 |
| Christ in the Wilderness by Stanley Spencer |
Starting with this post, I will start a series on the 7 virtues! Exciting huh?
The seven virtues are hardly spoken of outside the walls of catechism. Perhaps they elicit in us horrid memories of old school nuns beating these virtues onto our bodies with human sized rulers. Perhaps they remind us of medieval, ascetical, and rigid spirituality.
But virtues matter. We shouldn't keep them in "medieval consciousness" boxes stored in our cultural attics. They should be unboxed, discovered, and be given a place in our 21st century homes.
As I will explore in these upcoming posts, these virtues are immensely necessary to our 21st century society. The postmodern world needs them more than ever. I will also offer practical ways to practice them in an urban context.
For today's post we will start with Temperance!
What is Temperance?
Temperance can be described as self-restraint or self control. It is connected with discipline. It evokes images of a moderate person who is not overrun by emotions and passions. Negatively, it can bring up images of a stoic individual who seems dry, joyless and lacking in emotional expressions.
True temperance, however, should bring joy. This negative aspect of the virtue is more connected with someone who practices temperance for temperance's sake, while forgetting the end goal of practicing virtues in general: theosis, or union with God.
Interestingly enough, temperance (and the practice of it) has a wide range of applications. We can practice temperance not only with material goods, but also with our emotions. We practice temperance, for example, when in anger we decide not to engage in violence but instead we practice non-violence and forgiveness.
With this example, we start seeing how temperance is hugely important in our modern world and its struggles towards social justice.
Temperance & The Holy Spirit
Temperance is also connected with the self-control, which is the last fruit of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:22-23.) I believe this list of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is hierarchical, meaning that each fruit builds on top each other.
The apostle Paul lists self control at the bottom of the list, since it is not only the one we should start practicing with, but also the base where the Holy Spirit can build up the other gifts. It is for this reason that I wanted to start this series of the 7 virtues with Temperance.
The Virtue of Temperance for a Post-Modern World
There are many ways we can practice temperance in our urbanized world.
First, the practice of temperance encourages us to lead a simple life and to fight our senseless materialism that is sucking the precious resources of our earth. A study suggested that, if the rest of the world were to consume like Americans, we would need 4 planet earths!
Temperance, or self-control in materialism will help offset this senseless consumption of resources. It will teach us that we are not more entitled to these goods than people in other developing nations.
Secondly, temperance will help us in our struggle towards environmental justice. We practice self-control by making the sacrifices needed to reduce our carbon footprint. Like I've written in the past, the problem is not just the government, but we also bear a personal responsibility in destroying the environment.
Thirdly, temperance will also give us self-restrain in the things we do buy. We can practice it by paying attention to how our purchases affect the world around us and by showing self-restrain from buying goods that are probably cheaper, but they are built on maquilas or factories that are abusive to its workers, and even have child labor.
Since buying fair-trade goods is probably more expensive, this will require that we consume at a lower rate than we currently do. We will buy less things, but the ones we do will probably be of better quality. Sometimes less is more.
All of this, of course, require discipline. It is easier to go with the flow and simply buy what is convenient. It is easier to not think of what we are consuming instead of showing self-control by restraining our over-consumption.
In what other ways is temperance relevant in our post-modern world?
No comments:
Post a Comment