This is fifth post in a series. To read the entire series, click here.
One of my kids asked me a question the other day where I had to explain ethics. This was quite the arduous task, especially given the language barrier. Regardless, I chose my favorite ethics paradigm, virtue ethics, and attempted to explain the 7 virtues: Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Fortitude, Faith, Hope, and Love (the last three are the theological virtues). I was greeted by constant blank staring.
So, maybe I wasn’t being so prudent.
It got me to thinking, though–a good place to start asking questions about anything is temperance (the idea of finding the middle or the mean).
For instance, should we all practice Christianity alone as individuals? No.
Should all Christians in the world gather in one place to worship all at the same time? No.
The answer lies somewhere in the middle.
In my exploration of ideas, I find that many people that I talk to think that I am talking about extremes. So, when I say that we should be a tight-knit community, people think that I am suggesting that we never have alone time. Or, when I suggest that we should reconsider always splitting up by demographics (i.e. women go here, men go there, and children somewhere else, and oh… college kids go there and high-schoolers over there), people think that I am saying that we should never separate by demographic.
When we start to question things, we need to be cautious and be wary of extremes. Extremes are attractive, and people are drawn to them. Middle ground is not as “cool”, but it is probably more where we should find ourselves in most cases.