Virtue and Balance
One
Virtue and Balance
It was Aristotle who originally noticed that the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance all involve balance: Virtus stat media – virtue stands in the middle.
Each cardinal virtue lies at a mid-way point between too much and too little. You can eat too much and you can eat too little. You can be too careful about money and you can be too careless about money. And virtue is where you find the balance.
It’s interesting too that if you have a vice, it means you haven’t found the balance, but it also means you have no sympathy for people with the opposite vice. For instance, a lazy person and a workaholic have no sympathy for each other.
To take another example, Dante imagined the misers and the reckless spenders in the same part of Hell, and he pictured them slamming into each over and over, with the misers yelling, “Why waste?!” and the over-spenders yelling, “Why hoard?!”
All of this is to say, if you want the virtue of temperance, you should be able to appreciate the good things in life, but not let the desire for them get out of control.
Which means you have to resist two extremes: that of intemperance and insensibility.
Two
Intemperance – sacrificing the greater in pursuit of the lesser
Intemperance just means you don’t have any self-control and you let your desires for lesser things ruin your chance at greater things. It’s where you stay up all night watching shows or checking social media or playing some game on your phone. And because you can’t resist your urge for entertainment at night, you spoil your chances the next day for prayer and being productive, peaceful, and grateful.
It’s where you can’t resist your urge to drink, so you ruin your family, work, and health. It’s where you can’t resist your urge to spread a piece of gossip, so you spoil your relationship both with the person you’re gossiping about and with the person you’re gossiping to.
So the main way to fight intemperance is to remember the greater good that you’re foolishly sacrificing for some trivial passing pleasure.
Once I was on a highway in Louisiana and there were a fair number of casinos and strip clubs along the way. And then, thank God, someone had put up a billboard in response to those casinos and strip clubs. And on the billboard was the silhouette of a man with his wife and his kids. And the sign said, very simply, “You can lose this.”
That’s what you have to do when you are tempted – remember the greater good that you don’t want to put at risk: love, peace, the consolation of having done right by the people who depend on you, and especially, union with God in this life and the next.
Intemperance, a lack of impulse control, will take all those away from you.
Three
Intemperance – losing pleasure even in the lesser
Not only does intemperance spoil all the best things in life, it even spoils your pleasure in the lesser good you’re being intemperate about.
Addiction ruins appreciation. The mark of addiction, whether to sex or alcohol or gambling or exercise or work or whatever is that you no longer take pleasure in the thing you’re addicted to. The addict works or drinks or exercises or looks at pornography to get relief from his craving, not to peacefully enjoy the good.
There’s a horrifying story in the Old Testament about a man named Amnon who had an intemperate desire for a woman named Tamar. Amnon, instead of trying to temper his desire, attacked Tamar in order to gratify his out-of-control urges. But as soon as he gave into his desire, Scripture says something uncomfortably familiar to those of us who have been intemperate. Once Amnon has done this hideous thing, this thing that has spoiled his life and the woman’s life, has put him outside all decency, has lost him his place in society, has sacrificed her dignity and his self-respect, the moment after Amnon has sacrificed all these greater goods in pursuit of his selfish and passing pleasure with poor Tamar, the Bible says, “Then Amnon conceived a hatred of her that was greater than the love with which he had loved her.”
His attraction turned to revulsion. His desire turned to aversion. His longing turned to disgust.
In other words, intemperance doesn’t just destroy the greatest goods in life, it even takes away from us the lesser pleasures we sacrificed everything else to get.
No wonder Our Lord, when he was speaking of sinners, said, “Those who have not will lose even the little they have.”
Because intemperance ruins absolutely everything.
Four
Insensibility – a lack of love
So intemperance, a lack of self-control, is one extreme that has to be avoided. But the other extreme is what Aquinas calls the vice of “insensibility.”
This is where you don’t have a normal or healthy appreciation for the good things in life.
That’s not right either. God made the world a good place, full of good things. To not appreciate them is to fail to recognize God’s incredible gifts.
You’re not temperate if you don’t enjoy anything, you’re just childish and ungrateful and unhappy.
If you go around saying “I don’t like this,” and “I don’t like that” all the time, you’ve got a real problem, and you need to better discipline yourself in taking the time and putting in the work of recognizing the goodness all around us.
To be temperate, to moderate our desires and our loves, presupposes we have some love for things to start with. Being loveless isn’t temperate. It’s not a virtue, it’s a vice we need to get over.
Five
Temperance and a Resolution
Every meditation should end with a practical concrete resolution. So, where specifically are we controlled by our desire for too much or too little of something?
Are we tempted to too much work or exercise? Are we tempted to assuage our fears or pain or feelings of being overwhelmed through food or alcohol? Are we tempted to veg out with too much entertainment, news, sports, or YouTube? And do we slow down enough to really appreciate and delight in the truly good and beautiful things in life and thank God for them?
What do I need to work on specifically?