Wyatt Graham
As a child, my father read to me William Bennett’s Book of Virtues. While I may not have learned as much as I should have, the concept of living virtuously stuck with me. As a father myself, I now read the Book of Virtues to my children.
With the advent of the internet, we parents deal with a constant flow of parenting tips and tricks. Fresh data comes every week. Influencers tell us about new studies that should supposedly change how we parent. The ground beneath our feet feels shaky. We often feel overwhelmed.
But can this increase in data make me or my children truly virtuous? I may know more facts and information, but am I parenting virtuously? And if data about parenting constantly changes, can we find lasting parenting principles?
I believe we can.
I have found the virtue tradition to be an indispensable aid as I seek to cultivate wisdom and godliness in myself as well as be the kind of parent that instils the same in my children. By looking to an ancient wisdom tradition, rather than our endless streams of information, we can find a safe harbor. But, to do so, we must return to the past.
In this article, I want to help parents know and cultivate the seven virtues in themselves, so that they can be wise and just parents that model virtue for their children and cultivate the same virtues in them.
Parenting and the virtues
Family meals matter. They are one of the few times when families gather together despite life’s busyness. Among all the other good reasons to share a meal, training in virtue stands out as one of the most important.
During our meals, I will often pick a topic to discuss like, What is courage? or What is fear? Then I’ll lead my family through a discussion on the topic. But I do well to lead such discussions having first modeled such virtue in my own life—or else I risk hypocrisy, and kids can smell hypocrisy from a mile away.
We need to be growing in virtue so that we are virtuous parents for our children’s sake.
Now this does not mean parents need to be perfect. We all sin and make mistakes. It does mean, however, that we need to be growing in virtue so that we are virtuous parents for our children’s sake. I hope I have grown in virtue over the years. And by God’s grace, through growing in these virtues, I hope I have made better decisions as a parent than I would have otherwise.
But what exactly do I mean by this?
The four cardinal virtues: foundational guidance
This is what I told my family during our recent discussion on how to make good decisions in life:
Look, you need wisdom to understand all the choices in front of you. And importantly, you need to choose to act justly. Choosing evil is not just unwise; it’s also unjust. But doing the right thing often takes courage because people may not like it. And this means you will need self-control so fear doesn’t overcome you.
I was effectively summing up the four cardinal virtues that form a quartet of habits to help us live well:
- Prudence (or wisdom)
- Justice
- Fortitude (or courage)
- Temperance (or self-control)
These four cardinal virtues derive from every day observation in life. So although their appearance as a group first occurs in Plato’s Republic, their importance—even cardinal importance—is rooted in lived experience. We need prudence to know what is right (just), and we need courage to do what is right and self-control to temper the fear of blowback. They are called cardinal virtues because the rest of the natural virtues order from them.
The Bible reinforces these virtues. For example, Proverbs speaks to fathers raising their children (Prov 1:8), and it does so by beginning with wisdom or prudence (Prov 1:2). The rest of the book is full of injunctions towards righteousness or justice, and regularly emphasizes temperance or self-control. One finds courage (or fortitude) throughout the narratives of the Old Testament. The Lord, for example, commands Joshua to meditate on his Torah and act justly. But he reminds Joshua: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Josh 1:9 ESV, emphasis added). In other words, the Bible supports the importance of the cardinal virtues.
As a parent, I find their simple paradigm for virtuous living incredibly helpful. It gives me a place to hang my hat. I do not need to keep up with every new piece of parenting advice or every new Instagram influencer. I know the basic principles for moral reasoning and, Lord willing, I am becoming more virtuous day-by-day.
And as a parent, I need to become the kind of person characterized by the virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. From there, I can, by the prudence I possess, choose wise and just parenting strategies. This help me think through questions from those as simple as, Should we let our kids do sleepovers? to more weighty ones like, How should we order our entire life?
Let me illustrate how this has worked in my family. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we discovered our daughter was struggling in her French immersion school. We also found that aspects of her schooling were informing unjust sentiments in her. My wife and I prudentially looked at our options (homeschool, private school, classical school, etc.), and decided to homeschool given our specific circumstances. This took a measure of courage because my wife and I had never educated our children like this before. Self-control also tempered our fears of what people might say about our decision. This also importantly tempered our judgmentalism against those who might prudentially choose not to homeschool. Our decision made sense for our family, even if it didn’t for others.
This is an additional beauty of the virtues. Because prudence orders the virtues, prudential choices will usually be recognized as reasonable among reasonable people, and yet the nature of prudence prevents us from unjust sentiments such as looking down on Christian families whose kids go to public school. After all, it may be prudent for that family to do so because they’re prohibited by finances or other reasons of which I may not be aware. I must display temperance in my sentiments of others, for as C. S. Lewis reminds us in his Abolition of Man, we can have both just and unjust sentiments.
The three theological virtues: Christian graces
But despite all their value, the cardinal virtues cannot justify us before a holy God. As Peter reminds us, “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12 ESV). Acquiring virtue without the Holy Spirit will not end in salvation. In Paul’s words, “only faith working through love” counts (Gal 5:6 ESV); only through this faith informed by love do “we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness” (Gal 5:5 ESV).
The three theological virtues are what matter for eternity (1 Cor 13:13):
- Faith
- Hope
- Love
That said, just because they cannot justify us does not mean we shouldn’t pursue wisdom or prudence where it may be found (Job 28:12). All people should pursue prudence, along with the rest of the virtues. But as we do, we must recognize their limits.
In the first place, apart from faith, hope, and love, the cardinal virtues only amount to halfway virtue. For who would find it prudent to lay down one’s life for an enemy out of love? Yet Christ, out of a love for humanity, did just that. That kind of prudence or wisdom, so informed by love, does not make sense to the world. It is foolishness to the Greeks. But to us, it is the power of God unto salvation (see 1 Cor 1:18–25).
Although the cardinal virtues may exist to some degree otherwise, they are not able to reach their perfection apart from God’s gracious gift of these theological virtues. For this reason, as a Christian parent, I seek to cultivate the cardinal virtues according to the three theological virtues.
Virtues are not able to reach their perfection apart from God’s gracious gift.
Whether by explicit word or necessary implication, the Bible teaches us that the theological virtues, faith, hope, and love, are gifts from God (Eph 2:8; Rom 5:5; 15:13). Because of these gifts, I can now be faithful, hopeful, and loving. I can model these virtues as I seek to instill them in my children. Yet because they are gifts, I am taught to rely on God’s mercy for them. I must ultimately rely on God’s grace to form faith in my children’s minds, love in their hearts, and hope in their wills.
The church: a means of grace for instilling virtue
One place we experience this grace is the church. As parents, we must not attempt to cultivate virtue in isolation from the body of Christ. God has ordained certain means of his grace to grow our faith in him, our love for God and neighbor, and our hope in the resurrection. These happen in the context of the church.
Grace alone creates faith in our hearts (Eph 2:8). Yet the place where God has ordinarily chosen to mediate this grace is the church. To be born to Christian parents is a great privilege. On account of their believing parents, children are made holy (1 Cor 7:14). They are set apart for special privileges.
In particular, they grow alongside a Spirit-filled congregation that reads the Scripture (1 Tim 4:13), preaches the Word (2 Tim 4:2), and administers the sacraments (Matt 28:19–20; 1 Cor 11:17–34). By faithfully dedicating ourselves to Christ’s church, we, through the means God has chosen, open our children up to the grace of God in Christ Jesus for us.
While I can confidently teach my kids to make prudent and just choices with courage and self-control, I must, with faith and hope, love my children enough to ensure they hear the Word read, preached, and prayed in a Christian community filled by the Spirit. Importantly, I myself must be the kind of parent who grows from one level of glory to another as I gaze into Christ’s face so that I can be a holy and just parent for my children (2 Cor 3:17–18; 4:6).
Parenting grounded in virtue
By becoming a virtuous person, you will become the best parent for your children. The virtues ground us. By practicing them, we can increasingly become the kind of parents that make prudential and just parenting decisions. By grace, God grants us (and our children) faith, hope, and love.
Although I have very little specific strategies to share, I can, nonetheless, like a lighthouse point you to safe harbors during the black of night. These harbors will never fail, for they are more real than rock and sturdier than diamond: “God understands the way to [wisdom], and he knows its place” (Job 28:23).
Together, these seven virtues provide us stability, even as we live in shaky and vicious times. In the fear of the Lord, let us look to him to become the kind of parents who can weather any storm life brings, because we have grounded ourselves in virtue.
Recommended resources from Wyatt Graham
- Gregory the Great, Moral Reflections on the Book of Job
Back to Virtue: Traditional Moral Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusion
Regular price: $11.99
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