Month: November 2019

O simple ones, learn prudence;
O foolish men, pay attention.
I, wisdom, dwell in prudence,
and I find knowledge and discretion.
…
The wise of heart is called a man of discernment,
and pleasant speech increases persuasiveness.
Wisdom is a fountain of life to him who has it,
but folly is the chastisement of fools.
The mind of the wise makes his speech judicious,
and adds persuasiveness to his lips.

– Proverbs 8:5, 12 and Proverbs 16:21-23

Prudence Renders Wisdom

What did we learn this week?

I learned a lot, least of which neither being the close relationship between prudence and the other cardinal virtues nor the difficulty in writing research posts over a holiday week spent with family. (Pro tip: working when staying in a hotel is easier than when staying on site. Also, TIL: my Dad is still learning because he doesn’t know everything. … Yup, stunned silence – that shocked me, too.)

Returning to the topic at hand, we discussed lust, chastity, and prudence.

Lust is unbridled desire. It’s a deadly sin because lust is necessarily excessive, harming people and our relationships both with people and with God when we surrender to it. Desire itself is good and natural, but anything in excess is necessarily bad.

Chastity is for all stages of life. Why? Because it adapts to our stage in life: single persons are chaste if they refrain from sex entirely whereas married persons are chaste if they are faithful to their spouses both by not having extramarital sex as well as having marital sex. Chastity fends off lust by recognizing the respect due ourselves and others and holding on to hope.

Prudence is forethinking, reasoning the best course of action based on goals. It requires knowledge of what we want in the long term and assessing the best routes to achieve those priorities. Prudence is the charioteer of the virtues because it enables us to make the right decision regardless of which sin we’re dealing with.

Wisdom Renders Prudence

It’s a feedforward cycle. Parallel to the one referenced earlier when discussing hope, prudence renders wisdom, and that wisdom in turn renders prudence. Each gives rise to the other, and using either strengthens its partner.

Partner?

Yes, the two are partners. Prudence is a tool that is best used when well equipped with the proper informtion. Given the right information, you can assess when it’s worth it to take a risk and when the dice aren’t in your favor and the payout isn’t good enough to chance it. The more wisdom one has, the more prudence one is able to exercise in determining the best decision.

Prudence is not the same thing as caution. Caution is a helpful strategy when you’re crossing a minefield; it’s a disaster when you’re in a gold rush. … Prudence is foresight and far-sightedness. It’s the ability to make immediate decisions on the basis of their longer-range effects.

– Randy Traeger

Prudence is weighing the scales and thoughtfully reasoning which way is best with respect to the long term goals. Simply taking the safest road isn’t always best, sometimes that’ll put you three days late for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but risks need to be calculated, it’s better to arrive three days late than not make it at all.

What Does Prudence Have to do with Chastity?

Remember my comment about prudence having a lot to do with the other virtues? In particular, it has a close relationship with temperance. Prudence especially is a tool I use with respect to fending off a number of different sins, including lust. When anything ever gets heated, I ask myself if I’m willing to deal with the consequences, particularly if a child results and the person I made that child with doesn’t want a kid. I’ve also pondered a metric I heard recently: only go so far as you’d want your future spouse to go. What would I want to tell my future spouse? What would I worry would be too far to speak?

Prudence guides the answer to these questions. For some, sex may seem to be nothing special. However, science says otherwise: sex bonds people together chemically, resulting in emotional attachment which grows with each session of intimacy. There’s a lot of data on the topic; check it out!

Chemically, sex builds and maintains a permanent bond. How many people other than your spouse do you want to have a permanent bond to? Do you want your spouse thinking about someone else when you’re together? These questions go back to the risk-benefit analysis: what you give up and what you stand to gain by waiting is part of the pre-decision assessment.

I wish I had died before I ever loved anyone but her.

– Ernest Hemmingway

Is it prudent to have sex with anyone other than one’s spouse? The data tends toward no, but given the nature of the question, it’s technically inconclusive. (Will we ever get straight answers about who is the favorite child? I totally win, for the record – but I’m waiting on the science to back it up.) As for me, I don’t enjoy gambling; I’d much rather stack the deck in my favor.

Prudence Recommends Chastity, and Chastity Counters Lust

That’s the run down: the cardinal virtue suggests the principal virtue which counters the deadly sin. Don’t die by sin; set goals and prudently search them out!

Prudence directs theoretical activity (whose end is truth) toward the investigation of certain truths; however, prudence cannot tell theory what to find.

– Cambridge dictionary

Pro tip: when driving, look a fair distance up the road, specifically into the lane you’re driving in. Your eyes can see more beneath your target zone than above it – much more than most people realize – and having that spot to aim for helps you get there… just like in other real life scenarios.

Summary

Think ahead! Know what your aims are, and take care to reach them. Don’t let the short term trip you up; instead, know where you’re going and make decisions to help you get there.

What do you think? Have tips on prudence, chastity, or dealing with lust? Let me know in the comments!

He who keeps his mouth and his tongue
keeps himself out of trouble.

– Proverbs 21:23

Further Reading

• The Chastity Project provides resources for holding on to purity and figuring out how to navigate today’s dating scene. In particular, it provides facts and articles evidencing why chastity is such a strong preserver of marriage. This article discusses the high rates of divorce within couples that cohabitated prior to marriage.
• Matt Fradd runs a program for men who want to detox from porn; the program is called Strive. It’s relevant, and I’ve known him to put out a lot of great stuff, so I’m confident recommending it without having done the 21-day detox myself. Matt Fradd makes a lot of excellent material which he posts to YouTube. (Aside: he has an awesome Aussie accent.) Check him out!

Nullum numen habes si sit prudentia.
(One has no protecting power save prudence.)

– Juvenal

What’s with all the qualifiers?

Human, Not Theological

Our first three virtues were theological virtues: love, hope, and faith are all divine, relating directly to God. Meanwhile, all human virtues are based on the theological virtues – distilled from them, if you will – and are therefore indirect links to God.

Regardless of the nature of the virtue, it helps us pursue God by arming us with good habits and dispositions. Human virtues are “perfections” of the mind. These virtues help us to govern ourselves, our passions, and our conduct reasonably and faithfully. The human virtues are the human side of the virtue bridge, connecting us to the divine virtues and thus to God.

A bridge has two sides.

– Elsa, Frozen II

Like the theological virtues, we strengthen our “virtue muscles” by exercising human virtues; unlike the theological virtues, human virtues are not a direct gift from God through Grace. In contrast, human virtues are an outgrowth of habit. However, human virtues can take on supernatural nature via sanctifying grace, granting it a dual (natural and supernatural) nature.

Cardinal

The cardinal virtues are special human virtues. The word “cardinal” means “of the greatest importance; fundamental.” It comes from the Latin “cardo” which means “hinge.” The cardinal virtues are fundamental in that all other human virtues hinge on them; they are pivotal because all other human virtues are derived from them.

What is Prudence?

Prudence – the quality of being prudent; cautiousness.
Prudent – acting with or showing care and thought for the future

– Oxford dictionary, prudence and prudent

Something that irritates me: dictionaries defining terms using their base word. If we understood the base word, we’d probably surmise the definition of the word itself. As circular logic is frustrating, I included both the definitions for prudence and prudent so we’re not spinning in a theoretical hamster wheel. (And this is common practice; I checked several other dictionaries, all of which used prudent in the definition.) I digress.

Basically, prudence is planning ahead: rather than indulging in the immediate, prudence weighs the costs relative to the benefits before making a decision on how to move forward. Maybe it’s all benefits and it’s a go-go-go; maybe there’s a mix and it’s a difficult decision; maybe there are a whole lotta negatives and the only benefit is the indulgence itself. Prudence is looking at the cost-benefit analysis and making the best decision with the facts at hand.

Prudence means we are not controlled by our emotions.

– Father Ben Bradshaw

With prudence, similar to sensing which decisions are better or worse for us to make, we recognize good and evil for what each is, and we make decisions based on all of the available information. It’s not excluding emotion, rather it includes it as a piece of information amongst all the rest. Whether a certain decision will make you happy in the short term is a factor, but so is whether you’ll likely regret the decision tomorrow.

Prudence Follows Priorities

Maybe your top priority is to provide for your family; maybe you don’t have anyone to provide for and instead you’re focused on advancing in your career; or maybe you’re a retired empty-nester whose pride and joy is a local charity you volunteer at. Whatever your priorities, prudence helps make the best of any decision.

If you’re looking to rocket to the top of your career, it might mean taking a job halfway across the continent or even on the other side of the planet. Maybe that will take you away from everything you know and everyone you love, but you know you want to take the position for the growth opportunities. It may mean delaying progress toward that goal of sailing across the globe because there’s nowhere to practice in the new locale, but you’re willing to sacrifice that dream for this one.

In contrast, if your growing family is your top priority, taking that position may be imprudent because it will disrupt your family. Or perhaps it would take you away from your parents when it’s critical for you to be nearby. Priorities are different for different people, and they change over time as well.

When an attempt was made by both Gentiles and Jews, with their rulers, to molest [the apostles] and to stone them, they learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycao′nia, and to the surrounding country; and there they preached the gospel.

– Acts 14:5-7

The apostles weren’t afraid of dying for the gospel; most of them were martyred, and Paul even wrote he knew his death was imminent because of his preaching in one of his letters encouraging to press on in the faith. In this passage, the apostles fled because they still had work to do, and they were prudent to see it done. Later, they didn’t flee, standing up for Jesus even when they knew it would cost them their lives: it was time to pass the torch. When they prepared the next generation to continue the work of spreading the Good News, the only thing left to do to complete their testimony was committing their deaths to the gospel through martyrdom.

Summary

Prudence is reasoning out a plan in accordance with priorities for the future. It’s using right reasoning and proper judgment to decide the next move and anticipating the moves thereafter. Prudence is doing the right thing in the short term to benefit the long term.

What do you think? What’s your experience exercising prudence? How do you handle making difficult decisions? I’m eager to read your advice in the comments!

Prudence is the virtue by which we discern what is proper to do under various circumstances in time and place.

– John Milton

Castitas – purity; morality; chastity

– Wiktionary

WordHippo’s top translation for the term castitas is “control.” This speaks a lot to our nature as humans: we all have desires that need to be controlled, regardless of their nature. There is even a French phrase for the ideation of one’s own destruction: l’appel du vide, literally translated to the call of the void. For the approximately half of us who have experienced this phenomenon, we know that certain impulses should be rejected out of hand.

Reigning back in, castitas is a virtue in Latin which translates to chastity or purity. Let’s dig in.

What is Chastity? What is Purity?

Chastity – the state or practice of refraining from extramarital, or especially from all, sexual intercourse
Purity – freedom from adulteration or contamination; freedom from immorality, especially of a sexual nature

– Oxford dictionary, chastity and purity

The definition for purity is much better here because it’s more precise for the discussion today. Specifically, the definition for chastity is non-descriptive whereas the one for purity gives us more of a guidepost. (I even went to re-order the definitions to properly emphasize the helpfulness, but I’m struggling with them being out of alphabetical order…)

When we talk about the virtue of castitas, we’re talking about defeating lust, particularly defeating treating people like objects of desire rather than like humans made in the image and likeness of God. Essentially, we’re talking about embracing the state we’re at in life, and treating others with the respect that is inherent to the dignity of their personhood.

Chastity – a Moving Target?

The “rules” for chastity depend on what one’s state in life is – sort of. There are a bunch of “rules” within the Church, but (lucky me) I don’t have to learn any of those and can keep to the simple version:

Only have sex with your spouse.

If you’re married, only have sex with your spouse; if you’re unmarried, you don’t have a spouse, so refrain from sex. Simple, right? Except not, because we (and others) misuse words and get bogged down with all sorts of things, including misunderstandings, excuses, and rationalizations. Many of us conflate “chastity” with no sexual intercourse, but that’s not the case when there’s a segment of the population that’s married.

Chastity means not having sex if you’re not married and only having sex with your marital partner if you are married. There are all sorts of rules which boil down to giving yourself fully to your spouse because one’s body belongs to one’s spouse when married. Chaste spouses have sex with each other. Chaste spouses do not have sex with other people, or only participate for their own gratification. Chaste spouses love each other fully, including through sex.

Simply, we are called to full union with God, and sometimes we’re called to share that union with one other person through the sacrament of marriage. This union is sacred – whether or not it is shared with another human. When sharing it with another person, it is to be shared exclusively with that other person. When not married, this union is not to be shared at all: God is the only one to Whom we are meant to give our all.

Marriage is full and complete love, total self-giving. That’s what we’re called to with God: full and complete, total self-giving love.

Why, Though?

It’s not just for the sake of righteousness itself. It helps us to be our best selves.

“Only the chaste man and the chaste woman are capable of true love. For chastity frees their association, including their marital intercourse, from that tendency to use a person.”

– Pope John Paul II

Am I a sucker for a great Saint Pope John Paul II quote? Why, yes, yes I am. He offers a great deal of wisdom and explains things in an easily understandable way that doesn’t cheapen the answer or make light of the inquiry. For example, right here, he includes the goal, the route, and the reason for the means easily.

Goal: true love.
Route: chastity.
Reason: chastity frees a person from the tendency to use others.

Chastity is like anti-fog spray for diving goggles: it helps us to see the whole of the person instead of the distorted view of what that body can do for us. This helps us with our relationship with other people and the world at large because it grounds us in the heart knowledge of sonder: that everyone is a unique person with a vivid life all their own. When we experience sonder, respect for another person as a person is the next logical step. Otherwise, respect for others may take leaps and bounds to rationalize.

When we apply the anti-fog, it doesn’t just work underwater, but whenever we’re using the goggles. The goggles are more than just how we look at our spouse or potential mates, but how we view the world. Chastity helps us in recognizing the humanity of people; impure acts lead to objectification of others, seeing them for the purpose of achieving our own gratification, putting up roadblocks to empathy and easing the pathway to abuse.

This doesn’t just impact how we see potential mates, but how we view everyone – including ourselves and those close to us. Akin to the concept that untrustworthy people find it difficult to trust others, the spiritually “dirtier” we get, the “dirtier” we assume everyone else is. We assume ourselves to be the norm, regardless of whether or not that assumption is based in reality.

To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure; their very minds and consciences are corrupted.

– Titus 1:15

If we want to practice giving others the benefit of the doubt, if we want to be able to look on the bright side of dark situations, we need to stretch that muscle. Castitas is that muscle. The more we practice purity and chastity, the more we strengthen the muscles of believing in reaching for the light, and the more we’re going to seek and find the light.

No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a bushel, but on a stand, that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is sound, your whole body is full of light; but when it is not sound, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.

– Jesus in Luke 11:33-36

It’s never too late to seek the light, either. David, best known for his battle with the giant Goliath, started strong but faltered hard when he came into his kingship. He’s known as a lecherous king, arranging the death of a man after committing adultery with the man’s wife to cover up the affair and then steal her. But, David repeatedly returns to God. Broken as he was, God used David to show us that we can always return to Him.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy steadfast love;
according to thy abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.

Psalm 51: 1-2, 10

Summary

Chastity and purity aids us in keeping to the straight path not for its own sake, rather, because it helps us see the path. How we interact with the world has an impact on what we see in the world, including how we treat ourselves and others and how much of the truth we can see.

What do you think? Any helpful hints or tips on staying pure in the world today? Please let me know in the comments!

Further Reading

• ForYourMarriage, a resource of the USCCB, has a decent “101” article on Marital Sexuality, referencing the Catechism in a very understandable way. It sacrifices depth for understandability, making it a great starting point.
• The Catholic Exchange offers an article on Marital Sexuality that explains the Catechism and offers some guidelines on chastity in marriage. In short, make sure the acts are out of love for your spouse and not against natural law.
• Want wisdom but not interested in reading the full book? JP2.info offers a 32-page .pdf of snippets from Saint Pope John Paul II concerning Love & Responsibility.
• Mark Manson has an article describing how we judge others based on the metric of our own devices. It suggests that the lens we view ourselves through is the same lens we view others through; I posture the flip side of the argument in this post. Fair warning: his site is rather vulgar.

Luxuria – intense longing, usually thought of as intense or unbridled sexual desire [including] fornication, adultery, rape, bestiality, and other sinful sexual acts, [but also includes] desire in general [such as] for money, power, and other things

– Wikipedia (grammartorial)

Recognize this sin? It’s one the world advertises most these days – without the disclaimer that it’s bad for you, body and soul. Despite its prevalence, it remains socially unacceptable to discuss in even unmixed gatherings. For example, as a Catholic discussing this with another self-professed Catholic, one might think we’d be on the same page. More often, I’m instead mocked or yelled at (or both).

Dicey.

Luckily, this is a busy week, so I don’t expect anyone to throw digital rotten tomatoes at me.

Luxuria and Lust

Luxuria – luxury; extravagance

– Wiktionary

Lust is an inordinate desire for or pleasure from something. The something may be anything – money, power, pleasure, anything. The key here is the inordinate desire of something or a disordered way of desiring it. For example, desiring enough money to pay the bills in and of itself isn’t sinful; wanting an extreme amount of money may cross the line into inordinate desire, and trying to get money by stealing it certainly crosses the line into obtaining it in a disordered manner.

Lust – a psychological force producing intense wanting or longing for an object, or circumstance fulfilling the emotion; can take any form such as the lust for sexuality, love, money or power.

– Wikipedia

Wikipedia covers the swath that lust entails. Specifically, it is “an inappropriate desire or a desire that is inappropriately strong” for anything. However, given several moving parts (including gluttony, another deadly sin to cover the rest), this one focuses on sexual desire in particular.

The focus of luxuria is on the sexual side of the sin for a few reasons. First, it’s different from other foci because it is the distortion of the self whereas everything else is a warping of externalities. It takes a gift that God granted humanity, darkens it, twists it, and allows that charred inner self to make a claim on the light against both the self and the rule and love of God. In other words, it takes a God-given gift and turns it against us.

Second, it is not only specifically a distortion of the self, but it may also be a distortion of the marital partner. Specifically, a spouse has full claim to the other’s body, and denying them the spousal right is contrary to the dignity of the spouse as a person. Put simply, if you are married, your body belongs to your spouse; if you are not married but one day will marry, actions you take against your body are taken against your future spouse. The lust need not deprive the spouse in a way that we can measure (such as cheating on them or even simply disinterest in involvement as a result) because it impacts the relationship on an emotional level regardless of physical evidence.

Why is Lust Sinful?

You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.

Exodus 20:14, 17 (6th and 9th commandments)

First of all, it goes against the sixth and ninth commandments. Second, the Catechism of the Catholic Church discusses how it causes a divide between us and God. Lust attacks the integrity of the person and personhood in general. Further, it wrings purity from our hearts, driving us farther away from God.

The body is not meant for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.

– 1 Corinthians 6:13

Further, the body is meant to glorify God and bring us closer to Him. You have a divine nature because you are made in the image and likeness of God! Thus, sinning against that nature is also sinning against God, twisting His nature to use Him against Himself.

What Counts as Lust?

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

– Jesus in Matthew 5:27-28

It takes less than physically acting on a desire, but more than simply having one. Clearly, fornication falls into the realm of lustfully sinful action, and appreciating someone as beautiful doesn’t. The line is somewhere between the two, but where?

I’ve heard of the idea of “second look” or “second glance.” The concept is that the first look doesn’t count because you don’t know what you might see (it could be a turtle, or a car, or a rock), but after knowing what it is, looking again because you specifically want to see it again.

It’s not quite complete, but it’s a good base to build on. The intentionality has to be there, and you only need the first glance to form intention. However, you also need to build the inordinate desire from the first glance – not mere curiosity or confusion or nothing at all because you weren’t really looking. There would need to be intentionality as a result of rousing inordinate desire.

Summary

Lust is the excessive desire of something. In the context of the deadly sins, it’s sexual in nature, appealing to basal instincts and animalistic traits. It’s sinful because it harms ourselves as people, at least mentally and emotionally, and also to our spouses (present time or otherwise). More critically, it harms our relationship with God because it perverts gifts that He gave us.

Thoughts? Questions? Digital rotten tomatoes? Let me know in the comments!

Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

– Ephesians 4:22-24

I waited patiently for the Lord;
He inclined to me and heard my cry.
He drew me up from the desolate pit,
out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure.
He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the Lord.
Blessed is the man who makes
the Lord his trust.

– Psalm 40:1-4

This week, we’ve looked at the deadly sin of anger (Latin: ira) the corresponding virtues of patience (Latin: patientia; principal) and faith (theological). At first glance, this may be an odd grouping; however, peeling through even just the surface layers shows an intimate connectedness between these three. In short, faith grants us patience which stems wrath.

Reflection Story:
Call Me Patient, Watch Me Laugh

I had an interesting conversation with my mother.

I’d been actively searching for work for a year, and we have been both baffled and frustrated by my lack of success. As someone who finds great fulfillment in work, I sincerely and deeply want to work, and I’ve been working hard and pulling long hours to find work. I do things far outside of my comfort zone on a frequent basis, such as networking, cold calling and emailing, and even asking others for help. (Gasp!) My to-do lists running long with tasks both tedious and arduous, I managed to accomplish everything each day, and I still felt like I was failing because there’s nothing concrete to show for my efforts. I often feel like a failure. Yet, every morning, I get back up and do something to try to achieve this goal.

After a year of this, I suffered from a most quizzical and even more frustrating setback: I was not hired for a job within my field that I was well (and overly) qualified for despite the hiring group clearly needed many more recruits. I literally called it (to myself) my “safety” position, referencing the college a high schooler applies to just in case they don’t make it into their stretch school or second-best-on-paper university, and was rejected from it. I was rejected from my safety spot.

After a year of plowing forward, and pushing for the end goal, and working hard for apparently-naught, and pulling long hours without a paycheck, and still getting rejected from this position, for a minute, I was ready to give up. I felt like an unemployable schmuck. As I closely tie my identity to the work I get done, this was a devastating blow. Finally confessing my frustration to my mother, she replied with something I didn’t expect to hear:

You have a lot of patience.

– Mom

Patience. I had been working so hard and for so long with no results, I certainly didn’t feel patient; I felt like I had wasted a year’s worth of energy, a year’s worth of peace, and a year’s worth of time. How many other things I could have accomplished in that time had I known that they were all dead ends!

Yet I push on. Even still, out on “vacation,” I continue to work and network, even packing a suit in case of the off-chance last minute interview. I have some sort of intrinsic faith that the process will work out if I keep at it. Why? Maybe I’m afraid of langoliers, but most of the time I’m moving forward in peaceful determination.

How? Why?

I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

– Jeremiah 29:11

Every time I come to my wit’s end, I run into Jeremiah. It might be via seeing a sign during a stroll down the street or listening to a song on the radio, but the timing is always just right. The verse refuels me and I crawl up my rope. The verse alone is powerless; what gives it influence is the trust that I have in its truth. What gives the verse power is faith.

But why do I trust in the Lord? I can list of a number of “coincidences” in my life, not the least of which being my survival through some pretty opaque circumstances. I can delineate a number of times when I didn’t have the courage, strength, patience, fortitude, intellect, foresight, humility, or kindness to properly move forward, yet something great happened through me despite (or because of) my weakness. I also have a list of “narrow escapes” of goals I had my heart set on that I was detoured from which led others to destruction. However, being human, these things only have due meaning when I reflect on them, and I don’t often do so. Think about it: when’s the last time you reflected on a narrow escape from two decades ago, or even an annoying red light that kept you from being in a traffic accident last week?

This is substantiating evidence, but it only substantiates faith already established. I could write off everything if I wanted to, but that wouldn’t make sense: I’m a scientist – an engineer – after all; I don’t throw away data. Armed with an arsenal of facts, the path starts to reveal itself; even if the next few steps aren’t clear, hindsight is still 20/20.

Every time I stop to evaluate the data, I’m filled with a sense of peace because they all seem to be leading in a particular direction: away from this, nearer there but tangentially, way away from that. There’s a pattern. I’m still puzzling it out, but when I look at the last decade (or even longer), there’s a clear pattern.

Patience and Faith

I again humbly assert that I don’t find myself to be particularly patient, but I am getting better. My level of patience is clearly directly tied to my level in faith: faith in the system, faith in people, faith that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. My trust in all of these things can be shaken, though; the system, people, and my own actions have all let me down at times. Everything manmade is fallible.

In contrast, when I’ve placed my faith in God, I haven’t been let down. Faith and patience go hand-in-hand; humans are more and more a people of “now” whereas God seems to smile at our restlessness. So we wait diligently in faith, and we’re rewarded for our efforts. The results may be unexpected, but it shines a light on a better option; the road may be frightening, but traversing it shows us our own strength and leads to more than we dare hope for.

Countering Anger

With faith and patience, it’s a lot easier to not get upset about things. With an eye to the future, we can see not only the consequences of our actions, but those of the actions of others, and the power of God in the overarching plan. This isn’t to say “karma,” though karma is a biblical principle; rather, we place trust in God that He will ensure things will turn out the way they are meant to.

The more faith we place in God, the less ground there is to be shaken beneath our feet because God never fails. He does things in a divine way, not a human way, so we don’t always understand the path, but He always gets us where we’re supposed to go, where we need to be, where we flourish. Holding on to that trust in God, we know that, in the overall picture, whatever we’re going through has a purpose. Having faith in purposefulness enables us to accept difficult times, situations, and actions instead of getting upset.

Before you roll your eyes, this concept is gaining recognition in the secular world. Purpose in the working world is seen as a “secret weapon,” often ignored yet increasing returns for companies because it improves employee performance. I’ve found it helps me to overlook passive aggressiveness at the water cooler; sometimes it’s intentional whereas other times I don’t notice the intended slight until later. Even in the middle of internal turmoil, I was someone anyone could speak to – not because I didn’t pick a side but because everyone saw that I didn’t harbor cross-hostilities. There was too much to accomplish to worry about petty squabbles.

Summary: Faith -> Patience = Wrath Counter

Ira translates to wrath or anger; it’s lethal because it triggers other sins such as deliberately wishing harm on others. Patientia translates to patience, endurance, and forbearance; it calls for us to hold fast to peace in turbulent times. Patientia counters ira because it redirects energy from anger to staying the course. We know we want to stay the course because faith tells us there is a goal at the end of the road, and the goal is worth the effort. Faith is substantiated by evidence and “by no means a blind impulse of the mind.“

Preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching.

– 2 Timothy 4:2

Song of the Day: It Is Well

There are many renditions of this song; one of my favorites is Bethel Music’s version which medleys it with You Make Me Brave.

Faith… is confidence or trust in a person, thing, or concept. In the context of religion, one can define faith as confidence or trust in a particular system of religious belief. Religious people often think of faith as confidence based on a perceived degree of warrant, while others who are more skeptical of religion tend to think of faith as simply belief without evidence.

– Wikipedia

Yes. To all of this. Wikipedia’s summary of faith is the most accurate description I’ve ever heard of any term, particularly a term with varying views. It denotes what faith is while connoting the depth of contrasting viewpoints.

I further appreciate the “often” and “tend” language of the last sentence because I’ve met many people who thought opposite what their role would indicate. I have met religious folk who are hostile to the notion of supporting their beliefs with evidence. I have also met those without faith who pointed out a great deal of evidence in its favor, one even crying out in frustration, upset at lacking the faith even though it it all “makes sense.”

Faith is Necessary for Salvation

He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.

– Jesus in Mark 16:16

So… that’s pretty straightforward. It gets a little complicated later, but the assertion alone seems plain as day. This assertion is echoed in John as well as the epistles.

Faith is a Gift from God

Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by Him.

– Catechism of the Catholic Church

This entire segment of the Catechism is interesting to read, but this is the specific part relevant to this subtopic. I highly recommend perusing it further. It references a few Bible verses; below is the most apropos.

Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

– Jesus in Matthew 16:17

Jesus asked who the apostles thought He was. Peter responded, saying Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God – the One the Jewish people had been waiting for as a fulfillment of the covenant made centuries past. God made a promise, and Peter’s response to the inquiry was that God was making good on His promise. Peter showed that he trusted God at His word by believing that Jesus is Who He says He is.

This was the faith of Peter. Jesus points out that it’s not Peter himself who figured it out; rather, God did. God pointed out the reality to Peter, granting Peter faith. God gave Peter the faith to trust in His promises, including the fulfillment of the covenant in Jesus.

The Circular Debate on Faith as a Gift from God

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.

– Ephesians 2:8

This verse has generated contentious debate about whether faith is a gift from God or whether the “it” instead refers to grace or salvation. Both faith and grace make great candidates as the “it” as the antecedent basis was set in the previous half-sentence; salvation also makes for a great candidate because it’s the topic of the letter. As such, “it” may refer to any of the three: faith, grace, or salvation.

As my brother would say, “I’mma simple potatah fahmah from Maine; I like simple.” Feel free to delve into the depths of theology, but for the time being, I’ll pass. Why?

It’s a moot point. Here’s why:

These are the the venue options suggested by various interpretations of the passage. Regardless of the path taken, the start point is the same and the end point is the same. The order and clumping-or-not of stuff in the middle is just gravy.

“Gift + Necessity:” Why This Debate Matters

It’s pretty clear that, one way or another, to be saved (or simply to not be condemned) requires faith. Faith is a gift from God that we may join Him at the end of our Earthly lives. God loves all of His children and wants all of us to be saved and join Him in heaven. However, some are given the gift of faith and others are not. Why?

I can’t fully answer that, but I do have an analogy. Faith is beyond belief; it requires works. Not for God, mind you, but for us: if we don’t put works into our faith, it will grow stale and die out.

Think of it like tending a literal fire. We have to prepare the wood fuel and add to it as the fire depletes it, eventually needing to go out and either purchase or cut down timber to feed the fire. We pile up the timber and the kindling – our works – but we still just have a pile of flammable stuff. At some point, prepared or not, God comes along with a flint and gives us a spark.

Excellent! Awesome, right? But there’s a “catch” of needing to continue to feed the fire. One spark is all it takes, but we need to nurture the spark into a full blaze and continue to feed it once it is burning. If we fail to feed the fire, it will slowly peter out as it depletes the wood.

Our faith is the same way. Maybe God struck the flint and the target person decided to stamp out the flicker of light; maybe they let it catch, but then severed it from the pile of fuel; maybe the pile was intentionally not built. Regardless, God gave us the spark we needed to get started, but it’s up to us to keep the fire burning.

Summary

Faith is trust in something or someone. It’s not (generally) blind, instead wisely depending on various data to determine whether something is true. The more we build up a knowledge of the whys, the sturdier our foundations of faith will be.

It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.

– Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl

What do you think about faith? How do you exercise your faith, whether it’s in God, loved ones, society, or anything else you place trust in?

Further Reading

• The Catechism of the Catholic Church has a couple of great sections on faith, specifically in the Profession of Faith (in which the importance of faith is delineated) and Life in Christ (in which the virtues are explained) sub(^2)sections.
  
  More on the debate about whether or not faith is a gift:
• Bibliotheca Sacra offers an intriguing article which makes some great points but also stumbles on some critical ones; I enjoyed the insight but ultimately disagree with the conclusion. (First, because it’s both and the way the question is asked prevents that answer. Second, because everything is ultimately a gift from God. #TrumpCard.)
• Apologetics Press offers a similar dissection of the topic but with the addition of a key word which makes the argument more cogent: “Faith is not a direct gift from God.”