“Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character” – Albert Einstein
So begins the opening line of a leadership paper a former colleague Doug DeMaster and I wrote a few years back. I was privileged to work under Doug, first as a scientist and then as his Deputy managing a regional science enterprise. Doug was one of the brightest lights within the organization. Smart, highly respected, accomplished, wise, and virtuous. My resume was much more modest, but I was also the “core values” guy and when Doug needed that sort of person to help him lead the Center, I got the job.
Our leadership responsibilities were, at times, national in scope through membership on national leadership and policy councils. There we saw first-hand the good, bad, and the ugly of leadership execution across diverse agencies and regions. In our judgement, many of the Agency problems appeared to be foundational, stemming from deficiencies in leadership values. Solutions too often attacked the symptoms rather than root causes. Hence the symptoms would invariably persist, likely to surface again like a game of whack-a-mole.
We found that organizational excellence depended on the character of its leadership and that Einstein’s character insight applied to science organizations too. We saw character as foundational to healthy organizations through virtuous leaders who practice what they preach. We further believed that leadership excellence was best expressed through “servant leadership”, as demonstrated through a leader’s ability to listen, empower, and develop staff in a manner marked by integrity, humility and authenticity. That the task of a leader was a moral endeavor as much as a scientific endeavor where character and virtue became indispensable to the mission.
Moral Man, Immoral Society
Moral reasoning and belief however, as I wrote in my previous blog post, can be tricky business. Jonathan Haidt, the author of moral foundation theory, sees it as a two-edged sword, able to bring both good and harm: “Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood.”
Garrett and Bankert in their paper “the Moral Roots of Partisan Division: How Moral Conviction Heightens Affective Polarization,” show how partisanship and moralization feed off of on another. We know that strong partisans will seek out information that cast their party in a most favorable light. This motivated reasoning stems from a “soldier mindset” where accuracy is no longer the main goal.
Yet the more people moralize about politics, the more partisan bias, distance, and animosity they exhibit. And the stronger the moralization the more one-sided people become in their partisan and ideological division. Such moralizing even trumps partisan strength as a driving force behind anger, incivility, and antagonism towards the opposing side. It intensifies affective polarization and an increased perception of social anomie with its attending call for authoritarian and strong leaders.
Are Morals Then the Problem?
From coast to coast throughout America, virtue is alive and well, witnessed through the goodness of neighbors and family. This practice of virtue has been seen as essential for human flourishing across the landscape of human history. Virtue in the ancient Japanese Bushidō code was marked by righteousness, courage, benevolence, respect, honesty, honor, loyalty, filial piety, wisdom and care of the aged. Aristotle’s four classic cardinal virtues were temperance, prudence, courage, and justice. Early Christian church fathers then added faith, hope and love to make up the Seven Christian Virtues. The Christian faith lists the Fruit of the Spirit – the outward behavioral evidence of an inner transformation – which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
Good character depends upon a range of virtues, not just one or two. Sins of omission can lead to profound sins of commission when our moral codes are incomplete. Even the Sicilian Mafia lives by a moral code which emphasizes respect, loyalty, honor, and fidelity: “anyone who behaves badly and doesn’t hold to moral values” are no longer welcome in their organization. But their moral code is woefully incomplete, lacking essential virtues needed for human flourishing.
The problem in America, like in the case of the Cosa Nostra, isn’t because morals aren’t valued. The problem in America arises from incomplete virtues, especially within the public square. The goodness we experience in everyday life gets transformed through our partisan battles. It creates a new worldview of us against them that reshapes our inner self. We become affectively polarized from a partisan dislike that surpasses all other affections. The culture war amplifies those sensibilities through the outrage and fear it inspires. Then cancel culture sets in, but only after we cancel the goodness within us.
Andrew Sullivan the conservative iconoclast, who alternatively triggers and affirms both partisan sides, recently said: “The American Constitution was set up for people who can reason and argue and aren’t afraid of it, and then reach compromises, the whole thing is designed that way.” “If you’re in a tribe, and all that matters is the victory of your tribe…You can’t make it work.” “We’re flying from reality. We’re inventing abstractions and ideologies. We’re fighting each other. We’re demonizing each other. The system can still work. It’s we who are broken.”
The Full Gospel Priority of Othropraxis and Orthopathy
Our identity must be in Christ and our calling is to love the other. This calling, the injunction to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God, has no higher priority as we “are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.” As we conform to His Image through abiding in Him, the Fruit of the Spirit shows up. And it’s our Christian practice (orthopraxis) informed by our attitudes (orthopathy) that tells who we truly are.
But there is a disconnect within the church today that diminishes the power of the gospel. In our relentless pursuit of so-called “Christian Values,” a pernicious and confrontational mindset can set in. The fruit of that witness is often an incomplete set of values, neglecting Christ’s “weightier aspects of the law.” And even those some of those values may be truly biblical in doctrine, but they lose gospel virtue when they are brandished around like a righteous sword. It leads to loss of orthopraxy turned harmful, yielding a moral code that’s woefully incomplete.
My former pastor Steve Pecota once said: “Our opinions, especially our theological opinions, are important. But orthodoxy at the cost of lost orthopraxy will always imply a diminishment of the gospel – the gospel is about more than right believing, as the Apostle James labored to make clear.”
The church will continue to fall short of its calling until it embraces a full gospel witness. Where Micah 6:8 and the Fruits of the Spirit God become as important as creedal orthodoxy. Where the priority of orthopathy/orthopraxis and its faithful pursuit becomes a normative feature of the church. And where our community of practice becomes patterned after Jesus who taught that how we live is an important as why we live.
The Linkage between Undiminished Virtue and Truth
James 3:13-18: “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom…the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.”
The Fruits of the Spirit are a “tell all” story through its unmasking of our inner life. They are the outward evidence of an inward transformation of “those who belong to Christ Jesus [and who] have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” This process of transformation touches every part of our lives including the trustworthiness of our assertions.
Yet we can’t self-assess the depth of that transformation because someone else has to make this call. Hence the credibility of our insight, our wisdom, and our truth telling, as the apostle James has written, lies in a “fruit test” not graded by us.
The “works of the flesh” are the other side of the coin, those “obvious” acts contrary to the Spirit. The flesh and the Spirit are at odds in our life as St. Augustine many years ago observed: “Two wills were mine, old and new, of the flesh, of the spirit, each warring on the other, and between their dissonances was my soul disintegrating.”
We see this dissonance, this “warring on the other,” coursing through the church today. It’s always been a feature, a consequence of our fallen nature, until the culture war brought it to new levels. The widespread polarization and division within the church are two unholy outcomes of this war. Its apocalyptic message creates an upside world with many works of the flesh now functionally normative: e.g., hate [xenophobia], fighting [populism], obsession [affective polarization], competitive opposition [partisanship], conflict [outrage], selfishness [nativism], and group rivalry [tribalism].
The message of the cross and a culture war engagement are two incompatible faith choices. In the heat of the battle as the culture war rages, the fruits of the spirit quietly fade away. And with the loss of those fruits comes a loss in our truth claims, and the rest, as the saying goes, is our present history.
Postscript
The next and final post in this series will focus on how we get out the abyss that both America and the church finds itself in today. I don’t have all the answers, but there is a remnant who continue to be a 1 Tim 4:19 “example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” type of person. We can learn from their lives which brings hope for a church willing to take seriously a Matthew 5:16 calling of: “You are like that illuminating light. Let your light shine everywhere you go, that you may illumine creation, so men and women everywhere may see your good actions…”