Hold your moral values in the highest regard

“We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. Whenever we have almost succeeded in doing so, God permits a war or an earthquake or some other calamity, and at once courage becomes so obviously lovely and important even in human eyes that all our work is undone, and there is still at least one vice of which they feel genuine shame. The danger of inducing cowardice in our patients, therefore, is lest we produce real self-knowledge and self-loathing, with consequent repentance and humility.” ~ C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters …

It helps to put this in perspective a bit. The above excerpt is written as a letter from a senior devil to his junior nephew, basically explaining the techniques necessary to keep humans sinning while viewing their behaviors as virtuous. So the narrative is backwards–good is evil, and the enemy is God. And I feel that there is a very important message being conveyed here in this excerpt–that courage is not just a virtue, but also the form of every virtue at the point of highest reality.

As I am to understand here, the importance in the calamities of man is to awaken us from our moral stupor, to remind us that we are better than complacency and moral apathy. In times of peace, we tend to fall into immorality and sin, somehow finding justification and rationalization for our unprincipled ways. But when calamity hits, we are confronted with the naked truths before us, and the choice of cowardice, courage, or hatred is all we have left. It is in these times that we are awoken to the evils and the immorality that lie disguised before our very eyes.

As imperfect creatures, we have a tendency of becoming numb to the evils of this world. For this reason it is claimed, that a dangerous world serves to awaken the courage within us to fight these evils–hence, courage is a necessity for any virtue to succeed. For example, if we are only honest or merciful in times of peace, but are not so when confronted with danger, then our moral integrity is merely conditional.

Be courageous, always, and not just when you are called to be. The only way to defeat the evils of this world is to practice consistent integrity.

Hold your moral values in the highest regard today.

Questions to consider:

What is the importance of moral integrity?

When has a calamity inspired men to courage? Is the result of such courage an influx of morality, or the opposite?

In what ways can we hold our morals high without having to be confronted with calamity?

For further thought:

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.” ~ Maya Angelou