acquired inheritance to become more like Christ, he has not truly grasped
the relationship he now has with God. For
a man who truly understands the nature of God will realize that God, as the
ultimate good, just, loving being that He is, is someone to aspire to become
like, no matter how good the man might already think he is. For instance, who would settle for begging on
the streets when every opportunity had been given him to rise to greatness? Acting on virtue is important because it
combats the darkness of the world and brings the virtuous person out of the
depths of sin and closer to becoming like Christ.
Overall, hearing about and knowing the concept of virtue
is not enough to be virtuous, just as C.S. Lewis stated. But knowing the concept is at least a start,
since a man must still build on that idea and choose to live in a world filled
with good, so that he may learn to be good himself. Even if it does come down to a person’s choice
as to whether or not he or she will not only know good, but also do good, the
person must have first somehow learned not only what is good, but what good
looks like in action. Learning what is
good can be done through extensive, thoughtful reading; observation of those
who are virtuous themselves; and reading of the Scriptures; to name only a few
methods. Mankind learns best through
imitation in most cases, and this is certainly applicable to learning virtue. Christians are called to be a light to this
dark world so that others who are lost can learn virtue through their good examples.
