A Peace Virtue Set

The Daughterperson No. 1 had an interesting conversation with me about peace.

What vice distorts peace, she wanted to know. It was a fun chat.

The likely answer is complacency, stagnation, apathy . . . and that led in some interesting directions. Because the opposite of that vice is ambition or striving for excellence which is an aspect of glory

PEACE : Complacency/stagnation

Reckless ambition : GLORY

She pointed out some interesting scriptural parallels to problems with obedience. Complacency/stagnation seems like “blind obedience.” Happily doing what you are told without putting any thought or desire into it yourself. In contrast we have the opposite vice: someone like Saul sacrificing animals even though he had been expressly told not to. Seeking something facially good but being disobedient to do so.

The combination of PEACE :: GLORY could be either when you’ve achieved all the growth you are capable of, which would be HEAVEN and EXALTATION. Prospectively it would be when you working towards the light but with confidence through Christ that you will get there. In other words—and this surprised me—FAITH.

The vicious combination of stagnation and reckless ambition is very familiar to us in the form of Pride. In terms of obedience, it is the Pharisiacal vice of sterile rules manipulation for your own vanity. The kind of people that Isaiah accused of making sacrifices but also “join house to house.”  It is wanting more more more–more status, more glory, more rewards– but without personal change or growth. It occurs to me that part of the reason Milton’s Satan seems like a hero to some is that he has the vice of reckless ambition without the complacent smug part, which seems almost virtuous compared to what we usually encounter in others and ourselves.