Virtue

In his article “How America Got Mean,” David Brooks laments what he calls “the de-moralization of American culture.” Brooks notes that “over the course of the 20th century, words relating to morality appeared less and less frequently in the nation’s books:

According to a 2012 paper, usage of a cluster of words related to being virtuous also declined significantly. Among them were bravery (which dropped by 65 percent), gratitude (58 percent), and humbleness (55 percent). For decades, researchers have asked incoming college students about their goals in life. In 1967, about 85 percent said they were strongly motivated to develop “a meaningful philosophy of life”; by 2000, only 42 percent said that. Being financially well off became the leading life goal; by 2015, 82 percent of students said wealth was their aim.

An article in The Financial Times claims that “the west is suffering from a crisis of courage.” The author notes:

And the problem is much broader than politics. Society itself seems to be suffering from a crisis of courage … Virtue signaling might be endemic, but courage, like honor, is not deemed a virtue worth signaling. Indeed, all the incentives are stacked on the opposite side: there is little to lose from going along with what everyone is saying, even if you don’t believe it yourself, and much to gain from proving that you are on the “right” side. Courage — sticking your head above the parapet and saying what you really think — can, conversely, get you into a huge amount of trouble, and, usually, you are not rewarded for it.

The mere mention of courage has been in decline for a long time. A 2012 paper in the Journal of Positive Psychology that tracked how frequently words related to moral excellence appeared in American books — both fiction and non-fiction — over the 20th century, found that the use of the words “courage, bravery and fortitude” (which were grouped together) had fallen by two-thirds over the period.

Moral courage does not equate to recklessness, and neither does it mean being a provocateur for the sake of it … But if we want our societies to thrive, we must be courageous enough to think for ourselves and stand up for what we believe in. The late writer Maya Angelou was right when she said: “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”

Ride sharing apps (like Uber and Lyft) ratings have become almost meaningless. A recent report says, “Confusion over what constitutes 5-star behavior for certain services, combined with the guilt of potentially hurting someone’s livelihood, has people defaulting to perfect scores. Ratings padding is particularly rampant for services involving personal interactions. Everyone is ‘above average’ on some apps—way, way above.”

A customer named Mike Johnson has endured some awkward Uber rides. He once held his nose throughout a trip because the driver was carrying chopped-up Durian—the world’s smelliest fruit. Another time, he was stuck in the back seat while a driver bickered with her boyfriend. Yet another driver tried to sell him a Ponzi scheme. He rated each one five out of five stars.

Johnson explained: “They all seemed like nice people. I didn’t want them to be kicked off the app over my bad rating,” the 33-year-old New Yorker said. “Isn’t 5 stars, like, the norm?”

Ratings are so inflated that Lyft drivers whose scores dip below 4.8 out of 5 stars are asked to boost their performance. Drivers under 4.6 risk getting deactivated.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) God is not afraid to tell us the truth about our sin. 2) Christians should resist this rating inflation and be willing to speak the truth in love to one another.

October 27, 1962 was the day the world almost ended. One man, Vasily Arkhipov, displayed the virtue of self-control. He was the second in command of the Soviet submarine B-59 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Located deep underwater near Cuba and unable to receive outside communication due to mandated radio silence, the crew had not heard anything from Moscow in days when they were detected by the US Navy. The Americans released explosives intended to force B-59 to the surface.

The crew was unsure how to proceed. Battery power in the submarine was dwindling, and the extreme heat in the vessel became unbearable. Some members of the crew suspected that war had broken out and wanted to launch nuclear warheads toward the US mainland to aid the Soviet offensive. Of course, if war had not broken out, this action would certainly begin one and likely result in global devastation.

The captain and the third-in-command both wanted to launch the missile, but Soviet protocol required that all three officers make the unanimous decision to strike, and Arkhipov wanted to think about it. He eventually decided that he wouldn't agree to the launch, but instead would wait for orders.

As Arkhipov’s cooler head prevailed, the sub surfaced. The US Navy surrounded them and forced them to return to the Soviet Union in shame. For years, Arkhipov endured taunts in his home country for choosing to surface. However, in 2002, Robert McNamara, the former US Secretary of Defense, publicly acknowledged that Arkhipov's decision prevented a nuclear war at “the most dangerous moment in human history.” Arkhipov is a notable example of someone who displayed self-control and integrity despite direct pressure to do the opposite.

Vicky Umodu needed furniture for her new home, so she responded to a Craigslist ad for a matching set of two sofas and a chair, all available for free. Upon arrival for pick up, Umodu was told that the owner of the furniture had recently passed, and the family was trying to quickly liquidate everything on the property. Umodu said, “I just moved in, and I don't have anything in my house. I was so excited, so we picked it up and brought it in.”

It wasn’t long before she discovered something inside one of the couch cushions. Rather than discovering a heating pad, which was her initial assumption, Umodu found cash. A lot of it. "I was just telling my son, 'Come, come, come!' I was screaming, 'This is money! I need to call the guy.'"

All told, there were several envelopes with over $36,000 in cash, which she promptly reported to her contact from the ad. Grateful for her honesty, the family gave Umodu $2,200 as reward, which she used to purchase a new refrigerator. She said, “I was not expecting a dime from him, I was not.”

Author Gad Saad is one of the leading voices exposing the harm and folly of political correctness in the US and Canada. In his most recent book, he explores the current futile practice known as “virtue signaling.” Most often on social media, people express moral outrage just by hash-tagging a cause and doing nothing else. Just one example is the #BringBackOurGirls, that was used by millions globally because of the kidnapping of Nigerian school girls by Boko Haram. The only thing that came out of all the virtue signaling was the feeding of one’s ego and the social message that they are progressive and a good person.

Saad gives an example of a public display of valor known as “costly signaling”:

The Sateré-Mawé, an indigenous Amazonian tribe, have a very powerful way of differentiating prospective warriors from their fake counterparts. They sedate bullet ants, whose sting is akin to being shot, and then weave them into leaf gloves. Initiates wear the gloves for several minutes and must withstand the stings of hundreds of these ants as they come out of their sedated torpor. One sting causes unimaginable pain, and yet the inductees must withstand the suffering with restrained dignity (they cannot holler).

One such ordeal would be sufficient to test anyone’s toughness, and yet the young men must endure this tribulation twenty separate times. If all it took to become a warrior was the completion of ten push-ups, nearly everyone could complete the task. ... (It is) a rite of passage that serves as an honest signal of toughness and courage, and you’ve solved the problem of identifying the fakers.

You can watch the YouTube video of the tribal ritual here.

So picture this: You're a receptionist at a hotel. Someone says they found a lost wallet but they're in a hurry. They hand it to you. What would you do? And would that answer be different if it was empty or full of cash?

The experiment started small, with a research assistant turning in a few wallets with different amounts of money. Acting as a tourist he would walk up to the counter of a big public place, like a bank or a post office, and ask the employee to take care of it.

The researchers assumed that putting money in the wallet would make people less likely to return it, because the payoff would be bigger. But researchers saw the opposite. Lead researcher Alain Cohn said, "People were more likely to return a wallet when it contained a higher amount of money. At first, we almost couldn't believe it and tripled the amount of money in the wallet. But yet again we found the same puzzling finding.”

What's behind all this honesty? The researchers suggest two explanations.

The first reason is just basic altruism—the person who reports receiving a lost wallet might care about the feelings of the stranger who lost it. They would want to return their valuables.

The second reason has a lot to do with how people see themselves—most don't want to see themselves as a thief. The more money the wallet contains, the more people say that it would feel like stealing if they do not return the wallet.

Nitin Nohria, in the Washington Post, explores the idea that we are not as virtuous as we think we are. Nitin has coined the term "moral overconfidence. Which she explains as, "this gap between how people believe they would behave and how they actually behave." Nitin goes on to say, "Moral overconfidence is on display in politics, in business, in sports—really, in all aspects of life." This gap is most obvious "…in high-pressure situations, when there is some inherent ambiguity, when there are competing claims on our sense of right and wrong, and when our moral transgressions are incremental, taking us down a slippery slope."

One way to overcome this overconfidence is to stay away from certain situations. Nitin says, "… when we are under extreme time pressure, we are more likely to behave unethically. When we operate in isolation, we are more likely to break rules. When incentives are very steep, we are more likely to try to achieve them by hook or by crook." The goal to overcome all of this is to find moral humility and moral courage.

A 1961 research project asked ordinary people to send extremely painful electric shocks to a stranger. (Unbeknownst to the participants, the fake shocks were only delivered to an actor.) A staggering 65% of the subjects obeyed. Most of us are confident we would have been in the 35% who refused to go along with this program. But in her essay for The Washington Post, "You're Not as Virtuous as You Think," Nitin Nohria has a name for this "gap between how people believe they would behave and how they actually behave"—"moral overconfidence."

She writes: In the lab, in the classroom and beyond, we tend to be less virtuous than we think we are. And a little moral humility could benefit us all. Moral overconfidence is on display in politics, in business, in sports—really, in all aspects of life … There are political candidates who say they won't use attack ads until, late in the race, their moral overconfidence is in line with what studies find to be our generally inflated view of ourselves. We rate ourselves as above-average drivers, investors, and employees, even though math dictates that can't be true for all of us. We also tend to believe we are less likely than the typical person to exhibit negative qualities and to experience negative life events: to get divorced, become depressed, or have a heart attack.

Once upon a time, there was a boy who grew up in a household of faith. As a young man, he was quickly singled out as a top student who was marked by key political leaders. He moved to the big city, where the intellectual elites trained him and gave him responsibility. He moved up in the ranks, and the powerful people of his day considered him a rising star.

Then he fell passionately in love. But there was a problem: The woman he fell in love with was married—married to another power player. The tension intensified. The woman was desperate and the man was having nightmares about what would happen if their cover was blown. His career, credibility, and political alliances hung in the balance. One restless night he had a nightmare: he dreamed his secret love had been discovered. He pictured the horror of his betrayed and bewildered colleagues, the hysteria of the woman, the fury of her accusing husband, the political fallout. He woke up in a cold sweat. The next day, he fled town.

He travelled to a city far away to seek counsel with a couple renowned for their wisdom and discernment. He became physically sick there; his body broken down by stress and fear and grief and guilt. Those who tended him knew that his sickness was deeper than his physical symptoms. When they confronted him, it took all he had to finally to confess the whole mess. Their advice? It was time for a good, long spiritual retreat. And then, perhaps, for a new career. You can't lead anyone well unless your heart is right.

The man in this story is not a 21st century political leader in Washington, D.C. But he could be, couldn't he? That was actually the story of a man named Evagrius of Pontus, a church leader in the fourth century A.D. By age thirty-five, he was near the apex of success in the halls of power in the thriving city of Constantinople. But then temptation struck. When he headed south to Jerusalem, seeking the counsel of Melania and Rufus, they eventually sent him to a monastery where he could get his spiritual life in order. Evagrius needed time away from his life in the halls of power to understand the real power of sin. What he learned about sin's destructive potential is hard-won wisdom for us today.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Spiritual disciplines; Solitude—This story shows our need for spiritual disciplines that God uses to transform us before we can make a difference in the world. (2) Sin; Repentance—Evagrius and his fellow-Christians living in the desert talked about the seven (or eight) "deadly" sins. Ms. DeYoung adds,"The vocation to follow Christ, according to these early Christians, included both fighting against these powerful temptations and finding peace and freedom through a life of spiritual discipline and virtue."

Leaving children to discover their own values is a little like putting them in a chemistry lab full of volatile substances and saying, "Discover your own compound, kids."

Do you ever wonder why people cheat—or feel tempted to cheat—on expense reports, taxes, exams, and other endeavors? According to a series research studies at four major universities, cheating often provides psychological rewards that motivate people to act unethically. Cheating can even give many people what researchers have labeled a "cheater's high."

In one experiment, researchers from the University of Washington's Foster School of Business asked subjects to predict how they'd feel about cheating. As the researchers had expected, most of the subjects predicted they'd feel bad about cheating. Then they conducted an experiment in which 179 subjects had to unscramble as many words as possible in a 15 minute period, earning money for each word completed. When the subjects were offered a chance to cheat, 41 percent of the participants did so. Right after the test, the participants took a test that measured how good they felt at the moment. Surprisingly, "[The] cheaters reported higher positive feelings [than the non-cheaters] (such as excitement) and no difference in negative feelings (such as guilt) than non-cheaters."

A second study with 205 participants revealed even more disturbing results. Once again, the participants were given a test that allowed the chance to cheat. And once again, the cheaters felt better than the non-cheaters. But this time the cheaters also rated themselves higher on how often they felt "clever, capable, accomplished, satisfied, and superior." In other words, they not only felt good about cheating; they also felt smug about it.

An article in Forbes magazine concluded, "[We can] add this [study] to the pantheon of research undermining the idea that humans are good at heart …. And we wonder why Wall Street investment banks, stocked with the smartest minds from Ivy League schools, all plunged lemming-like off the same cliff in the credit crisis?"

Possible Preaching Angles: The Power of Sin/Temptation—The Bible is honest about "the passing pleasures of sin." Sin often entraps us and becomes habitual because it feels good. It makes sense to our "flesh."

The hugely popular board game by Milton Bradley called The Game of Life went through the following variations—all of which reflect the changing values of our culture:

In 1798, before Milton Bradley was born, a board game from England arrived in the U.S. and became popular. It was called The New Game of Human Life. Acquiring virtues sped you through the game while vices slowed you down. Parents were encouraged to play this game with their children. The game's main point was, "Life is a voyage that begins at birth and ends at death. God is at the helm, fate is cruel, and your reward lies beyond the grave."

In 1860, Milton Bradley invented a simple board game and called it The Checkered Game of Life. The good path included Honesty and Bravery. The difficult path included Idleness and Disgrace. Industry and Perseverance led to Wealth and Success. Bradley described it as "A highly moral game … that encourages children to lead exemplary lives and entertains both old and young with the spirit of friendly competition."

In 1960, Milton Bradley Company released a commemorative edition, called simply The Game of Life. It sold 35 million copies. In this game you earn money, buy furniture, and have babies. Vices and virtues are non-existent. The winner of the game is the one who at "Life's Day of Reckoning" makes the most money and retires to Millionaire Acres.

In the 1990s Milton Bradley game designers tried to make the game less about money. They emphasized good deeds like saving an endangered species or solving a pollution problem. However, the only reward for these good deeds is cash. You can earn as much by winning at a reality TV show.

In the 2011 version, players can attend school, travel, start a family, or whatever they want. If they earn enough points, they can reward themselves with a sports car. There is no end or last square to the game. You can stop any time. The box says, "A Thousand Ways to Live Your Life! You Choose." Values are up-for-grabs—you get as many points scuba diving as you get donating a kidney. The description on the website says: "Do whatever it takes to retire in style with the most wealth at the end of the game."

Within an hour of closing on his first home, Josh Ferrin, an artist for the Deseret News, used the keys to take his first official look inside. While taking it all in, he noticed a tiny scrap of carpet peeking out of a small door in the ceiling of a workshop at the back of the garage. He got a ladder and climbed up to explore the unseen space. It was dark and musty, but Ferrin could see a black metal box sitting there. It was a heavy metal box—the kind used to haul ammunition during World War II—and it was filled with cash (more than $45,000), old stamps, bond certificates, and other random memorabilia.

And he gave it all back!

"You can't make plans for money like this," Ferrin said. "It just doesn't feel right to do anything but give it back. So I immediately closed it, locked it in my truck, and called my wife. 'You won't believe what I just found.'" His wife Tara immediately knew the couple had to return the money to its rightful owners.

But Arnold Bangerter, the former homeowner, had passed away in November 2010, and his youngest son, Dennis Bangerter, the executor of Bangerter's estate, had just signed the 1950s red-brick rambler away. It took at least three hours for the Ferrins to sort and count the box-full of cash, all the while teaching a lesson of honesty to their two young sons, who wanted to keep "just one" of the bundles and kept trying to slip coins into their pockets.

"The house needs some work," Josh Ferrin said. "I could use the $45,000 for remodeling, but he didn't save that money for us. He saved it for his family. I never considered the money mine. You can't allow yourself to think like that."

In his book Humilitas, pastor John Dickson illustrates the beauty of humility in the life of Sir Edmund Hillary. In 1953 Hillary conquered Mount Everest with his Sherpa friend and guide, Tenzin Norgay. Consequently, in that same year Hillary was knighted; in 1985 he was made New Zealand's highest commissioner to India, Nepal, and Bangladesh; and in 1995 he received the British realm's highest award, the Order of the Gater (membership of which is limited to just twenty-four individuals). But despite Hilary's achievements and rewards, he maintained a humble outlook and a readiness to serve others.

John Dickson captures one story that reveals Sir Edmund's profound humility:

On one of his many trips back to the Himalayas he was spotted by a group of tourist climbers. They begged for a photo with the great man, and Hillary obliged. They handed him an ice pick so he would look the part and set up for the photograph. Just then another climber passed the group and, not recognizing the man at the centre, strode up to Hillary saying, "Excuse me, that's not how you hold an ice pick. Let me show you."

Everyone stood around in amazed silence as Hillary thanked the man, let him adjust the pick, and happily went on with the photograph.

It doesn't matter how experienced that other climber was; his greatness was diminished by this intrusive presumption. We are repelled by pride. Edmund Hillary's greatness, however, is somehow enhanced by this humility.