Too many people, when they grow older, give up on the God they learned about as children.

What they really need to do is think about God in a more mature way.

This can be a crisis of faith for many people, especially young people who can no longer relate to the God they learned about as children.

Too often, priests will tell them that this is a temptation.

They are told to have greater faith.

Hold on to their God and don't let go.

In truth, when someone is undergoing a crisis of faith, they may need to leave their old image of God for a new one.

We need to change our understanding of God as we mature, just as we need to change our understanding of our parents as we mature.

Psychologists, like Erik Erikson, teach us that humans go through stages of development as they mature.

The great Catholic mystics taught the same thing for centuries when they wrote of the purgative, contemplative and unitive ways. More recently, spiritual writers like James Fowler have used modern psychology to enrich our understanding of spiritual development.

My own simplified vision of spiritual development has three stages:

• turning away from sin,
• the practice of virtue and
• being embraced by God's love.

These stages are not airtight compartments but more a matter of emphasis.

All our lives involve turning away from sin and practicing virtue, but the emphasis will be different as we mature.

Many of the greatest saints were first great sinners.

They had to go through a conversion, reject sin, do penance and accept God's mercy.

Many Christian ministers put a great emphasis on this process, focusing on sin and the need for conversion in their preaching.

Their God is a lawgiver and judge and sometimes even a policeman.

God's wrath will fall on sinners, but his mercy will come to those who turn away from sin.

Pentecostals, Baptists and conservative Catholics are good at challenging sinners and calling them to repent.

This approach can be especially successful in dealing with prisoners and those with addictions.

Knowing that God is watching can also keep ordinary Christians from falling into sin.

The fear of getting caught and punished keeps many people from doing wrong. We are like children who behave because we don't want to be spanked.

The prayer life of a person at this stage of development is all about contrition, recognizing we are sinners and saying we are sorry.

If we hear the parable of the prodigal son, we identify with the prodigal and his brother, and how we are just like them.

We spend a lot of time examining our conscience and listing all the sins we have committed in confession.

At this stage, God can sometimes come across as arbitrary and vindictive.

When I was a child in the 1950s, we were taught that it was a mortal sin to eat meat on Friday or miss Mass on Sunday.

Adolescents were told that they would go to hell if they enjoyed a "dirty thought."

Wives were told to stick with their husbands, even in cases of abuse.

For many, it seemed absurd to burn in hell alongside Hitler for eating a hamburger on Friday.

This was a God who could be easily rejected.

At some point after turning away from serious sin, a Christian needs to move on from a focus on sin to a focus on the practice of virtue.

If you are no longer a great sinner, it is time to move from the negative to the positive.

We need to move from "How can I stop sinning?" to "How can I be a better Christian?" Scrupulosity is a sure sign that it is time to move on.

In this second stage of spiritual development, God is not so much a judge as a coach.

We ask him for help to be a better Christian.

He urges us on to greater and greater virtue.

When we pray and read the Gospels, we don't focus on sin, but on Jesus as the person we want to follow and imitate.

"What can I do for the Lord?"

"How can I be better?"

Most Christians spend most of their lives at this stage of spiritual development.

We are not great sinners, but neither are we saints who practice the virtues perfectly.

We try to be better but frequently fail.

We don't pray well, we don't love as much as we should, we struggle and don't seem to get better.

This can get tiresome after a while.

The coach wants us to run faster, but we know we are never going to win a gold medal.

We begin to resent the coach for asking too much of us.

At this stage of development, we are like a teenager trying to win someone's love with the perfect clothes, hairstyle, makeup, conversation and social media.

We are looking in the mirror all the time, not at the person we are with. By being good, we think we will earn God's love.

In the third stage of spiritual development, we focus not on ourselves but on God.

We look less at the prodigal son and his brother than at their father.

Many Scripture scholars call the story the parable of the prodigal father because of the love that he showers upon his sons.

When we look at Jesus in the Gospels, we see someone who will not just tell us to stop sinning and follow him.

Rather he is someone who is wonderful and who tells us about his Father, who is loving and compassionate.

In this stage of development, we are not looking for sin or ways to be better; we are looking at the Scriptures to learn how awesome and wonderful God is.

I sometimes think that the hardest act of faith is not to believe a particular dogma but to believe that God loves us unconditionally, that above, behind and in the universe is a benevolent God.

In each stage of spiritual development, our prayer life is different.

• In the first stage it is mostly contrition (I am sorry),
• in the second stage it is mostly petition (help me) and
• in the third stage it is mostly thanksgiving and adoration (you are amazing).

To truly fall in love, we must forget ourselves and focus on the person in front of us. God is amazing and we give thanks to him for all that he has done for us.

In the final stage of spiritual development, we fall in love.

We aren't good out of fear or to win God's love; we are loving and kind because God has first loved us.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

New Zealand is held up as an excellent example of virtuous pandemic policymaking even considering its advantages in having wealth, low density and no land borders say Mary Elizabeth Collins and Sarah B Garlington.

They propose three core virtues to guide policymakers in easing out of coronavirus crisis mode in ways that achieve a better new normal: compassion, solidarity and justice.

And it isn't enough to apply just one virtue in a crisis of this magnitude. All three should be deployed in combination.

The writers say New Zealand's virtuous pandemic policymaking included not only aggressive public health measures but also a well-articulated message of being united in the COVID-19 fight and recurring government payments, so workers did not have to risk their health for their job."

They note that to achieve acts of solidarity, the leaders are most praised in their countries and abroad- from U.S. National Institutes of Health director Dr Anthony Fauci to New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern - have relied primarily on moral persuasion, not threats of punishment.

"By delivering clear information, giving simple and repeated behavioural guidance, and setting a good example, they've helped convince millions to take personal responsibility for protecting their community."

Collins and Garlington's ethics research examines the potential for using virtues as a guide for a more moral coronavirus response.

"Virtues are applied morals - actions that promote individual and collective well-being," they say.

"While often embedded in religion, virtues are ultimately a secular concept.

Because of their broad, longstanding relevance to human societies, these values tend to be held across cultures."

Using virtues to guide social policies is an old idea. It dates back at least to the Greek thinker Aristotle.

Source

• theconversation.com
• Image: pmcsa.ac.nz

Greed can distort reality, manipulate truth, coerce sinful actions, and compromise virtue and a desire to follow the ways of God.

This weekend, the Lenten journey continues but lightens up with "Rejoice Sunday," often called by its Latin name Laetare Sunday. The observance gives Christian believers a reminder of the glory of the Easter celebration that awaits them at the end of Lent.

Rejoice Sunday is a consolation, but also a call to perseverance through the soul-searching and self-accusation of the Lenten season.

It's a summons to keep our focus on the ways of God and to keep pride, vanity, and greed at bay.

These three ‘bad spirits' were identified by St. Ignatius of Loyola in his monumental seventeenth century work The Spiritual Exercises. In the Exercises, which have drastically shaped the spiritual worldview of Pope Francis, believers are called to a sober examination of their consciences.

Among the dark spirits, they are to search for greed. Where has greed distorted reality, manipulated truth, coerced sinful actions, or compromised virtue and a desire to follow the ways of God?

As we desire the joys of Easter, we have to explore and dig out greed. Greed can pertain to our faith, love, forgiveness, time, abilities, and our finances.

While each area needs to be examined, we must especially assess our finances since they reveal so much about us. If we want to know what we love, we just have to look at what we spend our money on.

And so, the review begins. Where do we spend our money and why? In our spending, do we tithe to our faith community, to the poor, and to others in need? Does our spending seem to revolve only around us, our interests, and our well-being? Continue reading

• Father Jeffrey F Kirby is a Catholic priest of the Diocese of Charleston, South Carolina.

Tolerance is a moral virtue best placed within the moral domain - but unfortunately it is often confounded with prejudice.

Much of the psychological research about tolerance generally and about the development of children's understanding of tolerance of others who are different from them has been examined through research about prejudice - and not through the moral domain.

The assumption made is that absence of prejudice by default means a person is tolerant.

Prejudice and tolerance are actually theoretically different concepts - and not the opposite of each other.

In fact, they coexist in most of us.

Tolerance is difficult to define, which may have led to limiting the study of tolerance in psychology in favour of studying prejudice.

But, unlike prejudice, tolerance can be grounded in the moral domain which offers a positive approach to examining relationships between groups of people who are different from each other.

Based on its Latin origin, tolerance, or toleration as philosophers often refer to it, is most commonly viewed negatively as "putting up with" something we dislike or even hate.

If a person is prepared to "put up with" something - along the lines of, I do not like the colour of your skin but I will still serve you not to lose your custom - that person is someone who does not discriminate but remains intolerant in thoughts and beliefs.

Besides, who wants to be tolerated or be "put up with"?

At the same time tolerance cannot be indiscriminate.

Indiscriminate acceptance in its most extreme form could lead to recognition of questionable practice and human rights violations - for instance, child marriages and neo-Nazi propaganda.

Tolerance as a moral virtue

An alternative way for us to think of tolerance is to place it within the moral domain and recognise that it is what it is, a moral virtue. Continue reading

Sources

• The Conversation
• Image: Revisions

Not necessarily your life, nor the life of someone you know or love. Just a life: Joe Bloggs, Jane Doe, the guy from the bus, the high school friend you don't speak to any more.

Think of a figure, round it to the nearest hundred thousand, put a dollar sign in front, and we're done.

With a simple, arbitrary sum that quantifies, to your mind, the existence of another human, you've reached your own personal ‘value of life'.

It sounds callous, but this is essentially how government agencies have determined what you're worth for more than two decades now.

The Value of Statistical Life (VoSL) was developed by the Ministry of Transport in 1991 as a way to measure the country's loss of life in dollars.

The figure was initially set at $2 million, and was based on the findings of a survey that asked approximately 600 people what they would be willing to pay for various improvements in road safety.

From this, a value was determined to represent what an average person would be willing to pay to reduce the risk of death in road accidents.

In crude terms, the state had estimated it would be $235,000 better off for every person that didn't die. Continue reading.

Source: The Wireless

Image: TVNZ

Self-confidence, resilience, and fearlessness produce bold leaders who perform well on the job, whether as presidents, CEOs, or war heroes. But the very same virtues are also just a few degrees from antisocial behaviors with decidedly negative consequences. Lack awareness of your own fears and limitations and it's easy to become reckless, impulsive, and callous, ignoring other people's fears and limitations as well.

"Some traits may be like a double-edged sword," says psychologist Scott Lilienfeld, developer of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory and an Emory University professor. "Fearless dominance, for example, may contribute to skillful leadership in the face of a crisis, or to reckless criminality and violence," he reports in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In his personality assessments of 42 presidents, Teddy Roosevelt ranked highest in fearless dominance.

The nature of a virtue is that a vice is almost always hidden inside.

In the newest view of personality, our traits are no longer seen as binary—you are either conscientious or you're not—but as dimensional, existing on a continuum. Not only does each characteristic fall on a spectrum, each holds the grain of its own destruction: Organized becomes obsessive. Daring escalates to risky. Modest slips to insecure. Confident turns to arrogant, cautious to anxious, persuasive to domineering, friendly to ingratiating.

The seven deadly sins might very well have started out as ambition, relaxation, awareness of one's good work, righteous anger, a healthy sexuality, and enjoying a good meal. It's all a matter of degree.

In their recently published book, Fear Your Strengths, executive developers Robert Kaiser and Robert Kaplan say that in their collective 50 years of business consulting and executive coaching, they've seen virtually every virtue taken too far. "We've seen confidence to the point of hubris and humility to the point of diminishing oneself. We've seen vision drift into aimless dreaming and focus narrow down to tunnel vision. Show us a strength, and we'll show you an example where its overuse has compromised performance and probably even derailed a career." Continue reading

Sources

• Psychology Today
• Image: Incredible @rt Gallery

I never hear: "I want my child to be virtuous."

Virtuous?

Who talks about virtue anymore?

Well, outside of the Church, not many. (Okay, let's be honest, even most Catholics today don't talk about virtue.) In general, talk of being virtuous has been replaced by talk of having "values" — even though virtues and values are not synonymous.

Here's how I see it. Continue reading

Image: Catholic Lane