Why Does Virtue Hurt?

Why Virtue Hurts

Why does it pain us to do good?  Why do we cringe at doing the right thing, almost to the point that it physically hurts our bodies?  Certainly this must be one of the greatest wonders of the human soul.

Virtue is from the Latin word virtus, which means "excellence."  Any excellent quality can be referred to as a virtue, but usually we use it in the sense of moral excellence.  A virtuous man is one who is brave, honest, kind, and chaste.  A vicious man is one who is a coward, a cheat, a sadist, and a Lothario.

Why does the vicious man experience pain when he tries to be brave, or honest, or kind, or chaste?  Take it from me, a very, very vicious man.

Being really very vicious, sometimes I struggle to make a clear picture of my own problems.  The deeper into the chasm of sin you sink, the less you see your own vice.  It's just like sinking into a real abyss; the nourishing light of the sun fades as you descend.  Why does it hurt to be good?

The Benevolent Architect

I'll take another example from C.S. Lewis to explain this.  (I briefly refer to it in another blog post.)

Imagine that you are a house.  Your siding is stained, and some of your drywall has cracks in it, and one of the inside columns is not bearing the load all that well.  Some of the carpeting is stained and worn, and you have water marks in the ceiling, and your basement floods when it storms and is all musky.  Your roof really needs re-shingling and you're pretty sure that you have rats living in your walls.  It's possible that there are bats in the attic as well.

But all the same, you're a content, happy little house, even though you have one or two little problems here and there.

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Suppose that a gifted architect and interior designer takes a liking to you and decides to live inside.  He starts by replacing the carpets and patching up the drywall.  He reinforces the columns and fixes the basement sump pump so it doesn't flood anymore.  He fumigates the place to get rid of the vermin in the walls and attic.  He even has the roof re-shingled to keep the drywall from spotting.

You're feeling pretty good about things, in fact you feel brand new!  And you really feel content that the architect will stop there.

But now he starts knocking about inside in ways that are really very painful to you.  He starts fixing things that you didn't think needed fixing.  He topples a wall here and installs a fireplace.  He knocks out the south side and puts in a sun room.  He rips out all the plumbing and wiring and starts to replace it with brand new stuff.  He puts in a new bathroom with a big tub.

Now all this hurts you a great deal, and all the while you really wish that he would stop and leave you alone.  You never wanted to be a great house, just a regular decent one.  Why all this fuss?

The architect is not content to make you a "good" house.  He needs you to be a perfect house because he wants to live inside you.  And when he is finally all done, you look at yourself to find that you are so grand and beautiful that you weren't sure how you could have doubted him in the first place.

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How We are Like Houses

This is how God has his way with us.  We are all really very bad, and that badness is the result of a variety of disorders.  But when God calls us and we listen (and even start to do as he has always demanded), he gains a sort of entry into our minds and begins to crush and stamp out the miserly demons in our hearts.  This is painful.  When I find myself deciding to choose a virtuous course of action (all too rare), it- in a perpetually curious way- does me some discomfort.  This is probably much the same for all people, to different degrees and regarding different virtues.

God will not have you as "good enough."  Jesus said himself, "Be ye perfect."  Not "Be ye pretty good."

God wants to live inside you, not visit on Sundays.

God will have the whole thing, or nothing.  He will have all of you, or have no part.  Often a man becomes a Christian to cure a certain vice.  He wants to be brave, or stop lying, or be kind, or stop sleeping around.  And when God cures that vice for him, he says to himself, "Well, that's all good and well.  Now I can get on with my life."  But the true Christian finds that God doesn't seem to think that it's all good and well, and starts acting on him in ways that the convert had not expected.  Sometimes this frightens people and they fall away, and of course, fall back into their old vices.  Always it requires a sort of acquiescence on the part of the Christian, who submits and finds himself much better than he ever imagined.

There is a beautiful hymn that goes like this:

And he will raise you up on eagles wings,

Bear you on the breath of dawn,

Make you to shine like the sun,

And hold you in the palm of his hand.

God wants you to shine like the sun, not glimmer like a sputtering candle flame.  He wants you to be a spotlight, not a candle.  And he will help you to shine; he doesn't expect you to be able to do it on your own.  Remember, he knows the condition of the vehicle you are trying to drive, and it's bad. 

Let him repair you, and later you will wonder why you ever doubted him in the first place.