Most of Us Don’t Sacrifice Like Abraham. We are not Pioneers.

I’ve been writing a lot about the nameless virtue, which is the virtue of unironically recognizing and praising standards that you yourself fall short of. The nameless virtue is easy to recognize when we’re talking about conventional sins and shortcomings. The inmate telling kids to stay away from the gangster life, the alcoholic who wishes he’d never taken that first drink, those are all standard fare. Along the same lines, what first brought the nameless virtue to my attention were Mormons who missed out on the basic steps of Mormon life extolling those steps. Those kinds of exceptions that prove the rule make the nameless virtue pretty apparent.

But the nameless virtue goes farther. The nameless virtue is deeply tied with recognizing heroism and excellence. By definition, heroes and those who excel are uncommon. If they were common, it wouldn’t be heroism.

Heroes sometimes claim that they are just ordinary people and anybody in their situation would have done the same. It’s possible that they are right. It’s possible that a great many people would have risen to the occasion. But for most of us, the occasion never comes. In fact, for many of us, we may be morally obligated to avoid the occasion. Here’s a basic example. In most cases, it would be proper for a young, unmarried man to go haring off to war and to push the risk envelope when he got here. An older father with responsibilities probably ought not to. But it’s still a virtuous act for that father to honor and respect soldier heroes.

Too many people in the Church get upset when the Church teaches the ideal, not the exception. They point out that in their case, the ideal isn’t even practical. They are probably right. But they are wrong to demand that we not teach the ideal or muddy it up too much with a lot of nods to everyone’s particular rationale for falling short of it. The nameless virtue is comfortable with gaps between what we ought to achieve and what we are able to achieve.

We as a Church praise the pioneers. But then we take it back by saying that in our own way, we’re all pioneers to. We talk about the importance of the Abrahamic sacrifice and then add that, well, we all have our own chances at Abrahamic sacrifice through enduring to the end and avoiding porn on the internet while we do it. Congratulations all around. Well, that’s nonsense. We’re not pioneers, we’re not sacrificing like Abraham did, it’s nonsense, and at some level, everybody knows it’s nonsense. We don’t praise them because we think we can be just like them. We praise them because they were praiseworthy, because they lived out the good life in a supreme degree. If the opportunity comes, praising them will help fit us to rise to the occasion. But the opportunity may never come. Who knows? I’ll still sing Blessed, Honored Pioneer.

I had a dream. In my dream I saw a collection of cripples and crazy people dressed in black-and-white motley. They formed a shield wall on a hill.   They were armed with bright swords. They were capering about a bit, the ones who could, and acting the fool. For all that, though, they were frighteningly strong. They were formidable. The dream conveyed to me that they were the church of the Lamb. Gay men standing for marriage, schlubs in dockers mouthing clichés about eternity in their Elders Quorum, people living inauthentic lives devoted to the Way, the knights of the new dispensation.