Category: Virtue: Ancient Wisdom on Becoming Excellent People

How do we develop excellent traits that reflect the glory of God and show forth the wonder and nobility of human beings, traits like wisdom, justice, courage, and self-control?

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5 Steps for Becoming a More Loving Person

You’ve tried it over and over again. You want to show more grace. You want to be patient with people. Then, you get out into traffic, and somebody cuts you off. There goes patience out the window.

How do we become loving people who can endure the annoyances of life? In my last post, I explained five characteristics of real love. But how do we get there? Let me give you five steps for doing so.

1. Pray. Have you actually asked the God of the universe to make you into a loving person? God’s grace is available. The power of Christ’s resurrection is at work in this world. The Holy Spirit works love in our hearts. But God wants us to ask! Have you asked? The Apostle Paul said, “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight” (Philippians 1:9). Paul prayed that God would give the Philippian Christians more love and more insight into how to love well. And so should we.

2. Reflect on how you think about people. A lot of our reactions to people our automatic. We don’t understand well what we are really thinking. We need to examine our own thoughts and feelings. We can do this by journaling, praying, or talking with others.

To get you going in this, consider some of the following questions:

  • What do you think when people do something you disagree with?
  • When you see people on the street, what do you think of them?
  • When you meet new people, what is your thought about them?
  • What do you think and feel when people disappoint you?
  • What sort of expectations do you have for what people should do for you?

These and many other questions like them can help you think through how you view people. When you do that, you can take the next step.

3. Re-think how you view people. In Paul’s love chapter in Romans 12, he tells us that we need to be “transformed by the renewing of your mind” (v. 2). He teaches us that love begins in the heart. It needs to be sincere. How we think and feel about people is what is in our heart. What do we actually see when we see other people? Do we see them as God sees them? We have to think about what is going on in our hearts and minds and be transformed.

Here are a few ideas to get you going on re-thinking your view of people.

  • What do I think human beings are?
  • What do I think the possibility of connecting with people is?
  • What are some ways I could view people’s attacks that would make me less reactive?
  • How could I view the fact that people are different in a good way?
  • When people block my goals, can I view this in ways other than an attack?

You can use these directions to begin to re-think your conception of people.

4. Put new thoughts into practice. It’s not enough to think about things. We have to put them into practice. For me, I noticed that my anxiety would go up when I wasn’t achieving a goal. Then, I would often be short or terse with people. I recognized that this is not how I wanted to live. I drive Uber. I often have a vision of how it will work out. Regularly, a wrench is thrown into my plan. Sometimes, it is because of the unwitting action of my customers. For example, they may change their trip and make it less profitable for me. They are not trying to do me harm. They are just trying to figure it out. But this can make me upset, and I can show it in subtle ways. I have begun to practice not getting upset at this and just responding with kindness. This practice will have effects in other areas of my life.

5. Keep doing it. Perseverance is key. Character does not change in a day or a night. Even big and sudden breakthroughs take time to transform our thoughts and hearts. We have to keep going. Being a loving persons is one of the highest and most important goals we can achieve. It is worth working at it. We should keep praying, keep re-thinking, and keep practicing. This is how character and virtue develop.

That’s the method for character change. There’s no better time to start working on it than now. It is our destiny to be transformed into loving people. That’s what God is doing in this world. It is one of his highest priorities. That should motivate us to give ourselves to this work and keep at it. With His help, we can expect real progress in this life.

Thank you for reading this series on love. I hope it was a blessing to you. If you liked it, please consider sharing it and subscribing below. I hope to see you here again soon.

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5 Characteristics of Real Love

People often talk about the “will of God.” Is it God’s will for me to move somewhere, marry someone, or start a business? These questions are legitimate, and God certainly has something to say about them.

We should also remember, though, that what God wants us to do is clear. His greatest priorities are very clear. He wants us to be loving people. He wants us to love God and our neighbor. If we learn to do that, then we are doing what God wants the most. Becoming lovers of God and others will keep us busy and give us great fulfillment.

But what does it mean to love others? There’s a lot of fake love. There are a lot of misconceptions about it. It’s hard to show real love for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons is that we haven’t been taught how to love. We need to think more clearly about what love actually is.

The Apostle Paul gave an explanation of what love is all about in Romans 12. His more famous chapter on love is 1 Corinthians 13. 1 Corinthians 13 is more inspiring, but Romans 12 might have more solid instruction on what it means to really love. Let me show you five characteristics of real love from this chapter.

1. Real love is sincere: it starts in the heart. In Romans 12:9, we begin a long list of commands or rules. The first is, “Love must be sincere.” It must not be hypocritical. What does this mean? We can act like we love (“Bless our hearts”) and not really have that love in our heart. It is an act. We show kindness in our interactions but do not have it in our hearts. We have all known people who acted like they wanted to be with us but who ended up not having any real interest in us. It was a mask. We have also done this to others. It hurts when we discover it and when others discover it in us. This is insincere love.

What this means positively is that love begins in the heart. It is not enough to show it on our faces. We have to have it in our hearts. How do we really think and feel about people? That’s where love starts. Love is a genuine affection of the heart that desires union and communion with others.

2. Real love is attentive: it takes an interest in anybody it meets. Philostorgos is a Greek word. Paul uses it in Romans 12:10, and it is the only place we find it in the Bible. It is love like parents have for their children. It’s hard to translate into English in one word. Love takes an interest in other people’s well-being. Parents generally seek the well-being of their children in a way that simply gives. We need to learn to take that love and extend it out to others. Continue reading “5 Characteristics of Real Love”

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Five Reasons Why It Is So Hard to Love

Everybody thinks about the love they need. Few think of the love that others need.

Most of the songs we enjoy are about our own need for love and not about the love others need. I was trying to think about a song that was about the joy of loving others. My mind went to Jefferson Airplane’s “Don’t You Want Somebody to Love?” Then, I read the lyrics. The song is more about a person who has made a wrong romantic choice about the author of the song. Sure enough, Darby Slick had just experienced a breakup before writing the song. The person who is addressed is being rebuked for choosing the wrong person. They messed up. Not as noble as it first may sound.

The problem is that we all have trouble loving others. Parents may show real love and concern for their children but moving beyond that is very difficult. Why is loving others so hard? Let me give five reasons.

1. Our natural perspective is to see ourselves first. There’s nothing we can do about that. We see things from our own perspective. We see our own needs. We see our own inner world and no one else’s. We are always present to ourselves. There is a natural focus on self that is simply impossible to avoid, but it creates an obstacles to seeing the perspective of others. It will require more work.

2. Our natural self-perspective becomes exaggerated. We not only have a natural and legitimate focus on self, but it becomes illegitimate in all of us. We worry too much about ourselves. I would suggest that this is rooted in our alienation from God and our tendency not to trust Him as the source of love and provision. Without this anchor for our soul, our anxiety about our own needs runs wild. Continue reading “Five Reasons Why It Is So Hard to Love”

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The Four Cardinal Virtues, Part 2: Fortitude & Temperance

The objects of virtue are defined by prudence and justice. By objects, I mean, the things we are to pursue, such as a relationship with God, a loving family, and scientific discovery. However, knowing what to do is not the same as being able to do it. There are many hardships and dangers in pursuing the best. This requires fortitude. There are many good things that distract us from the best. This requires temperance.

These are the four cardinal or principle virtues required in the excellent or virtuous person. Josef Pieper has written a helpful explanation of these four virtues for our time in consultation with ancient philosophy, Christian theology, and modern philosophers. In this post, I am considering his discussion of fortitude and temperance. You can read my post on prudence and justice here.

Fortitude
What are you willing to die for? This is the chief question of fortitude. It’s one every single one of us should consider. Preparing for death prepares us to live. As Josef Pieper says, “Fortitude that does not reach down into the depths of the willingness to die is spoiled at its root and devoid of effective power. . . . Readiness to die is therefore one of the foundations of Christian life” (117). This does not mean that death or suffering are valued in and of themselves. Pieper explains, “The brave man suffers injury not for its own sake, but rather as a means to preserve or to acquire a deeper more essential intactness” (119). The flip side is a desperate attempt to keep one’s life at all costs, “All neuroses seem to have as a common symptom an egocentric anxiety, a tense and self-centered concern for security, the inability to ‘let go’; in short, that kind of love for one’s own life that leads straight to the loss of life” (134). Consequently, careful consideration of what is worth living and dying for is at the root of our well-being. Continue reading “The Four Cardinal Virtues, Part 2: Fortitude & Temperance”

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The Four Cardinal Virtues, Part 1: Prudence & Justice

Introduction
The tradition of the four cardinal virtues was already old when Plato wrote about it in his Symposium. This ancient wisdom contained three aspects. Fist, morality was about a person’s character, the type of person he was, as well as the rules he followed. Second, the goal of morality was not merely following rules but to be a person of excellence, which is the meaning of the word “virtue.” Third, a virtuous act requires four key virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.

In his book, The Four Cardinal Virtues, the Catholic theologian Josef Pieper explains the meaning of these four virtues. He does this in interaction with the ancient philosophers, Christian theologians, and modern philosophers. The result is a unique and helpful discussion of these four categories. Pieper believed that such a discussion was extremely fruitful. He said, “we may well turn to the ‘wisdom of the ancients’ in our human quest to understand reality, for that wisdom contains a truly inexhaustible contemporaneity” (xii). In this article, I want to summarize and highlight his discussion of the virtues of prudence and justice. Continue reading “The Four Cardinal Virtues, Part 1: Prudence & Justice”

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