Dr Paul Allen

We don’t hear much about virtue, character, or moral excellence in the church today. There might be many reasons for this omission, but let me suggest a couple. The first is that calling people to a high standard of moral excellence is to place a demand on them. These demands are challenging to align with our typical mindset of making the church consumer-friendly and keeping our own business. Additionally, our culture does not value what is good for its own sake. Many people look for ways to improve their lives immediately, in tangible ways that they can measure. With this mindset, truth and goodness are only relevant if they help maximise production. Virtue, though, should be valued, not because it is pragmatically effective, but because it reflects God’s holiness, beauty, and goodness. Therefore, we should value moral excellency, character, and virtue because they all showcase the excellencies of our Lord. However, this message of moral excellence only resonates with those who believ...

English: Peresopnytsia Gospels. 1556-1561. Miniature of Saint Matthew. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble; for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you.” 2 PETER 1:10–11 The pursuit of virtue results in assurance now and eternal reward later. Assurance is a great blessing, as Peter tells us in verse 10 of today’s passage. However, it is not the only thing you will enjoy if you are pursuing godly virtues . Years ago a Jewish teenager named Marvin learned about the additional blessing of rewards from the lady who led him to Christ . Before he left home to join the Marines as a struggling, often persecuted believer, she told him: “You’re a true Christian , Marvin…. One day when your earthly life ends you will go to Heaven because of what the Mes...

Image via Wikipedia Christians know something else: true virtue , and hence genuine happiness, is not merely a matter of thinking correctly or behaving properly.  As Jonathan Edwards put it, the seat of true virtue is in the heart. Real happiness flows from character and comes to those, as Jesus said, who are poor in spirit, merciful and meek, and who hunger and thirst for righteousness and peace. Can freedom survive where virtue doesn't thrive?  Some of the founders were less than fully orthodox in their theology, but they believed this: No person or nation can be good without God . This is why, in setting forth the most radical program for self-government in human history, they appealed not only to nature, but also to nature's God. Image via Wikipedia True virtue is personal, but it is never merely private. It involves a commitment to civic duty and the common good—traits seen so clearly by Alexis de Tocqueville in the Americans of the 1830s. "Americans of all...

Image via Wikipedia Openness to truth where truth may be found is a long-standing virtue that worked on the assumption that there is such a thing as objective truth , to which we should be open.  Students of higher education now taught one overarching virtue: to be "open." The purpose of their education is not to make them scholars but to provide them with a moral virtue—an openness, a relativism that eschews any form of fixed objective values or truth. Its simplistic creed is that there are no absolutes. Without objective standards of truth, we are left with feelings, impressions, and intuitions that can never be judged as either false or bad. The bottom line of such an approach is not merely ignorance and skepticism, but the ultimate dehumanization of persons. If everybody is right, then nobody is right. If every viewpoint is equally valuable, no viewpoint is valuable. As members of the body of Christ , we face twin enemies, both of which are deadly. First, we a...