Goodness

So I've come across a new book, not at all by accident, called Receiving the Gift of Friendship: Profound Disability, Theological Anthropology, and Ethics by Hans Reinders. The book is primarily a book about theology, both about friendship and about the questions of what it means to be human, and it reminded me of something that I've been thinking about for quite some time and might as well air here in the midst of my thoughts about the fall and redemption.

I haven't read Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue and I mean to, but I have a feeling I'm going to agree with a good deal of what he had to say, because I deeply believe that our civilization has been dessicated by the disappearance of virtue about 40 years ago, and we're just starting to see the effects of it now.

I'll return to the book I opened with in a moment, but first I want to outline what I see as the problem. We've lost our desire to make people good. Instead we've been focusing our "rights." Granted, thinking about "rights" has certainly improved our lot institutionally speaking in a number of areas, particularly civil rights in the face of segregation and the right to life in the face of abortion and euthanasia. However, what we need to realize is that these were merely institutional changes, and the task of making men moral goes far beyond what the state can accomplish. In fact, it's lead to the erosion of other rights in its attempts to do so.

Now I will return to Reinders's book. He points out in the introduction the momentum that disabled-people's rights groups have gained through the nineties to the present in making people with disabilities equal in the eyes of the law. That is, their "rights" have been recognized and they have full citizenship. However, he notes that in spite of these successes, "they lack friends, which is the one kind of good that rights and justice claims cannot achieve."

He continues:

...that literature [based on "rights"] operates within the political sphere of emancipation, antidiscrimination, and issues of civil rights. It is successful [...] to the extent that it contributes to changes in public policy. While I think these efforts are important [...] I also think we should raise different questions, questions regarding our moral culture. I do not use that term to refer to morality in the narrow sense, as a system of mutual obligations that arise from institutional roles and responsibilities. Rather, I want to use "moral culture" as the domain constituted by the concept of the good that people pursue in their lives, both individually and collectively. [emphasis mine]

I think that in large part, the problems of our society are due to our being overly focused on that "morality in the narrow sense." We're concerned that our children are shirking community service, that our young people aren't giving enough of their time and treasure to the poor and the needy, that our fathers and mothers aren't protecting their children, and that our elderly are dying in pain or alone.

What is our answer to these problems?

"Why doesn't someone DO something about this? Make children do community service! Obligate donations to the poor! Mandate certain things be taught to children and certain parenting strategies!"

Nobody asks the right question:

"Based on the people I know, what can I do to help they and I become the best human beings we possibly can be? What can I do to craft my sons and daughters into good people? What can my community do to foster generous and loving spirits among its members so that no man or woman ever dies alone or in pain?"

Everyone is concerned with rights and obligations; no one is concerned with virtue and love. All we have left is works without faith, and they're nothing but filthy rags. Soon, we'll have no works.

What can we do? What can we change?

If you're asking that question, then you're missing the point.

What can I do? How can I make a difference?

Closer but not quite there yet.

What do I need to do to become a good person?

There you go. One step at a time.

More on this in the future.