The Good Life is The Virtuous Life

00:00 Introduction and Background


03:53 Challenging False Dichotomies


08:06 The Journey of Deconstructing Sectarianism


10:27 Moving from Rigid Beliefs to Charitable Living


16:12 Understanding Virtue Ethics


21:57 The Change in Definition of Freedom


28:05 The Role of Authority in Virtue Ethics


32:21 Virtue Ethics as a Way Forward for the Church


34:17 Addressing Deconstruction and Hypocrisy


37:41 Virtue Ethics and Political Engagement


43:07 Navigating the Political Landscape with Virtue Ethics


48:17 Closing and Prayer


 


Welcome to another episode of Off the Wire. And I am really
excited to be able to have Lee C. Camp here in the interview
space, at least through Zoom. And I was telling Lee earlier that
I am thankful to be able to have him on the podcast because my
wife and I have been avid listeners of his podcast, which is
called No Small Endeavor. And we were listening to that. We've
been listening to that the


 


past couple of years, but he has done a great job of helping us
think through how to get rid of, or at least challenge false
dichotomies. Because a lot of times, as we've talked about on Off
the Wire, that there are a lot of times that we think this, not
that. And a lot of times the answer is in the gray space or in
the this and that. So the both and is what is helpful. And so I'm
really grateful to have you on the podcast, Lee. Thank you for
your time. And


 


And you are hailing from the great city of Nashville, Tennessee,
where you're a professor, right? That's correct. Yeah. So can you
tell us a little bit about how you got into that space and what
you teach and everything like that? Sure. Yeah. Thank you, Matt.
Pleasure to be with you and appreciate the invitation to be on
your show. Yeah. So I live in Nashville. I've been in Nashville
starting my 25th year of college teaching at Lipscomb University
in Nashville. I teach theology and ethics. And, um,


 


So, you know, I got into that line of work by some, not terribly
circuitous, but a little bit circuitous route. I, when I was in,
started college, I intended to be something in science or
technology, engineer, physicist, something like that, and started
in engineering and then moved to computer science and actually
did my undergrad in computer science.


 


But somewhere along the way, I had kind of a nagging sense of
calling of some sort towards either pastoral work or teaching.
And I finally kind of yielded to that sometime between my junior
and senior year in college. And did you go to Lipscomb for
college? I did. I did undergrad there. Yep. And, um, but while I
was doing my computer science degree, I also did biblical studies
and Greek along with a math minor. So, um, so those different
minors gave me access to a lot of different stuff.


 


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So then I went on to seminary. In seminary, I kind of fell in
love with the very notion of the history of ideas and
intellectual history, and then the way theology fits into that.
And that kind of piqued my interest in doing PhD work. So after a
brief stint, my wife and I went to Nairobi for six months between
seminary, and then I got into Notre Dame to do my graduate work
and did my PhD there, was there for five years, and then came to
Nashville and started teaching. So that's kind of a...


 


That's a quick snapshot of how I got into the world I'm in. Well,
that's great because, I mean, obviously that's going to inform
what you're doing right now. I mean, how do you move from an
engineering type mind of being very definitive in things? And
obviously theology and systematic theology works at trying to
say, you know, Jesus is this, he's not that. So how do you move
into the space where it could be for a lot of people?


 


very scary or very shaking to their foundations to say, okay, I'm
going to move from these very hard lines of what is true and
place those in areas of conviction to where someone can still be
a Christian and disagree with me and still be a brother or sister
in Christ. Can you walk us through that journey of where you're
seeking now to help people demolish strongholds, namely, false
dichotomies?


 


Yeah, that's a big and can be a complicated question, but it's a
super important one. So just, I guess some of the things that are
important in my own history or thinking about that is that I
certainly was raised in a highly sectarian church context in
which, you know, not only were.


 


was it that we were the only ones going to heaven, you know, but
that we weren't so sure about the people sitting on the P with us
either. And so, so that that was kind of the, the world I was
raised in, as far as thinking about who's in and who's out. And
then so it was, it was a long process of realizing that the world
is big, that the Christian world is big, and that the world is
big. And that there are a lot of ways that people have tried to


 


Off the Wire (04:46.542)


be very serious about their Christian faith in ways that I
originally had no idea about. And then with regard to the
question like about an engineering mind, I think that there were
certainly, I was laughing about this at church Sunday morning
with kind of the social visiting time. And I don't remember how
it came up, but, oh, was someone talking to me about,


 


someone mentioned a famous Saturday Night Live sketch from when I
was a kid. And they said, Lee, you probably didn't get to watch
Saturday Night Live, did you? And I said, well, actually, we
actually weren't permitted to watch the Love Boat, but we could
watch Saturday Night Live. And I said, but I never watched
Saturday Night Live because I didn't get it. And it just didn't,
I didn't understand it. And then I laughed and I said, I think
it's because...


 


I was raised in such a literalist context and where we looked at
everything so literally that that really does, you can't be very
funny and you can't understand comedy and humor when you're that
literalist. gotta explain the joke, you've lost the joke. That's
right, right. And so think like satire and so like that. I just
didn't get it. I didn't find it interesting. And so learning to
have different ways of reading texts, of thinking about the world
and all that kind of stuff, not only does it give you a better
sense of humor, but it gives you a better sense of...


 


the beauty and the wonder and the mystery of life and the mystery
of the universe and so forth. And so that then brings me full
circle to the last thing I'll comment on at the moment about that
is that I recently got to spend a day with a well -known writer,
Parker Palmer, and he talks a lot about paradox. And he quotes
the famous physicist, Niels Bohr, who Bohr once said, the
opposite of a true fact,


 


is a falsehood. But the opposite of a profound truth may be
another profound truth. And I just find that super helpful.
Clearly there are things that are true and things that are false.
I was born in 1967, that's true. And any other assertion to the
contrary is false. But there are certain profound truth claims.


 


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that there may be, and it's important that Bohr was careful
there. He didn't say the opposite of a profound truth is another
profound truth, but that it may be another profound truth. And so
this capacity to hold onto paradoxical claims, I think is
terribly important and enriches our lives in numerous ways. Was
there a certain author or certain school of thought that started
to get you to go down a path of saying,


 


maybe I don't need to always question the person down the pews
salvation. Like, were there certain, for my experience, it was
reading the early church fathers who were going back and forth
about the person of Jesus, right? And they're arguing about these
very fundamental doctrines. And then I'm like, well, I guess that
particular extension of that isn't as important as maybe the
fundamental Orthodox beliefs. So that's my genesis of coming to a
place of, okay,


 


I can listen to people who I strongly disagree with and I can
learn something from them. Was there anybody, any author that you
could direct somebody to that was helpful for you? For me, it
began to be challenged. My sectarianism began to be challenged by
a mentor of mine as an undergraduate. And he was actually the
vice president of our college. And for whatever gracious,
generous reason,


 


he began to connect with me and a good friend of mine and would
visit with us once a week. And he would begin to ask us questions
that we couldn't answer. And so it was just kind of basically
asking us questions that stood in tension with what we had taken
for granted and showing us this doesn't hold up necessarily as
well as you might think it does. And he did it in a non
-threatening sort of way. But then he upped that.


 


by one evening, I'll remember this night the rest of my life, he
invited me to this ecumenical gathering in which we sat in a
circle, there were probably 15, 20 people in this circle. And
people were asked to talk about their life of late and the way
their faith had been informed, challenged, growing in the last
season of their life.


 


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And so that was really the first time I had ever sat and listened
to devoted Christians who didn't share all of my convictions. And
I remember sitting with this mentor at a break and me expressing,
I've never gotten to hear people that are different than me talk
about their faith this way. And clearly there's something to this
faith that they have. And so that began a long process of kind of
deconstructing my sectarianism and helping me have a much
bigger...


 


more compelling vision of a Christian faith and practice. Yeah,
no, that's great. Because even within my, in my own journey, and
I don't know if you can, would resonate with this or not, but I
found that I grew up in a more mainline Protestant denomination.
And then I was converted in college and I became very adamant
with beliefs and like, okay, I'm going to walk through this
passage. I'm going to get the meaning of the text, which is there
is one meaning.


 


and all those who don't agree with that. And so I became very
rigid in my approach to not just theology, but others in life in
general. And as I started looking at my own life, I said, the
path that I'm on, I'm going to be a really bitter person in 30
years. If everybody is suspect and I'm not really being able to
hear somebody say, oh, you talk about Jesus.


 


and I'm going to take you at your word as opposed to looking at
them as though they're not really talking about the same Jesus.
So that was part of my journey as well, is being challenged with
what kind of person are you being charitable? Are you being
loving? Are you being kind? Are you exhibiting the fruit of the
Spirit? And quite frankly, I had good doctrine, but I didn't have
good living. And would you find that like within your sectarian
upbringing that that was a large...


 


or was that visible in how you exhibited your life and the people
that you observed in church? Well, I think that there were
certainly a lot of people in my childhood church community who
did subscribe to a lot of sectarian presumptions, but they also
had beautiful lives.


 


Off the Wire (11:50.324)


along with it. But at the same time, I'll also say that even
though sectarian presumptions, I think it is important to
challenge some because, and I'm not a child psychologist and
don't know a whole lot about child development, but one thing I
do understand that I think is commonly presumed about growth in
childhood,


 


is that when we're younger, we have a much more black and white
vision of the world. And a lot of times we might not be able to
see that there's a lot more nuance around us as children because
all we have is the scales, lenses that see things in very black
and white terms. And so I've learned to try not to presume that
my interpretation of things that I had as a kid of my church
context were actually in fact true. It was my childhood
experience of that.


 


And so I can look back on some of those settings and realize that
even, you know, there was this one preacher that I had during my
adolescent years that was very sectarian and was highly
legalistic and was really good about the shaming and the blaming
and all that kind of stuff. But there were other preachers that I
had even when I was younger and then preachers that came later
that they weren't that way, you know, and they had a much more
charitable.


 


gracious vision of the world and what their faith meant. And then
there were people sitting in the pew that I'm sure a lot of times
they were just trying to figure out what in the world do I do
with this stuff that I'm hearing that I may or may not agree
with, you know, and doing their best to try to live a life that
they thought honored love of God and love of neighbor. But yeah,
I mean, I can look back at some of those beautiful people that
were in the pews around me and think those were wonderful human
beings that I was really grateful to get to be in community with.


 


Even though sometimes I was having to struggle with some of the
presumptions of teaching and so forth. I'll say too that, you
know, there did come a time where I would feel a sort of sadness
about the fact that, for example, after my first book came out
when I was young, I was in my thirties, I guess, and my first
book came out, you know, it was, it was another denomination that
invited me to come back to my hometown and lecture on the book.


 


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and very few people from my home church showed up to be with me.
And so there's sadness about that kind of reality is that because
even the bare fact that I was lecturing at a competing
denomination that a lot of folks wouldn't see as Christian meant
that they would just wouldn't come hear me. And so there's
genuine sadness about those facts and it definitely gets in you
and affects you as you have to process what you do with all that
kind of stuff.


 


Even as you're talking, I was thinking about in my own experience
that I wonder how many times the life that I lived has actually
changed multiple times. Meaning, as I look back on it 20 years
down the road, I remember when I first started walking with Jesus
that I used to say, well, I don't remember hearing the gospel. I
never heard the gospel at the church I grew up in. And the fact
of the matter is, more than likely I did. But I wasn't listening.
I didn't have the ears. Right.


 


Spirit, right? And along with those same people, there were a lot
of amazing people who were very charitable, who exhibited the
fruit of the Spirit. But because I was so black and white in my
thinking, I was unable to see that. I was looking at everybody
through a certain lens that compromised literal interpretation of
Scripture, and they didn't really believe the Bible was inerrant
or any number of things. And because of that, everybody was
written off. And I could really see the beauty.


 


that was there until 20 years later. Right. Yeah. So you, you,
and I mentioned this at the beginning when we first started that
you've given a lot of your energies and thinking to virtue, what
is called virtue ethics. For folks that aren't familiar with that
term, can you explain exactly what virtue ethics is and why that
could be a way forward in not only how we think in nuance, but
then also how we just,


 


quite frankly, live our lives. Can you talk some people through
them? Yeah. Well, certainly when I do this with classes, I have
to take two or three or four full lectures to try to begin to
answer that question or those series of questions. But prior to
the... So taking... I'll summarize briefly, for example, the
philosopher Alistair McIntyre, who's one of the most prominent
virtue ethicists, a Scottish American.


 


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philosophers who's still living. I think he's in his nineties
now. But, you know, McIntyre would talk about how prior to the
enlightenment, moral theory had three basic elements. It was
humankind as it is or untutored human nature, and then humankind
as it could be if it realizes its essence or if it realizes its
telos, what it means to be a human. And then there are virtues or
moral practices or habits, skills, dispositions.


 


that constitute a way of life that can help us realize that
excellence. And so with Aristotle, the classic example was, one
of the classic examples Aristotle used was think about a
musician. You've got a master musician who epitomizes the essence
of what it means to be an outstanding musician, an excellent
musician. And then you have an untutored child who wants to be
that master musician. Well, there are certain dispositions,
skills, habits, practices.


 


that have to be put in place to move from one to the other. And
so what McIntyre says is that's the way until the Enlightenment
that we thought about morality, that morality was not some
arbitrary capricious rules to squelch joy or to squelch pleasure.
It was instead a way actually to be free. If you want to be free
as a musician, you have to undergo all of this discipline, all of
this work, all of these practices. And then you can have this
incredible liberty.


 


to be free as a musician that's wonderful and masterful and
delightful. And so similarly with the virtue traditions, we're
asking what are those skills, habits and dispositions that are
indispensable to being a human being? And apart from those, we
will experience bondage or inability to be what we were created
to be or what we were designed to be. And so for example, going
back to Aristotle,


 


Aristotle would talk about there are four cardinal virtues and by
cardinal that word is taken from the Latin cardo and cardo means
hinge. And so these are four key practices that are the hinge on
which your life will turn. And this is common sensical, right? So
for Aristotle, it's the four cardinal virtues are courage,
prudence, temperance, and justice. So courage, for example, if we
don't have any courage and we're


 


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constantly living under the lash of cowardice. Clearly that's not
going to be much of a life that's a life worth living. You know,
it's just, it's just not, it's going to be a pretty sad life to
have to live. Similarly with temperance, if we have no temperance
with regard to pleasure, then we fall into another sort of
bondage, right? Prudence or wisdom is the capacity to choose the
best way to do the right thing. And you know, you can be super,
um,


 


moral, if you will. But if you have no prudence about choosing
the best way or the better way to practice these things, you're
just going to be very difficult human being and probably cause a
lot of harm. And justice for Aristotle, justice has to be one of
the four cardinal virtues because we are social creatures. And,
you know, no man is an island, the poets would say later. And
because we live in community, then we have to be attending to
justice. We have to be attending to relationships.


 


So somebody like Thomas Aquinas, the great Christian thinker in
the 13th century, he picks that stuff up from Aristotle. He says,
Aristotle is right about this. And he said, however, there are
three so -called theological virtues or three infused virtues
which we receive as a gift that are faith, hope, and love. And so
apart from things like the four cardinal virtues plus the three
theological virtues, faith, hope, and love, then we can't be the
human beings that we were created to be.


 


And so that's the quick framework. The last quick note I'll give
about that is that in following the Enlightenment, we completely
reconstitute what freedom means. And this is so crucial, right?
Because prior to the Enlightenment, in various virtue traditions,
and so this could be going back to the Greeks, it could be the
biblical tradition, it could be various medieval virtue
traditions.


 


For all of them, freedom is found on the other side of
discipline, going back to the musician, right? You have a freedom
that is unbelievable as a musician. I know a lot of world -class
musicians here in Nashville and see them do what they do. It's
because they've given their lives to this and then they have a
freedom to do things that mere mortals cannot do. It's just
amazing to see what they can do and to hear and to watch them do
what they do. So freedom is over here on the other side of
discipline.


 


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So you're to have the unschooled person say, leave me alone. I
want to be free. I want to be free to do what I want to do. And
the ancients would have looked at that and said, that is not
freedom. That is bondage. So it's crucial for us to see that
after the Enlightenment, we have taken what we call freedom. The
ancients would have said is not freedom. It's the opposite. It's
slavery and it's bondage. And so this is a huge reality that I
think, generally speaking, a lot of modern people are oblivious
to.


 


And so once we began to reframe this, it allows this profound new
vision for thinking about our lives, this profound new vision for
thinking about why we care about things like morality, why we
care about habits, why we care about giving attention to our
lives, because we can then begin to say, okay, there is a
possibility for me living a life that is beautiful and true and
good.


 


but it means I got to give attention to it and it means I've got
to do what I can. So, and then the last, I said that was the last
thing, but let me do one more thing real quick. For Aquinas, as I
noted, you know, you've got the things like the cardinal virtues
and the cardinal virtues typically are seen both in the Greeks
and like Aristotle and in the Christian tradition as virtues that
we really can work on ourselves.


 


Whereas the theological versions are seen as a gift to us from
God that we receive that we cannot manufacture ourselves. So this
is kind of one way of thinking about faith and works. You know,
there's their courage. Aristotle says one becomes courageous by
doing courageous deeds. The only way you're going to become
courageous is by practicing. And if you don't ever practice being
courageous, you're going to be a coward. No, no getting around
it. That's just the way life is. So there's no escaping the
discomfort.


 


There's no escaping the fear. There's no escaping the anxiety
that you have to go through to learn to practice courage, faith,
hope and love. Well, these are gifts. We can still cultivate
ourselves to be open to receive those gifts, but they are gifts.
But again, this kind of gives us a frame to think about what can
I be giving attention to? What ought I'd be giving attention to?
So that I can really take seriously my own life and the life of
those people around me, the life of my community to foster.


 


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some sort of vision of what it means to live a good life. I threw
a lot at you there, Matt. No, it's wonderful. There's a couple
things that stirred my thinking. First of all, do you think the
change of definition of freedom at the Enlightenment and post
-Enlightenment, is it lumped in with a throwing off of authority?
Do people say, no, true freedom is you not telling me what to do,
church, and authority figures. Is that?


 


What happens is very much related to authority for sure. Yeah. So
following the enlightenment autonomy, the word autonomy becomes
actually the marker for what it means to be a moral person. And
so so there's this famous line from Immanuel Kant, one of the
great modern enlightenment thinkers who says he quotes the
slogan, have the courage to use your own reason.


 


And then he said, then his commentary on that is this is the
motto of the enlightenment, right? Have the courage to use your
own reason. And so autonomy, self -rule is seen as the marker of
what it means to be a human being after the enlightenment. And
then being under the authority of another is derogatively,
pejoratively called heteronomy.


 


But if you go back to the virtue traditions, this reconfigures
the notion of authority. So that, again, go back to the example
of the musician. Now, what I need to do if I want to become a
master at a given craft, such as a musician, I want to find some
sort of...


 


authority who can actually help me become that. And I can sit
over here and say, I'm just going to do this on my own. And what
I do is I become a hack at it. And I might get pretty good at it,
but not in the same ways I can get good at it. If I get the
privilege of having rightful, I don't want to say rightful
authority. I want to say healthy authority. I want to say
fruitful authority.


 


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that can show me how to do this, right? It's not imposing. It's
not an imposing authority, but it is a exemplary authority. It is
an inviting authority. It is an authority that says, this is the
way you do this. This is the way you hold the boat. This is the
way you play a scale. This is the way you practice. This is the
way you memorize. This is the way blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.


 


And then I can become something I couldn't become otherwise. And
so you're pointing to authority is crucial there. And so again,
the point is not any authority is good. That's obviously patently
false. And I would be super cautious of anybody that is going to
have this un -nuanced celebration of authority. I'd kind of run
from them, frankly. Yeah. Yeah.


 


But the notion of looking askance at every authority is just as
problematic. It doesn't help us either. So this virtue tradition
shows us a different way to think about authority and frame it up
in a way that can be immensely fruitful and helpful for our
lives. Yeah, because there is a bit of truth to having self -law
in the sense of, by extension, the four virtues are you having
governance over yourself, right? Yes, right.


 


don't do this in excess and know when to do this and not that. So
it takes it in by extension, but makes it a law into itself.
Always you need to be the authority, but then you have to ask,
what is the objective lens, the objective truth in which we need
to be moving towards to be able to say, okay, this is what is
just and this is what is unjust. Right. Yeah. And with the
Enlightenment, the autonomy typically focused not so much upon


 


character as much as it focused more upon rationality. And so,
you know, the, in the enlightenment, the focus moves much more
towards intellect and rationality as opposed to embodied habits
and embodied practices. And so the virtue traditions are much,
they're going to care about rationality, but they're also caring
about rationality in relation to bodies and embodied habits and
practices.


 


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But in the Enlightenment, we're just caring mostly about minds.
And so autonomy is construed in terms of you use your own reason,
you use your own mind. Whereas the ancients would have said, yes,
of course, use your own mind, but you have to learn how to use
your mind in conversation with under helpful, useful authority
while you're also working on the ways in which you have a sort of
rightful governance of your body and of your appetites.


 


Last thing, another thing that comes up with that, you pointing
to that, it's super helpful, is another thing I like about the
virtue traditions is that they'll talk about the use of the word
continence. And of course, when we hear the word continence, we
think about the capacity to control your bladder, right? But it's
an interesting word to think about with regard to the moral life,
because there's a sort of, it's interesting that,


 


Protestants and there's a Catholic writer, I'll think of his name
here in a minute, who's written on the Cardinal Virtues and he's
got this great book on leisure. But he talks about how in, and I
can't remember if he calls that Protestants or not, but I'll call
us out because I think it's important for us to be thinking
about. A lot of times we will think that the harder something is
for us to do, the more virtuous it is. And we'll look at Jesus
and say, well,


 


And Jesus is calling us to this high standard, for example, of
love of enemies and how hard that is to love our enemies. But
what this philosopher points out is that that completely
misconstrues what the virtue traditions are trying to get at.
Because, you know, his point there is that who's more virtuous
and who's more Christ -like, the person for whom we're greeting
our teeth, thinking I have to love you, you SOB, and so I'm going
to love you.


 


or the person who with some sort of grace can acknowledge the
pain and can acknowledge the hurt and can acknowledge the
sadness, but they still have a gracefulness about loving that
other person. And so the notion of continence is I can restrain,
I can hold it. But beyond that is the goal. And that is I'm not
just holding it, continence. I actually have a freedom to be this
kind of person.


 


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in a maturity that is beautiful and graceful. And I just love
that vision, you know, and we're all always in progress towards
that sort of vision of life, right? But to have that sort of
vision is very compelling to me. Yeah, I mean, Jesus seems to put
an emphasis on the actual act of obedience and it's not devoid of
a heart, right? That's part of the problem is you don't just obey
because you're supposed to, but obedience is an actual outworking
of what's already taking place in your heart. Right.


 


Yeah. So the son who says, I'm not going to do it, but then he
goes and does it is actually in a better pathway than the one who
says, I'll do it, but never does it. Yeah. I can agree with you
cognitively. And I think what you were saying reminds me of Jamie
Smith's, uh, who, where he says that we oftentimes as Protestants
are just, uh, heads on a stick, right? Just these cognitive being
like, give me the truth, but the truth is not devoid of action.
Like it's not really.


 


and it's not real obedience in what God's called us to do. So
within that same vein of self -rule, and you look at our cultural
landscape right now where everyone has a law unto themselves and
I'm doing right by me, I'm living my truth and those kinds of
things, how could virtue ethics be a way forward for the church
to be able to speak into the life of our culture right now? Do
you see there being some kind of bridge of what?


 


virtue ethics can afford us if we were to come back to reclaiming
the action that is needed of courage, temperance, and so forth? I
think it may be really the only way forward. And I think that the
more I have studied it and the more I see it and envision it, the
more I think that some sort of framework like this is the only
way to be true to what the biblical vision of life is, of what
the


 


biblical vision of what it means to be human is. And then I think
that it gives us a lot of nuance to speak both to excesses on the
American political right and excesses on the American political
left. And so it's just, it's so nuanced and it's so holistic that
I don't see how we can make a significant contribution.


 


Off the Wire (33:18.734)


or do very compelling culture making, to use Andy Crouch's
phrase, apart from some sort of vision of the moral life like
this. Yeah, you know, I've often wondered with a lot of
conversation about deconstruction of people's faith in the
current cultural milieu that we're in right now, it seems that as
people are deconstructing their faith, it isn't necessarily about


 


proves that they find more compelling as much as, oh, look at
what happened again. Look at how that person is a hypocrite or
that youth pastor would teach and then he abused that person. Can
you draw some connections between that issue of deconstruction,
people's problem with how people are living and how there might
be a way forward in helping people?


 


reconstruct their faith as it's connected to virtue ethics.


 


I don't know that I've thought a whole lot about that quite in
those terms. I definitely think that what a virtue type approach
is going to do can help us undercut


 


the various forms of legalisms against which that fuels a lot of
deconstruction. But we can look at certain legalisms and they
finally just break, you know, like that just doesn't fly because
it leads to so many problems and so much grossness. And so people
finally just say, I'm done with that. If that's what this
Christian faith is all about. Yeah.


 


Off the Wire (35:19.726)


Whereas the virtue approach is going to ask a different set of
questions and is not going to let us settle for any various forms
of legalisms. For me, a legalism is a moral rule or some
doctrinal rule that has lost sight of the end. So going back to
the three -part thing, there's humankind as it is, humankind as
it could be if we realize it's telos, and then...


 


rules or virtues or habits of movement that constitute moving
from one to the other. Well, a legalism is just, it's insisting
upon the rule, but without any vision of what we're trying to be
and the kind of people that we're trying to be. And so by
removing the goal and the telos, but insisting upon the rule,
that is this deeply perverted way of thinking about the moral
life. And so what happens is that rather than there being freedom
over here,


 


We've lost the over here. And instead, what that rule does is it
now restricts us and it's seen as a restriction of freedom and a
restriction of our desires and a restriction of what it means to
be human is the way that ends up feeding us a thing of what we
have to do. And it's like that's a very non -compelling vision of
what it means to be a human being or to be a Christian. And so,
and again, I'll note very quickly that you can find legalists on
the right,


 


and legalists on the left. And you can find deep shaming stuff on
the right and deep shaming stuff on the left. And so it's a
virtue approach will keep pushing us and saying, isn't there a
different vision than that sharp legalism or that sharp shame
based approach to living on the right or the left? That's a
different sort of way forward. Yeah, you said that virtue ethics.


 


causes us to ask a different kind of question. And as we're
looking at some of the political landscape, right, and we want to
be Christ -like, what kind of questions ought we to be asking so
that we aren't co -opted by the right or co -opted by the left,
but we actually are following after Jesus? Are there certain
kinds of questions we can be asking to right the ship, as it
were, on both sides of that equation of, no, if you really love
people, you'll do this. No, if you really love people, you'll do
this.


 


Off the Wire (37:41.834)


the other side of the aisle. As we think about the political
landscape right now, just so bifurcated between you're a
Christian, you can only be a Christian if you vote this way. And
you hear a lot of people saying, Christians can't vote for this
person and that person. What is a way forward? And as virtue
ethics asks us a different middle way type question. Yeah. Well,
I've got a...


 


a book that I published, unfortunately, that came out, it came
out the week after the pandemic came down, which is really
terrible timing on my part, you know, scheduling on my part, but
I called Scandalous Witness and it's subtitled A Little Political
Manifesto for Christians. And so what I'm doing in that book is
I'm trying to make a case for how Christian faith could inform
the way we engage the world and think about politics.


 


And I really love the book and I wish a lot of people would read
it. And because I think it can make it one more time. It's
scandalous faith, scandalous witness witness. Yeah. And then the
subtitle is a little political manifesto for Christians. And so I
try I try to take up that question that you raised at great
length and try to ask if not, as far as books go, it's a it's a
pretty.


 


not a terribly long book, but I think I've tried to set forward a
number of propositions to think about how we could frame thinking
about that. And one of the things that I keep coming back to in
that is avoiding ideological commitments to American
partisanship, which I want to rush to say that doesn't mean that
we don't have opinions and strong ones about the things that are.


 


happening in our cultural setting. But that.


 


Off the Wire (39:46.126)


It comes with an awareness that all political systems known to
humankind fall short of the kingdom of God and that the kingdom
of God is grounded in a sort of radical grace and a radical
freedom that eschews violence, that eschews coercion, that
eschews imposition of its will. And that the most radical, one of
the most radical claims about God is a God of love.


 


which allows us to reject God and even kill God when made
incarnate in Christ. And that this is the politic actually to
which Jesus invites us to participate. Is this what God's way of
being in the world? We're invited to that kind of politic. It's
not a spirituality devoid of, and it's not even a spirituality
that has political implications. It is itself a politic, right?
So when we ask what does the word politic mean, traditionally it
meant,


 


And going back to the Greeks, it's grounded in the word
etymologically, polis, which is a word for city state. And so
politics is the art of arranging the affairs of a community. And
so politics classically asks questions about power. It asks
questions about money. It asks questions about offenses. It asks
questions about marriage. It asks questions about reconciliation.
And like, well, who talks about that? Well, duh, you know, Jesus
talks about that stuff all the time.


 


And so Jesus is calling us to an alternative politic that's
deeply, that's radically grounded in the love of God and love of
neighbor. And for us to say that Christianity is not political
just means we don't have the slightest idea of what Christianity
is. But we can't then run to say, well, then we have to identify,
am I going to be X or Y? Because the facts are, is that...


 


There are going to be things about the right that I find, well,
let me rephrase this. There are going to be things about
classical American conservatism that I'm going to find to be true
and helpful. And there are things about classical liberal
politics in America that I'm going to find to be true and
helpful.


 


Off the Wire (42:08.244)


And if I can't look at the, I think it's imperative upon us to
try to figure out what are those things that we find true and
helpful and what are things about that that we find not true and
not helpful and have what I would call an ad hoc approach. And so
we're always looking for what's the issue right in front of us
that the Christian faith has a lot to say about.


 


and then us try to find a way in a compelling, winsome way to
bring the Christian tradition and Christian faith to bear upon
whatever that issue is in front of us. So rather than thinking
ideologically or partisan, we say what's something that we can
genuinely bring that could be helpful to our community? Bring
that forward. would that look like? What would that look like as
it relates to this very thorny issue in your view?


 


Off the Wire (43:07.266)


There's so many issues I'm trying to think of, which ones we want
to stick our foot into. Yeah, either way, there's going to be a
bear trap. I do think that's part of the fear, right? And the
church is becoming very silent on things, or they're being too
bombastic, and they don't sound a whole lot like Jesus to where
he cuts both ways. And you're either going to be in this camp,
and if you...


 


critique that camp, then you aren't really one of us. And I just
find like there's such a vacuum right now of a prophetic voice in
our culture because the church sounds so much like the culture,
either right or left, as opposed to cutting it in half and
saying, oh, the Pharisees don't like him, and those who are
loving their licentious life don't love him either. And so how
can the church find a way forward and how...


 


how could virtue ethics be that answer? I mean, I think, so let
me just speak from my own context for a minute. If anyone's
paying any attention to local state politics in the United States
of America, everybody knows that Tennessee is crazy right now.
And literally, people, one party walking out of the state house
this week because of.


 


one member being silenced, which appears to be related to a
personal political agenda. But a lot of this stuff goes to the
immense frustration that we're experiencing about a refusal of a
state house to take seriously common sense gun reform. And
because of the horrific shooting that happened,


 


two miles from my house this spring, or six people were, seven
people died, six were shot and the perpetrator was killed. And so
what you have in this particular case is people who want to talk
about Christianity and act as if they are purveyors of the
traditional


 


Off the Wire (45:27.614)


conservative values and want to ally themselves with Christianity
and a lot of them claim to be Christian. And yet they refuse to
take seriously any sort of, you know, it's a particular
interpretation, I won't put it that way. It's a particular
interpretation of the second amendment that then triumphs every
sort of thing that the Christian witness has a lot to say about.
Christian witness has a lot to say about violence. Christian
witness has a lot to say.


 


about our notions of the right to protect ourselves or the right
to use violence against other human beings. And so, you know, I
think Christians are quite right to be standing up and saying,
this is outlandish. And it appears to be a sort of bowing down to
the power of the gun lobby, where if you're serious about
Christian faith, you're going to have to quickly get
uncomfortable.


 


readings of, you Russell Moore, who's no liberal, right? Russell
Moore's editor at Christianity Today. But ironically is
considered a liberal by folks that are very far right. Correct.
Right. But he was on NPR a couple of weeks ago talking about how
he was hearing from preachers.


 


And if I remember the story correctly, he said he'd heard it more
than once. He was hearing from people who were saying that the
preacher's saying that they're citing the Sermon on the Mount,
turn the other cheek and love your enemies and stuff like that.
And they're having people come up to them after the sermon and
saying, where are you getting those liberal talking points? And
they're saying Jesus. And then Russell said, what's interesting
to know is that these preachers are reporting that the people...


 


that are pushing on that don't then apologize and say, oh, I'm
sorry, I didn't know that that was Jesus. Instead, what they're
going on to say is, well, that's weak and that's irrelevant to
the world today. And it's like, oh, okay, well, here we see
what's happening, right? Is that what purports to be Christian is
not Christian. And it's not taking seriously Jesus. And so I
think that...


 


Off the Wire (47:50.094)


Yeah, we have a lot of sorts of things before us that require us
to be savvy and courageous and prudent and attend to justice. And
we'll throw some temperance and it's going to have to have a huge
dose of faith, hope and love to maintain bearing such a witness.
And unfortunately, I'm going to have to go. Yep. Yep. Yep. And I
wanted to ask you just very quickly, if anybody wanted to
follow...


 


your work and where you're going. Of course, you mentioned your
book that I would love to give out to folks as they share this
podcast with others. I've got several that I'm going to be buying
and sending out to folks. But if they wanted to follow you, that
your podcast is called No Small Endeavor. No Small Endeavor, yes.
You can also find more about us on our website, nosmallendeavor
.com. Sign up for our email list as well. And we're also now
being distributed through PRX to public radio stations around the
country. So if you're


 


people in your area wanted to call your local radio station and
ask them to pick up No Small Endeavor on public radio. PRX could
help them with that. Lee, could you do us the favor of just
closing us in a brief prayer before you hop off? Sure thing.
Gracious God, we give thanks for the gifts of this day and your
mercies and your call to be your people. Grant us such grace, O
Lord. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you
so much. Thank you, Matt.


 


Thank you for listening! If you want to find out more about Matt
and how you can get coached toward your better self, visit
www.matthewwireman.com and check out his LinkedIn and Instagram
accounts @matt.wireman.