The Eternal Value of Virtuous Living – Sunday, March 04, 1984
Virtue is like beauty: it has intrinsic value. We need not be told that if we are good we will receive a reward; for the truly virtuous person, goodness is its own reward.
But like our appreciation of beauty, our appreciation of virtue is mutable, and virtues have a way of coming in and going out of fashion. Where meekness once was valued, people now look for assertiveness; where simplicity of spirit once was sought, people now seek sophistication. Where once temperance was fashionable, people now are praised for their passion.
In a world so changeable in the virtues it values, one might be led to wonder if there are any absolute values, any virtues which are more than conventions of social convenience.
To such a question we answer that the truly virtuous is like the truly beautiful: it is eternal. In the mind and eye of God, the beautiful and the good have always been, and they will always be. Only our imperfect perception leads us to believe that they change, that the virtues of yesterday are inappropriate for today.
And insofar as we seek to temper virtue to our need rather than to temper ourselves by its discipline, we are less adequate to achieve even those virtues we value. For instance, the virtue of passion—of loving, and believing, and sacrificing—has no enduring flame unless fanned by the discipline of temperance. The virtue of a sophisticated understanding is without value if not married to the simplicity of a virtuous life. The virtue of assertive leadership must be directed by the meekness a leader expressed in his willingness to be led.
A virtue, even when it is less fashionable, is of no less value in our lives, because virtue is not merely an adornment; but like beauty, it has value in itself. The reward of truth is honesty; the reward of love is loving; the reward of courage is a life not lived in fear. In each virtue we achieve there is an immediate, intrinsic reward in the sort of person we become, the sort of life we create.
Such creation is beyond the mitigations of fashion. Because it, like the virtue from which it springs, is eternal.
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March 04, 1984
Broadcast Number 2,846