Surviving or Thriving?

I’m entering my third week of class finally feeling like I’m finally getting it. Professor Rob’s lecture served as a good overview of Aristotle, and Nicomachean Ethics has turned out to be quite readable. Life is good. And speaking of good…

Aristotle argues that the “highest human good [is] happiness, also identified with ‘living well’ or ‘doing well’.” Virtue results from an individual’s character, and care must be taken to develop one’s character. Pleasure is the result of doing good and not an end in itself.

There are a lot of wonderful applications here for spiritual formation in my current situation. I attend a Salvation Army corps where the overwhelming majority of people we come into contact with live in poverty. With the poverty come other associated problems, such as lack of education, neglect, addiction, health problems, learning disabilities, and physical abuse.

We Sallies have a tendency to address the more obvious black and white (evangelical) sins, while never getting around to promoting thriving behaviors in individuals. In other words, we’ll encourage you to quit smoking, but may never get around to addressing your need to get a GED. (I’m not making a generalization of the whole worldwide denomination, just my little corner of it.) This has really been bothering me for the last year, but Aristotle finally showed me why.

Virtue has to grow out of one’s own character development and I think that could be better emphasized in our programs that address the formation of individuals. (Now I AM talking about the whole denomination!) Often our mentality is like that of, well, an army where we just tell people what to think and do. In the long run we do a disservice to both our members and the denomination by not teaching people why to do the right thing -- for the right reason -- at the right time. Thriving members will lead to a thriving denomination, if I’m following the philospher’s line of thinking correctly...

Finally, I need to wrap my head around the concept of pleasure being the result of doing well, because I need to be able to articulate it to others. I met a young man from inner city Pittsburgh at a recent youth camp who questioned the logic in working at McDonald’s for a few bucks a week while other young people in the neighborhood were living the good life by selling drugs.