Virtues — In Plato’s ‘Meno’ dialogue, Socrates struggled to define what they are. Are they good? Are they works? Are they only concerned with the results being good? He wasn’t able to define it, but he did conclude that virtues are innate and instilled in your soul by ‘the gods’ and that you become virtuous by performing virtuous acts. He also concluded that you can’t teach virtue unless you have a deep understanding of it — some would call this ‘theoretical knowledge’. In other words, it takes more than a little experience and rules of thumb to teach virtue, which is why so few are able to teach it.
Same with truth — people have struggled to define it. Jesus had no trouble defining it, he merely stated that He is the Truth. In order for us to teach it, we have to study Jesus and His teachings and work constantly to apply them to the everyday, mundane situations in our lives. Jesus also stated that if we love Him, we will obey his commands. This is pretty much a command to practice being truthful and become more Christ-like. Since Jesus knows we are imperfect beings, we will make mistakes along the way, but the more we practice the better we will get at it. Much like practicing virtue to become virtuous, we have to practice Jesus’ teachings in order to become truthful and Christ-like.
Sometimes this is really hard. There are some uncomfortable truths that the Bible lays out.
List of uncomfortable truths:
- We are all sinners and Jesus is the only saving grace before God. You also need to be baptized — Acts 2:38 reads:
- ‘Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ‘
- The Bible does not say that it’s enough for you to just be a good person — all have sinned and fallen short.
- You need to love sinners — Luke 6:27-28 reads:
- ‘But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.’
- You also need to love sinners enough to spend time with them and witness to them — Mark 2:16-17 reads: ‘When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”’
- You need to forgive those who hurt you — Matthew 18:32-33 reads:
- ‘Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’’
- You need to spread the gospel — Mark 16:15 reads:
- “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”
- You can’t just do whatever you want because there is grace — Paul says in Romans 6:1-2:
- ‘What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?’
We should strive to seek truth by obeying Jesus’ teachings and becoming more Christ-like. We need to have a healthy fear of God — for as Proverbs 9:10 says ‘…fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…’. Many people say that they do not fear God because He is good. I say, just because someone is ‘good’ doesn’t mean that there are not consequences for your actions. Our parents have taught us that. Besides – dentists are good, but the visits can be painful.