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Excellence: A Vanishing Virtue?

SEPTEMBER 26, 1969

1969This article is part of CT's digital archives. Subscribers have access to all current and past issues, dating back to 1956.

Some years ago John W. Gardner, former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, produced a stimulating and somewhat unusual little book. In a single sentence he explained what had prompted it: “I am concerned with the fate of excellence in our society.” Added Gardner, who is now chairman of the Urban Coalition: “If a society holds conflicting views about excellence—or cannot rouse itself to the pursuit of excellence—the consequences will be felt in everything that it undertakes.” There is no doubt that our society does in fact have conflicting ideas about excellence—if it gives thought to the subject at all. One wonders indeed if here we do not have a vanishing virtue, the casualty of a secular age.

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The very meaning of excellence has been eroded by the years, its depreciation due in part to the fate of its adjective: “excellent” can now convey no more than a vague sense of worth. Like the resourceful Humpty Dumpty, we might assign it meaning according to the need of the moment. And what it is applied to is often transitory, too—some such feat, perhaps as rowing solo across the Atlantic or jogging from coast to coast, two exploits that made headlines recently. The pitcher honored in the Hall of Fame, however, might not manifest excellence outside the baseball diamond; excellence is not necessarily regarded by him as a way of life.

Jonathan Edwards not without reason complained of the difficulty of defining the term. We might tend, indeed, to put it within Augustine’s timely category: “I know what it is until you ask me.” Our dictionary puts it tersely: “the state of possessing good qualities in an eminent degree.” These are words, however, that fall strangely on the ears of restless youth contemptuous of the past and conspicuous for unteachability—youth who are, in one man’s phrase, “neither dupes nor imbeciles like us,” and who “believe in nothing, not even in atheism.”

It was not ever thus. “I assure you,” said Alexander the Great, “I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion.” In Plato’s Republic, provision was made for an élite who, excelling the others, would have special education and privileges, and also special responsibilities. The whole thing turned sour with Nietzsche and his doctrine of Superman, when the idea was given a sinister twist seen eventually in the rise of fascism and racism.

It is one of the blights of modern democratic societies that excellence may be stifled and reduced to tedious mediocrity. As John Aiken so aptly put it long ago: “Nothing is such an obstacle to the production of excellence as the power of producing what is good with ease and rapidity.” With the demand for an ever increasing number of highly skilled workers comes the problem of arbitrating between the claims of excellence and the claims of equality. It is a problem which no one with any experience of industrial relations is likely to minimize. It is seen just as much in the field of education, where the pace of an overcrowded classroom is inevitably dictated by the plodders. Equality must be maintained even though some are more unequal than others.

In some Western countries it is not unusual to find that welfare handouts and social benefits have taken away from many the incentive to work, and have encouraged a new and alarming breed of loafers. As Enoch Powell, that enfant terrible of contemporary British politics, has said: “The trouble about State money is that experience shows it is often a bridge to nowhere.” The answer to our problems does not lie in the availability of more and more state money, or in the diversion of such money from space exploration projects. Vice-President Spiro Agnew has said: “We do not need a transfer of dollars from the space program to other programs. We need a transfer of its spirit—an infusion of American dedication to purpose and hard work.”

Returning to industry (for it is here that the issue is writ large), we might discover that it is not only controversial divinity that has fallen a victim to the so-called acids of modernity. Certain skills appear to be incompatible with the highly developed commercial instinct that is characteristic of, and perhaps inseparable from, the affluent society. Officials of the National Cathedral in Washington, D. C. have been compelled to reconsider their policy of not borrowing money to complete that splendid structure because the carvers with their exquisite art are dying out and are virtually irreplaceable.

In past years boat-builders along the Clyde had an unsurpassed reputation for turning out magnificent ships, but these last decades have seen a sad decline. Lamented an old gateman at one of the yards: “Once iron men came in here to build wooden ships, today wooden men come to build iron ships. Once men came here to build ships, now they come to collect pay pokes [envelopes].” In England a boy was recently given an aptitude test on applying for factory work. He was asked to fill in the missing word in “More hurry, less—.” He thought for a moment, then instead of “speed” wrote “overtime.” In the sort of society that no longer sees that approach as incongruous, we have reason to fear for the fate of excellence.

The malaise is not confined to those quaintly referred to as the working classes. Nor is it pertinent only to the philosophy of labor. It has spread through every level of society. Said Gardner in a Time essay (“Toward a Self Renewing Society,” April 11, 1969): “The courts are crippled by archaic organizational arrangements; the unions, the professions, the universities, the corporations, each has spun its own impenetrable web of vested interests.”

The consequence of all this is not merely that mediocrity is imposed but that conformity is required. That remarkable Frenchman Charles Péguy, who died in 1913 at the age of forty, had this to say once in a slightly different context: “The life of an honest man must be an apostasy and a perpetual desertion. The honest man must be a perpetual renegade.… For the man who wishes to remain faithful to truth must make himself continually unfaithful to all the continual, indefatigable renascent errors. And the man who wishes to remain faithful to justice must make himself continually unfaithful to inexhaustibly triumphant injustices.”

No one would wish to deny that without religious belief man can achieve excellence of a kind, though this be regarded merely as “the touching memorial of a lost Eden.” It will fall short, however, of the “more excellent way” outlined by Paul, as even Christian work and achievement fall short (a Christian profession in itself is no guarantee of excellence). Man’s labors and man’s explorations are ultimately ineffectual unless they bear testimony to the Infinite Workman, who, mindful of us, fashioned all things “in the beginning.” It is he of whom the Scriptures speak when they proclaim: “His name alone is excellent.”

Reparations In Black And White

Seeing it in black and white sent a shock wave through delegates to the special general convention of the Episcopal Church. There it was in cold print in the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times: “Episcopalians Vote $200,000 as Reparations to Blacks”; “Legislators of the Episcopal Church submitted today to a demand of the Black Economic Development Conference …” (see News, page 42). Then the National Observer carried a page-one story with a picture of a sullen James Forman standing in front of Episcopal headquarters in May, when he made an initial reparations demand on Episcopal leaders.

Could this really be what we did? many delegates began asking themselves in the sobering light of retrospect. Yes, the Episcopal Church did vote the money for the BEDC, although a compromise measure attempted to blunt the sharp reality of the action by making the more acceptable National Committee of Black Churchmen the conduit for the funds.

What the black militants wanted and made crystal clear was that the money was to go straight to the BEDC without strings. The gut issue: Would the church support a militant organization that has refused to repudiate the Black Manifesto and is willing to use violence if necessary to pull down the American government in order to gain economic equality for blacks?

Canon Junius Carter, a black Episcopal minister from Pittsburgh, put it succinctly: “If you follow our advice, then, and only then, will we know that you trust us.”

We believe that both the black militants and the Episcopal Church have erred. The church is to be commended for coming to grips with what surely is the number-one social issue of America. But its fancy footwork in setting up the NCBC as a fence has fooled—and pleased—almost no one. The church should have responded to the demand just as unequivocally and pointedly as it was made. If it was trust, honesty and forthrightness the blacks wanted, they deserved an answer in those terms.

The black militants, we believe, were wrong in assuming that love and brotherhood could be proved only by an affirmative answer to their coercive demands and threats. That is not love; it’s extortion. And if it were right for the blacks to say they would accept money from the church only on their own terms, why would it not have been right—by the same reasoning—for whites to demand that the BEDC first repudiate the manifesto ideology (a move the BEDC refused to make)?

The love Christ taught cannot be coerced. Nor does love always signify giving in at any cost, no matter how great the need for justice. The basis for brotherhood is not complete agreement.

The Episcopal Church showed courage in agonizing over the vexing and momentous problem of black self-determination. But it should have firmly refused to capitulate to persons whose only document of record was well described in the ironic words of Presiding Bishop John E. Hines to the Executive Council May 21:

The language and basic philosophy of [the manifesto] are calculatedly revolutionary, Marxist, inflammatory, anti-Semitic, and anti-Christian-establishment, violent, and destructive of any democratic political process—so as to shock, challenge, frighten, and, if possible, overwhelm the institutions to which it is directed. It was no surprise that throughout the white establishment the immediate response was—with few exceptions—one of outrage, furious hostility and disbelief.

Woodstock Weekend

Time magazine called it “history’s biggest happening.” One day the New York Timesreferred to it as “so colossal a mess”; the next day that same newspaper likened it to the Tulipmania or the Children’s Crusade and designated it “a phenomenon of innocence.” The fact is that the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, held at Bethel, New York, last month, defies description. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the festival was not so much the constant beat offered up by a number of outstanding rock artists, or the casual display of nudity, or even the free-wheeling use of illegal drugs. Rather it was the overwhelming sense of community experienced by the more than 400,000 young people jammed on the 600-acre farm for the weekend. They came in search of peace, of love, of oneness, of community, of a sense of belonging. And, in some measure at least, many claim to have found what they were looking for.

It is at this point that the Woodstock Art Fair—and others like it that on a following weekend drew additional hundreds of thousands of young people both in the United States and in England—levels an indictment at and issues a challenge to the Church of Jesus Christ. We claim to have in Jesus Christ the peace, love, oneness, community, and acceptance these youth are seeking. But many of them have looked in vain to find what they seek in the Church. They have heard a great deal about these virtues, but they have not seen them practiced in the lives of professing Christians. As a result, they are seeking elsewhere. It would be too easy to say that this is the only reason why the young so often turn away from the Church (the problem is more complex than that), but insofar as we in the Church may be a stumblingblock to the young we must answer for our failure.

We can express our dismay and disapproval at the tremendous traffic in drugs allowed to flourish at Woodstock. We can register our displeasure at the almost amoral attitude evidenced in the nonchalant indulgence in nudity and sex. We can remind the Woodstock gathering that almost any group with a certain amount of common interest, freed from the hard realities and responsibilities of day-to-day living, can exist peacefully in community for a short while. But the most effective ministry to the youth of our world will be a demonstration that in Jesus Christ they can find that which they seek.

There are hundreds of thousands of young people who have found the meaning of peace, of love, of oneness, of purpose, not in a weekend happening, but in a day-by-day life of submission to Jesus Christ. They have learned to be “real people” not through the delusion of a dangerous drug but through the reality of a living Christ. They have found real freedom not by “doing their own thing” but by becoming servants of Christ to do his will. They have discovered genuine openness with others not by a superficial shedding of clothes or a childish playing with sex but through that love and respect for others that Christ brings into life. Whatever the kids found at Woodstock falls far short of what they can find in Jesus Christ.

Pike, Ho, Dirksen, And Pearson

Death has recently removed from the world scene four men who had little in common except their individuality. At this they excelled. If someone wrote a novel with a man like James Pike as the hero, it would be considered preposterous (see News, p. 42). His continual change of religious beliefs; the personal tragedies that surrounded him; his death in the desert—all show that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Perhaps James Pike can best be seen as a highly visible representative of the plight of all men. His desire to be up to date led him to throw overboard what he considered to be the “excess baggage” of Christian orthodoxy. In the process he lost the Gospel. Yet Pike’s enchantment with spiritism reveals the incurable religiosity of man. The contest of the modern world is not between belief and unbelief but, as it has always been, between belief of the truth and belief of the lie. James Pike demonstrated this in a flamboyant way that we are not soon likely to see again.

In his own way, Ho Chi Minh was a believer. His faith in Communism was misplaced; his belief that his people could wear down the mighty United States has proven to be rather accurate. Perhaps his successors, despite pledges to continue his policies, will prove more willing to negotiate an end to this tragic conflict. One thing is certain: no successor can hope to maintain the aura among the Vietnamese that accompanied “Uncle Ho.”

Senator Everett Dirksen will probably prove to be the last of the old-style orators. In other ways as well, he represents the end of an era. Two causes for which he was contending earnestly in his final months may not survive without him. There are few dwellers in the cities and suburbs who long for a return to the day when the rural population controlled at least one house of the state legislatures. While many Christians did support the late Senator’s campaign to permit officially endorsed prayer in the public schools, these same persons would doubtless not want such a measure if they lived in a country where some other religious tradition were dominant. Senator Dirksen was a dedicated politician; he took his duties as minority leader seriously and sought to fulfill them responsibly.

Drew Pearson was the acknowledged journalistic master of uncovering corruption. Public officials from presidents on down feared and denounced him. Many a public figure has been kept close to the straight and narrow out of fear of the kind of exposure that Pearson began decades ago, in contrast to the submissiveness then practiced by the Washington press corps. Regrettably, Pearson often went into print with inaccuracies. However, he would not have published nearly so many mistakes if authoritative news sources were not so tight-lipped. Pearson felt that it was better to publish an incomplete and imprecise exposé rather than let truth be suppressed altogether. As long as sin persists, we will need such watchdog journalists.

Pike, Ho, Dirksen, and Pearson were all transitional figures whose deaths remind us that the world is in many ways changing. They also illustrate a basic truth: zeal for a good cause can be tarnished or spoiled by wrong presuppositions or methods. Because all men are sinners, none of these men will enter history with unblemished reputations. Each of them had fervent admirers and equally fervant detractors. Each pursued his goals with dedication and style, accompanied by fame or notoriety. But death is no respecter of persons; the powerful and influential fall before it just as must the rest of us. None of us, no matter how well we are known, are prepared to live until we are prepared to die.

The death of cigarette-smoker Everett Dirksen shortly after an operation for lung cancer highlights a matter that should be of growing national concern. The consistent conclusion of more than 2,000 studies using many different approaches is that smoking is a cause of lung cancer and other diseases. Doubtless mistakes have been made in the conducting of some of the tests, but the possibility that all of them are wrong is too remote for reasonable people to entertain. A recent Gallup poll shows that even three out of five smokers believe that smoking and lung cancer are related. (Four out of five non-smokers, young adults, and college-educated persons agree.)

But knowing that smoking can lead to fatal disease is one thing and quitting the habit is another. Similarly, knowing that one is a sinner and headed for eternal separation from God is one thing and accepting the forgiveness freely offered through Christ is another. Men are perverse and act contrary to their own best interests.

Of course there are still those who refuse to admit the link between lung cancer and smoking, just as there are those who refuse to admit that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Such people claim to want more “proof.” The American Tobacco Company has recently been running a full-page advertisement asserting that “no scientist has produced clinical or biological proof that cigarettes cause the diseases they are accused of causing.” As far as this company is concerned, the theory that lung cancer and cigarette smoking are related is a “bum rap” and “a theory which, in the opinion of men who should know, is half-baked.” When the truth is too costly to admit, whether it concerns sales or salvation, men will find some way to evade it.

In 1884, the New York Times said: “The decadence of Spain began when the Spaniards adopted cigarettes and if this pernicious practice obtains among adult Americans the ruin of the Republic is close at hand.”

In its September, 1969, issue, Consumer Reports rightly impugns the decency of a large part of our society:

Surely in a decent society the cigarette companies themselves would hesitate to promote the sale of a product that causes an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 premature deaths a year from cancer, coronary artery disease, chronic bronchitis, pulmonary emphysema, and other diseases. Surely in a decent society advertising agencies would voluntarily refuse to handle copy for so dangerous a product. Surely in a decent society newspapers, magazines, and broadcast stations would voluntarily refuse to run the ads. And surely, to protect a decent society from its irresponsible members, Senators and Congressmen would vote to ban cigarette advertising altogether without a moment of hesitation.

Many Christians have long argued that smoking is bad for health and hence is poor stewardship of one’s body and a poor use for one’s money. But it is strange that some Christians and Christian groups who have not been reticent about making pronouncements on all sorts of other wrongs have been silent on this issue.

Many who are hooked on the habit choose a shorter life with cigarettes rather than a longer life without them, and we suppose that is their privilege, however much we deplore the choice. (Those who have given up the habit are to be commended for enduring discomfort that non-smokers cannot appreciate.) What is less defensible is the continued enticement of children and teen-agers to take up a habit that will enslave them. The creative imagination that goes into advertisements in order to portray smoking as youthful, dashing, and beautiful is a perversion of talent that serves as a bitter commentary on the depravity of man.

There are worse evils than smoking, and non-smokers are certainly not necessarily more virtuous in other respects than smokers. Yet those who are concerned with the health of individuals and of society should do what they can to send cigarettes the way of snuff.

Camille, described by the head of the National Hurricane Center as “the greatest storm of any kind that has ever affected this nation by any yardstick you want to measure with,” spent less than a week ravaging the Southeastern United States. But in that brief period she left in her wake an unbelievable trail of death and destruction. It will take years to cover the scars left upon the communities unfortunate enough to find themselves in her path. And there can be no rebuilding of the damaged families whose loved ones were swept to their death in her fury.

Speculation as to why such tragedies occur is fruitless. We must leave this in the hands of a holy and loving God. This is a time not to ask unanswerable questions but to express Christian compassion in a concrete way. Many Christians have already been working to meet the material needs of those who have suffered loss; indeed, Christians should be taking the lead in this kind of ministry. And certainly they can unite in prayer that God will work in his own way to heal the anguish that material restoration cannot relieve.

There are valuable lessons to be learned in reflecting upon this event. We are reminded of the temporal nature of material possessions and of the uncertainty of life itself. Though we would not presume to call this an act of divine judgment, we are confronted with the awesome power through which God can—and ultimately will—pour out his wrath upon those who reject him. The scientific advances of man have been great, but God has at his disposal power that man can never hope to control or repel.

Even in tragedies such as this one, God can overrule to bring about good. This is a time for us to share in the suffering of the victims, but it is also a time to pray that even in the midst of tragedy God will bring men to himself to find the kind of riches and life that no disaster can take away.

A 594-day experiment ended last month with the death of Philip Blaiberg, the South African dentist in whom Dr. Christiaan Barnard implanted another man’s heart. The normality of his life during the past twenty months shows the experiment’s success; the chronic rejection that caused his death points up its failure.

The problems of immunology that finally stayed success for Dr. Blaiberg have reduced heart transplants from an average of one a day to fewer than one a week while medical scientists study the phenomenon that thwarted three-quarters of all transplanted hearts almost immediately. Physicians who want to make the transplant procedure as safe as it is easy need to do further physiological and psychological research.

One Physician implants new life safely but not necessarily easily; he reclaims it—sometimes physically—for himself and others. But God’s love and the transformation it performs are not experiments. And they do not end.

Adultery has become almost the rule rather than the exception, it seems. Paul Gebhard, head of the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, which was founded by the late Alfred Kinsey, estimates that 60 per cent of married men and 35 to 40 per cent of married women have extramarital affairs. Both figures are up 10 per cent from the Kinsey reports of two decades ago. (Gebhard was commenting on Morton Hunt’s new book The Affair, which is abridged in the current issue of Ladies’ Home Journal.)

Those who accept the biblical teaching against adultery are a decreasing proportion of the population. Christians have to face up to their minority status and cease counting on society to reinforce divine standards. Young Christians in particular need to be prepared for the taunting and ridicule they may face when others learn of their “old-fashioned”—two thousand and more years old—views on sexual morality.

Sex, like life itself, is a gift of God. Like life, however, it is to be conducted within certain limits. Failure to observe these limits entails consequences. To exceed life’s boundaries brings death. The results of adultery are not so immediately apparent or pervasive. Nevertheless, the death or at least the degeneration of marriage is brought on or hastened by adultery.

Increasingly, men seem to consider God’s prohibitions against adultery and other sexual deviations as relative matters that society is free to adjust when convenient. God did not prohibit adultery, however, simply because of some arbitrary whim or because adultery was harmful to Hebrew tribal life. He who gave us sex in the first place knows the bounds in which its fullest enjoyment can be realized.

To measure the distance from “no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks” to yellow leaves and schoolbuses requires a variety of rulers. Mothers count the weeks in raindrops, sibling squabbles, skinned knees, and demands for new things to do. During early vacation weeks, at least, their children lapped the time from fun-filled saucers.

Although youthful scholars often greet late summer’s empty days with diminishing enthusiasm, some collegians head for campus with chop-licking glee. And prematurely gray administrators seem scarcely able to straighten wary smiles over gritted teeth before school bells ring. For them Indian summer fails to warm the chill rumblings of sandal-shod dissenters for whom coed dorms and relaxed restrictions, schoolboard seats, and black-studies programs are not enough.

Perhaps all those going back to school this fall should take with them not only sharpened pencils but also sharpened understanding, patience, and love.

Father Stanislaus Maudlin is a gentle, articulate, down-to-earth priest from rural South Dakota. He works among the American Indians. And he has been arguing a point with some social scientists lately that needs repeating—and remembering.

“The anthropologists and ethnologists are my friends,” he says, “but they don’t go far enough. They study man in the areas he has in common with the beasts—his nesting, his food gathering, his social system, his reproduction, his educational system. Yet, they overlook the only thing that really makes him a Man. Namely: his religion, his faith, his philosophy of life.”

This does not mean, as the Benedictine priest would agree, that the Church does not have much to learn from the empirical social sciences. Christ’s followers can never hope to reach others with a Christian witness unless they understand and sincerely care about their customs and social systems.

What it does mean is that the Christian must never stop at cultural and social ministries. God speaks most directly to man’s heart, to that inner wellspring from which issue all the sources of life. The Church, if it means what it says about redemption, must do the same.