Changing my ambitions

Is ‘virtue’ a terribly old-fashioned word? I don’t mind either way. If I’ve run into you for more than three seconds in the last couple of weeks, you’ll know that I’ve just started my second degree, and I’m very happy about it. I’m having a great deal of fun, and expect my studies to continue to be fun. But fun is not my goal. My goal is virtue.

In particular, the virtues I’m striving after in my degree are a greater ability to ask questions well, and to answer them well; to write well, and to dispute — that is, speak with, listen, reason, discuss — well. Insightfully, sensitively, humanely, intelligently, informedly, fluently: well.

But what about all the starving children! I hear you cry. In the past, I myself have got myself stuck fearing that doing another degree would be ignoring some more immediate duty to do something about all the evil in the world. So, is my degree selfish? Or how can it not be? How can this be good?

I believe it’s precisely by abandoning that restrictive sense of public duty which has freed me at last to do something good. Let me explain.

During my first degree, I had a great deal of ambition. I was genuinely convinced that I could find robust answers to big questions if I thought about them hard enough. I thought I was clever enough to make progress, or at least contribute. I thought I could, if I wanted to, get into a PhD programme and end up employed as Dean of Philosophy of Oxford, paid to smoke from a pipe all day in a tweed jacket with leather patches while quietly resolving all the world’s burning intellectual issues.

What’s changed? If I were a pessimist, I might mention my encounter with that devil, reality. It turns out that I’m not actually the cleverest person in the room, that the biggest philosophical problems are pretty intractable, and that I can’t get into Oxford — and even if I could, it wouldn’t necessarily be right to uproot myself from my friends, family and church community to pursue my dream career.

All this did matter a great deal. It’s what slowly convinced me to finally drop those unrealistic philosophical ambitions. It’s why, a year and a half ago, I turned down the offer of a Master’s in Philosophy at a excellent university (albeit not Oxford).

But that’s not the whole story. I’m not sat here with a sob story of broken dreams. After I turned down that PhD, I didn’t feel deflated, I felt liberated. I haven’t just dropped those ambitions, I’ve found new ones.

My friends, family and church community ought to matter far more to me, I realised, than my career. So, turning away from academia, I turned towards love.

This is what the gospel does. It’s the most good story, beautifully true, which says to the human heart: since God so loved us, so also we ought to love one another.

When I’m targeting virtue, I find it helpful to imagine a character who displays the virtues I’m after. So picture Helpful John. He’s an encouragement. Whenever you talk to Helpful John, you come away feeling emotionally mature and intellectually confident, because his overwhelming respect wipes away your anxiety. He listens to you carefully, and insists on understanding you at more than a superficial level. When it’s appropriate to do so, he can ask devious questions which unlock new possibilities you hadn’t considered before. He knows lots of relevant and often surprising facts. He can compare your perspective with that of strange and subversive alternative perspectives. He doesn’t like to tell people what to think, but when he speaks or when he writes, you pay attention, because you know he is capable of profound insight.

Helpful John sounds great. A model to replicate, right? Not in every respect, necessarily. Helpful John might not be the life and soul of the party. He might not be the first person you go to for comfort in times of trouble. He might not be the most reliable person in the world, or the best with children, or the best with hand tools. Helpful John is a character, but he doesn’t have to be good at everything.

Helpful John is roughly my north star. I don’t expect to become Helpful John. But with the Spirit’s help, with me continuing to lean in to the process, I do intend for Useless Joe to become more like Helpful John in his most enviable respects.

Is this selfish? Is this a shortage of ambition? Wouldn’t you love to have a Helpful John as a friend? A brother? Across the table at small group at church? In your workplace?

So forgive me if I’m old-fashioned: I believe virtue is a virtue. A better world is one full of better people.