late night thoughts on virtue

Galatians 5:22-26: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."

Ὁ δὲ καρπὸς τοῦ Πνεύματός ἐστιν ἀγάπη, χαρά, εἰρήνη, μακροθυμία, χρηστότης, ἀγαθωσύνη, πίστις, πραΰτης, ἐγκράτεια· κατὰ τῶν τοιούτων οὐκ ἔστιν νόμος. Οἱ δὲ τοῦ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τὴν σάρκα ἐσταύρωσαν σὺν τοῖς παθήμασιν καὶ ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις. Εἰ ζῶμεν Πνεύματι, Πνεύματι καὶ στοιχῶμεν. μὴ γινώμεθα κενόδοξοι, ἀλλήλους προκαλούμενοι, ἀλλήλοις φθονοῦντες.

Love – Love is serving the needs of people. For their sake. Not yours. Not giving up on people. Not playing favorites. Not picking and choosing when you care or how much.

Joy is to delight in life for what life is. To delight in life as opposed to the gifts of life. Evenness of keel. Because happiness does not depend on circumstance but on a self and a life which persist. The knowledge that as long as there is life there is hope. Therefore to grow in joy is to be more stable.

Peace is trust in self.

Patience is the ability to suffer. To be wronged. Suffer well. Without bowing down or becoming hard or bitter.

Kindness and goodness are integrity. A person with integrity is consistent in private and in public. Someone who is the same with one group as another. You are honest. You are not spinning everything. You don’t say one thing to one person and another thing to another.

Faithfulness is fearlessness, reliability, assertiveness.

Gentleness is humility. Blessed self-forgetfulness. The ability to exit my own body, how I look. How people are treating me. How I am doing.

Self-control - if I have the other 8, I have this one.

Most of us will see these 9 characteristics and recognizes some which we are good at and others which we are bad at. But that’s impossible. In Greek, the word “fruit” (καρπὸς, also translated as "crop") is singular. The fruit are these nine. They are one and the same. One diamond has many facets, and each facet is not separate. Each virtue is a facet of the spirit. Supernaturally produced character has these 9 aspects but they all come in 1. Then what is sin? Spiritual immaturity - sin - is self centeredness. Self absorption. Self pity. Self justification. Neediness. This is displaced not by self-flagellation or self-promotion but by love in God. God centeredness.

Naturally our character is self centered. Our temperamental dispositions are an expression of self-centeredness. Assertedness is a superiority complex without gentleness. Gentleness is an inferiority complex without assuredness. If you’re only growing in one virtue, you’re not growing in any of them.

A pile of stones can grow. You just put more stones. But is that the same as organic growth? No. I may add things to my resumé, CV, work to work, merit to merit, but am I growing wiser, deeper, humbler, better, in quality and complexity?