The wise and foolish virgins, Jacopo Tintoretto (Jacopo Comin, Jacopo Robusti) Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Netherlands. “If only life came with a user manual!” I once heard someone say. Today there’s not much emphasis on teaching rules of good behaviour. We’re free to express ourselves and make up our own minds about things. But ‘do what you feel’ very often ends up as ‘what do I do?’ Since I can do almost anything, I have no idea what to do. It’s like having a ship with no compass, nor map, nor destination. Is this freedom?
It turns out that for many things, ‘Just be yourself’ is not very helpful advice. Sadly, my personality and inner creativity do not include the ability to spontaneously speak Cantonese or play a piano concerto. More is required.
Languages, instruments, dances: in all these we become free by learning the rules and practicing them until we become so fluent in the skill that we can do it without thinking. So, when we are no longer taught clear rules and forms, we end up not freer, but less free.
Virtue is basically the skill of being good at life. Just as a pianist is skilled at playing the piano, so a virtuous person is a virtuoso at being a human – and all those rules of good behaviour help train us to be virtuous. It’s one thing never to be taught to play the piano, but it is entirely tragic never to be taught how to be human.
So, when into this gap stepped the straight-talking Jordan Peterson, it’s not hard to see why he was so well received. ‘Tidy your room.’ ‘Throw your shoulders back.’ ‘Treat yourself like someone you’re responsible for helping.’ For many, this provided the much-needed guidance and challenge that self-esteem culture lacked. Peterson also intrigued many with his psychological readings of the Old Testament. Much like the Platonists did for St Augustine, he has led lots of people to Catholicism without himself being a Catholic.
He who meddles in a quarrel not his own is like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears”
But Peterson’s advice has both good and bad in it; truth mixed in with falsity, like all human wisdom. We Catholics have been given something far better: and will it be said that we have neglected it?
The ‘Wisdom Books’ of the Old Testament – Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Sirach and The Book of Wisdom in particular – are a huge storehouse of sound advice and rules for life, written for us by God, teaching us to be virtuous and wise; and by our Faith, we have the key.
The Book of Proverbs at first seems a random collection of shrewd sayings: “He who meddles in a quarrel not his own is like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears,” or: “Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.” But underneath these pithy sayings, the Book of Proverbs answers a deeper question: will doing the right thing always end up best for me? The author’s answer is a vehement ‘Yes!’
Acceptance
Though it often seems that bad men prosper, and immoral deeds yield better rewards, in reality ‘the fear of the Lord’ and goodness towards others is always rewarded, and evil always ends in disaster; beneath all the appearances, Providence always has the last word.
Ecclesiastes teaches us some hard truths, and a certain healthy detachment. Uncertainty is a fact of life; and the outcome of all our efforts is uncertain; and sooner or later we meet our Maker. The conclusion? Acceptance: don’t found your life on chasing fleeting things like success or pleasure. Instead, as the various things in life pass you by, accept them and embrace them with a sense of perspective, without being too attached to them. God has made the one as well as the other.
Toward what your neighbour is looking at, do not put out a hand; nor reach when he does, for the same dish”
The Book of Sirach has advice for almost every situation:
“Never repeat a conversation, and you will lose nothing at all. If you’ve heard a story, let it die with you; be brave! It will not make you burst.”
“My son, with humility, have self-esteem; prize yourself as you deserve. Who will acquit whoever condemns himself? Who will honour him who discredits himself?”
There’s even advice on table manners: ”Are you seated at a banquet table? Bring to it no greedy gullet! Toward what your neighbour is looking at, do not put out a hand; nor reach when he does, for the same dish.”
The final book, known simply as ‘The Book of Wisdom’ is the most epic of all: Wisdom appears as an actual person, who is to be loved and pursued, and who is searching for us too; Someone who makes people wise and virtuous by the gift of bread and wine; Someone who crafted the whole world, who even seems to be divine, and equal with God. Who is this mysterious “Wisdom”?
Virtue
We already know that if we want to live truly human lives, we need to learn the rules and virtues. But is that all there is to it? It’s one thing to know what the right thing to do is: it’s an entirely other thing to do it. The ancient Greeks and Romans knew quite a bit about goodness and virtue but couldn’t live it out. What was missing?
For some, the question remains unanswered. But by our faith we understand that the same “Wisdom” who holds the answer to our questions, was born in Bethlehem and died on Calvary. He is the missing key.
We find here, then, at the end of our quest for virtue, not a series of principles or rules, but a Person: ”He has become our wisdom and our virtue and our holiness and our freedom.” Virtue turns out to be nothing other than the relationship with Him – He is our virtue. Before He came, we weren’t free to live the good life. To live a wise, a free, a truly human life: this isn’t possible without Him. When Christianity first spread in the ancient world, one of its most noticeable and unprecedented effects was that bad men became good: prostitutes became saints; scoundrels became honest men; and even to this day every twelve-step program begins with total dependence on the help of God.
The very best rules for life you can find are already there in the wisdom books; but the deepest wisdom of these is that they introduce us to the only Wisdom we can ever really live by: Christ Himself. And this is where, like a plane taking off a runway, we go from moral codes and rules, and on to the mysteries of the life of Christ and His sacraments. “And if the Son makes you free, you are free indeed.”
The deepest wisdom of these is that they introduce us to the only Wisdom we can ever really live by: Christ Himself”
Chivalrous Scouts
Codes of moral behaviour were not always so hard to come by. Take, for example, the famous Boy Scouts Handbook, originally written by Baden Powell in 1908. It features a whole section on ‘chivalry’, that is, the code of honour and courtesy followed by the knights of the Middle Ages. He writes: “One aim of the Boy Scouts scheme is to revive amongst us, if possible, some of the rules of the knights of old: Defend the poor and help them that cannot defend themselves; Do nothing to hurt or offend anyone else; Never break your promise; Rather die honest than live shamelessly; Do good unto others.”
He gives a model example of manly courtesy towards one’s enemies: When the Japanese were besieging the Russians at Port Arthur in 1905, a Russian soldier threw a letter for his mother into the Japanese trenches, complete with a gold coin for postage. Rather than keeping the money, the Japanese soldier “did what any boy scout would do” – he sent the letter to the Russian’s mother and even threw a note back saying he had done so. Many confused notions of masculinity emphasise assertiveness and conquest, but these older ones are all about service, restraint, and self-sacrifice.
Baden Powell himself refers to another great classic, The Broad Stone of Honour, written by Sir Kenelm Digby (a Galway man) in 1822, which concludes that chivalry is nothing other than living by the eight beatitudes. Sir Kenelm’s close study of medieval knighthood led to his conversion to Catholicism soon after the book was published.