Do you hear people talk about “virtue,” about moral excellence anymore?
In the fourth century B.C. a Roman military commander, Titus Manlius, dispatched his son to reconnoiter the enemy but ordered him not to engage in combat. The son went out but disobeyed, killing an enemy soldier. When he returned to camp, his father the commander said, “You have respected neither Consular authority nor your father’s dignity. I believe that you yourself, if you have any drop of my blood in you, would agree that the military discipline you undermined by your error must be restored by your punishment. Go, lector, bind him to the stake.” The son was bound to the stake and decapitated. (from Livy, in Anthony Everitt, “The Rise of Rome,” p. 150-151)
Compare today’s morality story: 13 baseball players have been suspended for using Performance Enhancing Drugs but one, superstar Alex Rodriguez, has appealed his suspension.
Rome and Rodriguez are far away from us but virtue, moral excellence should not be. “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” (2 Corinthians 5:10)
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