This week, I am launching a new series of blogs on the Constitution based on Randy Barnett’s book, Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People. [1] Due to the excessive politicization of our culture, it is important right at the outset to note that the word “Republican” is used as in political science and philosophy and not in its partisan meaning.

A republic consists of a form of government in which the leadership is not vested in a king, tyrant, or dictator, but in constitutionally designated leadership. A republic is organized in such a way that governing power belongs to that body of citizens entitled to vote, and the legislative and executive powers of government are exercised by the leaders and representatives elected by those citizens to govern according to law. [2] The United States of America is a republic in this sense of the word, and the founders were very deliberately forming a constitutional republic.

Before the adoption of the Constitution, the United States was not a republic. It was a confederation of sovereign states, which were themselves republics. This form of government did not work well, leaving the United States militarily, economically, and politically weak and unable to function. Thus, the Constitutional Convention was called in 1987. The convention opened on May 25, 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The story of the convention is beyond the scope of this blog, but it merits study by every American. There are many fine studies of the event, the most popular of which is “Miracle in Philadelphia” by Catherine Drinker Bowen. [3] The convention is unique in history for the quality of its leadership and the experience and judgment of its members, in particular James Madison, whose leadership and scholarship profoundly impacted the convention and its outcome.

The Preamble of the Constitution reads:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. [4]

Barnett’s book is a detailed discussion on the meaning of the term “We the People of the United States” and defends his view that the term should be understood as referring to individuals rather than as a collective, “the People.” As this blog continues, you will see that a lot is at stake in how one interprets the Constitution—as either a collective or as referring to individuals.

“Republican” vs. “Democratic” Constitution

Barnett begins by defining just what he means by a “republican” as opposed to a “democratic” constitution:

Under a democratic constitution, the only individual rights that are legally enforceable, or a product of majoritarian will whether the wheel of the majorities in the legislature who create ordinary, legal rights or the Will of majorities who ratify the constitution and it’s amendments and created constitutional rights. [5]

…

Under a republican constitution, then, the first duty of government is to equally protect these personal and individual rights from being violated by both domestic and foreign transgressors. The agents of the people must not themselves use their delegated powers to violate the very rights they were empowered to protect.[6]

The first tradition maintains that today’s majority should not be limited by the influence of past majorities in interpreting the Constitution. The Republican view argues that the Constitution’s meaning should not change over time and that it primarily exists to protect individual freedoms from the tyranny of hostile majorities. A Republican Constitution considers the individual rights of the people to be more important than the collective rights of a majority or their representatives.

Protection of Individuals

In Barrett’s view, the idea that the “will of the people” should necessarily dominate political discussion and allow courts to disregard the explicit language of the Constitution is mistaken. The “will of the people” was not what the Constitution aimed to protect. Instead, the Constitution was designed to safeguard the rights of individuals against the government and its leaders at any given time. Individual rights come first, and after individual rights, the government. Those in government are to serve and be subordinate to, not an abstract concept, but the actual people who make up the citizenry at any moment.[7]

In the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress put it this way:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. [8]

For the drafters of the Declaration of Independence, people have rights (what have been historically called “Natural Rights”) that precede the institution of government because they are inherent in the human condition. One reason the defense of personal rights against majorities is so challenging today is the decline of a natural law orientation in government and among those governing.  If government is merely the rules made by those in power, then there are no such things as “unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

This idea conflicts with the views often expressed by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose opinions remain influential even today, years after his last decision as a justice of the United States Supreme Court. Holmes’s theory of law starts with the idea that the majority of people (what the “dominant forces of the community want through their elected representatives” and “want hard enough to disregard whatever inhibitions stand in their way”) can do whatever they wish. Therefore, Justice Holmes saw law as a tool for achieving an end set by the lawmaker, with almost no fixed constitutional limits on what the majority might want to do. As one commentator said:

Holmes believed that the Supreme Court presides over an empty Constitution — empty of purpose, of moral content, of enduring meaning — bereft of any embedded principles defining the relationship between man and the state. This distinctively Holmesian view, novel in 1905, is today’s orthodoxy. It dominates constitutional interpretation, defines public debate, and furnishes a litmus test for evaluating nominees to the Supreme Court.  [9]

In short, Holmes’s perspective is that the dominant powers of an era and society create or deny rights through acts of legislative, administrative, or judicial will, enforced by the state’s police power. Holmes believed that objective values would prevail in the “marketplace of ideas:”

But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas — that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. [10]

In my view, this is precisely where America is today. With the ascendancy of postmodernism, which denies the kind of objective reality that Holmes and his followers assumed, made more toxic by a revolutionary Rousseauian notion of democracy in which there should be no limitations on the power of dominant groups and their leaders, we find ourselves in a much different  (and dangerous) position.

It seems to me that one avenue out of the dangerous situation in which we find ourselves is a recovery of the notion that the Constitution protects the rights of every individual American, whether they are part of the majority or not. No one doubts that leaders, elected by the majority of the people, should have the freedom to enact the policies for which the public voted. However, in our system of government, that freedom is limited by our commitment to protecting the rights of minorities. This is an essential aspect of the Constitution that is currently at risk.

There is a biblical proverb that reads, “A deep respect for the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and humility goes before honor” (Proverbs 15:33). Respect for the Lord, which biblical translators literally translate “fear of the Lord” is that respect that we give to a being more powerful than we are who we cannot necessarily control. The humility and respect for the Eternal brings is that respect we have because we understand that we are limited, finite, and do not always see things correctly or with a view toward the consequences that emerge. Therefore, we must be careful in what we say and do.

A commitment to a personalistic view of the protections that the constitution provides to people will only work if we understand that the reason this is so important is because the majority are very often wrong. Sometimes, as in the French and Russian revolutions, they are tragically wrong with long-term consequences for millions of people. Therefore, when implementing any public policy, we must be careful, and we must protect the rights of everyone, especially the minority and most vulnerable. This is the essential element for maintaining a free society where people have the freedom to pursue “life, liberty, and happiness.”

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Randy E. Barnett, Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People (New York, NY: Broadside Books (Harper Collins), (2016).

[2] See “Republic” in Merriam-Webster Dictionary (Online) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/republican (downloaded July 7, 2025).

[3] Catherine Drinker Bowen: Miracle in Philadelphia: The Constitutional Convention May to September 1787 (New York, NY: Little Brown and Company, 1966). This is a very well-done popular history. For those with a more scholarly bent, there are various others with a more academic tone. I believe her work to be unmatched for interested laypersons.

[4] US Constitution, Preamble.

[5] Our Republican Constitution, 21.

[6] Id, at 23

[7] Id, at 34.

[8] Declaration of Independence (US 1776).

^[9] Tom Bowden, “Justice Holmes and the Empty Constitution” The Objective Standard (Summer 2009),https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-and-business/individual-rights/justice-holmes-and-the-empty-constitution/ (downloaded July 8, 2025).

[10] Abrams v United States 1250 US 616  (1919), Holmes dissenting at 630.

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20)

This week, I revisit a subject that is crucial for the moral and spiritual renewal of our civilization: overcoming its widespread moral decline. One of the most unfortunate legacies of Rousseau’s Romanticism, combined with Marx’s dialectical materialism, is the widespread immorality present in modern societies, along with the common belief among many, including numerous elites, that immoral actions are justified in the pursuit of political victory which they identify with their vision of the common good. Frequently, this masquerades as support for “democracy” and the need to accomplish the “will of the people.” [1]

As I write this week, a report has been issued indicating that a former Attorney General, who presents himself as a Christian well-versed in the works of certain Christian writers on moral and political philosophy, engaged in deliberate deception to harm the election chances of a candidate he disapproved of. To achieve this, he was joined by several high-ranking law enforcement and intelligence officials. Behind this activity was their moral conviction that they were entitled to lie because it was in the public interest.

To understand what is wrong in the actions of certain (often political) actors in our society, it is crucial to clarify in one’s mind what is meant by moral inversion and moral posturing.

1. Moral Inversion: Moral inversion means exactly what it says. It is a distorted morality where committing an immoral act is justified by a morally impoverished actor influenced by the pervasive ideologies of our society.
2. Moral Posturing. Moral Posturing involves claiming support for widely accepted ethical positions that cost the speaker nothing, which suggests they are not genuinely moral agents. It often includes expressing opinions or stances aligned with popular views to appear ethical. Moral posturing is typically aimed at gaining power or social approval without taking meaningful action.

Taken together, these two moral perversions characterize much of the moral discourse of our time.

Moral Inversion

In his writings, the philosopher of science Michael Polanyi describes a process he calls “moral inversion,” which he believes is a common trait of totalitarian regimes on both the right and the left. Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and Communist China were all driven by an extreme moral energy disconnected from any form of traditional morality. Moral inversion, Polanyi argues, is the demonic force behind dehumanizing and violent social movements and the oppressive governments they establish. Despite the destruction they cause, the leaders and their followers in these movements see themselves as working toward utopian visions of the common good, shaped by their narrow worldviews. Moral inversion, unfortunately, is not limited to totalitarian regimes.

In his book, Logic of Liberty, Polanyi describes the phenomenon (speaking of Russian Marxists and German Nazi’s) as follows:

“In such men, the traditional forms for holding moral ideals had been shattered and their moral passions diverted into the only channels which a strictly mechanistic conception of man and society left open to them. We may refer to this as the process of moral inversion. The morally inverted person has not merely performed a philosophic substitution of moral aims by material purposes, but is acting with the whole force of his homeless moral passions within a purely materialistic framework of purposes.” [2]

Human beings are, by nature, motivated by moral passions. When by education or training they are denied an intellectual ground for their moral passions, these passions, like a river that has run out of its banks, flow in an uncontrolled flood into whatever channel lies conveniently at hand. In modern, materialistic societies, that channel has been revolutionary action designed to create a new society along strictly materialistic notions. Communism or some form of national socialism has been the preferred channel. The disasters of the 20^th and 21st centuries have been fueled by a moral energy resulting from the misdirected channeling of human moral passions.

The materialistic impulse of moral inversion does not necessarily have to be connected to radical movements like Nazism or communism. For example, I might simply be a capitalist who believes that any action I take to make money is justified. I might feel it was perfectly right to stretch accounting principles or engage in dubious tax avoidance schemes. In each case, I have decided to make something that is fundamentally immoral, moral on materialistic grounds. This is why I sometimes call “moral inversion” “moral reductionism.” Not only does moral inversion result in immoral acts being held good (“Violence is justified to bring in a more perfect state”) but it also can involve taking one value (working hard) and turning it into a supreme value the pursuit of which allows one to ignore other values as or more important.

Moral Posturing

With the Enlightenment and its celebration of critical reason, Christian faith and morals—as well as the beliefs of other world religions and philosophical systems—were subjected to the dissolving power of reductionist, critical thinking. The materialism of the modern world reduces all reality to material particles and forces acting upon them. Ultimately, this way of thinking led to Nietzsche’s critique that God (spirit) is an illusion, Christianity is a slave religion, and the Will to Power is the ultimate trait of sound moral reasoning. The widespread acceptance of this view among elites has led to the terrible, irrational immorality evident in contemporary politics, where winning is everything, and any action—no matter how immoral—is justified if it advances a particular group’s moral ideal.

Many people in modern society who identify as Christians or followers of other major moral systems sometimes use their moral statements to gain a sense of power and boost their social standing within their group. They aren’t genuinely trying to uphold morals but are more focused on gaining others’ approval. This is the essence of moral posturing. We’re not truly acting morally. We’re not making difficult moral sacrifices. We’re simply putting on a show to seek approval.

Politics and Moral Inversion and Moral Posturing

Nowhere is moral inversion and moral posturing more prevalent than in politics and on social media. Politicians constantly make moral statements not because they genuinely believe in them or even think they are true, but because they aim to gain power from voters who may agree with these statements. Even more troubling, they often encourage others to commit immoral acts, such as destroying the lives, reputation, or property of others. This occurs on both the right and the left. In any given political debate, there is usually an intentional effort by one or both parties to label the other as immoral due to their political beliefs, with the aim of creating hostility that they believe will give them a political advantage.

In response, people often make moral statements on social media that cost them nothing. They are frequently the reverse of ethical statements. A good example exists whenever we say that the government ought to do something that we wouldn’t do if we had to pay for it. (To give current examples, I would have to enter into current debates, which I try not to do in these blogs.) Suppose, for instance, that I was a slaveholder before the American Civil War, publicly declaring that I agree with the abolition of slavery from my home in New York City, but continuing to own slaves on my plantation in South Carolina. That would be a perfect example of moral posturing. I don’t intend to take any moral action. I just intend to gain the approval of others and avoid their moral judgment of my behavior.

Politicians often act in ways designed to influence us into voting for them, even when they have no real intention of keeping their promises. For instance, a politician might say they will cut defense spending but then fail to follow through because they receive large donations from defense contractors. This pattern can apply to any government program, regardless of political affiliation, where powerful financial interests support politicians with the expectation that they will push their special projects. Whenever anyone makes moral statements that contradict or don’t involve moral actual behavior, they are engaged in a form of moral posturing.

Absolutizing Relative Values

The Christian writer, C. S. Lewis, insightfully discusses the danger of relative values that are removed from their context in a larger moral framework. Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and Taoism are all complex and comprehensive systems of morality. In any such system, my moral actions in specific situations involve applying various moral principles within a complex context. Too often, modern moral systems involve the ideological adoption of certain principles while ignoring others. The result can be a kind of moral confusion or even madness.

In his short book, The Abolition of Man, Lewis discusses the harmful consequences of Ignoring or downplaying the importance of the great moral systems throughout history. After introducing the central moral ideas of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, Lewis suggests that the results are the creation of people without the kind of heart understanding of morality and wise action upon which civilization depends. We have, he says, created “men without chests,” that is, humans lacking the character needed for a civilization to thrive. [3]

Throughout most of human history, people have recognized that although not everyone agrees on all the values of a particular group, there is a moral basis for human action. When we remove the complex foundations of moral reasoning within a tradition of moral thinking and acting, we inevitably leave people relying on their own prejudices, upbringing, and the social and immediate pressures they face. This inevitably leads to moral failure.

A civilization in which the moral leaders of society, from individual family leaders, to neighborhood and community leaders, to church leaders, to state and federal leaders, have forsaken the “Tao,” as Lewis puts it, has taken a road that cannot help but lead to moral and social decay and human suffering.

Dialogue and Moral Discourse

One of the most serious effects of moral inversion and moral posturing is that it prevents true dialogue about important issues. For dialogue to occur, both parties must respect each other, understand their own position and its potential weaknesses, and be open to considering the political or moral issue from another perspective. Even more importantly, as the theologian Martin Buber emphasized, we must be willing to see others as a “Thou” and not as an object or an “It.” In other words, we can’t reduce human beings to objects; we must see them as persons with inherent value.[4]

To overcome the dysfunction and fragmentation of modern society, a different approach needs to be adopted. To overcome the fragmentation of our society, its fundamental paradigm for understanding reality (atomistic materialism and individualism) and its fundamental view of how to change that reality (material power) need to be changed. The process of change involves communication in the form of dialogue. Creative transformation in which fragmentation is overcome can be achieved through dialogue.

In the philosopher and physicist David Bohm’s view, the Greek roots of this term shed light on its meaning. “Dia,” meaning “through,” and “logos,” meaning “reason.” Dialogue occurs when two or more people share meaning by exchanging views. Of course, there can be honest and dishonest attempts at dialogue. In honest dialogue, new understanding arises as meaning is conveyed and differing perspectives illuminate reality. For two individuals to engage in real dialogue, they must commit to a mutual exchange of ideas and information to better understand reality. Authentic dialogue involves a continuous flow of meaning. Those participating in the dialogue are immersed in a moving flow of information and thought that constitutes the dialogue itself. A dialogue implicitly seeks a truth that the parties are humble enough to recognize and requires sharing ideas, thoughts, and perspectives.

Dialogue is more than just discussion. “Discussion” shares the same root as percussion or concussion. In a debate, conflicting views are expressed to undermine or challenge the other’s argument. People try to win, score points, and prevail in a discussion. Discussion and debate can create more fragmentation. In genuine dialogue, however, participants aim to discover new meanings and reach mutual understanding. Through this process, fragmentation and its negative effects can be overcome.

Participatory Thinking and Transcendental Ideals

Bohm views the search for knowledge as a scientist does. In practice, science involves a continuous dialogue or exchange of reasoning as investigations are conducted, results and theories are published, criticisms are made, and adjustments are implemented. This scientific way of reasoning should continue to be used in practical activities, but in delicate areas like religion and politics, it is often difficult due to blockages—emotional, ideological, and other types. These blockages hinder communication and the flow of understanding, blocking new discoveries and change. As a result, modern society is marked by widespread fragmentation and conflict. This fragmentation can be addressed through a kind of participatory dialogue where people share meanings and attempt to understand one another.

The significance of transcendental ideals (or potentials) for political thought is that such potentials reveal themselves to a community under concrete circumstances in a provisional but appropriate way.  Each determination is provisionally valid in a specific context. There can be no permanent and unchanging specification of justice as an abstract concept but there can be contextually valid approximations. [5] Because of the inner relationships among people and institutional structures, every determination of justice in a specific context, is relative to, and may be modified by a new emerging context and future understandings. Thus, no determination of justice can be final or fixed but is part of the movement of society, toward a more comprehensive understanding of justice and social peace. [6]

These insights have profound implications not only for our understanding of physical reality but also for our understanding of the social reality in which we live. As Bohm states in , the fragmentation and conflict in society arise from an outdated worldview. promotes, is leading to a loss of social coherence and meaning, as well as the decay of Western democratic institutions. To reverse these trends, a new perspective and approach to social reality are necessary.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

¹ This blog is partially based on prior blogs and a book I have written on the subject of a postmodern political theory. G. Christopher Scruggs, Illumined by Wisdom and Love (College Station, TX: Virtual Bookworm, 2024). Our current situation is the continuation of a long line of moral reductionism. In recent years, the aging of what has been called the “Enlightenment Project” has given rise to a form of cultural and political nihilism. The power orientation of our culture is a part of its plausibility structure. Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth(Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1991).

[2] Michael Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty (Indianapolis Indiana, Liberty Fund, 1998), 131.

[3] Id, 35.

[4] Martin Buber, I and Thou 2^nd ed. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958)

[5] David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London ENG: Routledge, 1980), at 151.

[6] Id, at 157

Several times in recent days, I have participated in prayer vigils for those who lost their lives and families impacted by the recent floods in central Texas. I have been especially impacted by the services led by Christ Episcopal Church in San Antonio, where we live. I have tried to reproduce some of the content of these moving and sad services for those who might need prayer and comfort.

Opening Prayer:

God of All Mercy: We come before you this day with heavy hearts amidst the pain and loss of a great natural disaster that has impacted our lives and loved ones. We lift our hearts in unison, seeking your wisdom, comfort, and consolation in our loss. Hear our common prayers.

Leader: God of all grace, whose love is deeper than mighty waters and stronger than any storm, we beseech you to hear our prayers for those impacted by the floods in the Hill Country and elsewhere in Texas.

People: Lord, hear our prayers that your love may be shown to all who mourn or who are impacted by the floods.

Leader: For the families who have lost loved ones or who wait anxiously for news of their beloved,

People: Lord, hear our Prayers for comfort.

Leader: For those who have lost their lives or have been injured in the storm,

People: Lord, hear our prayer for your amazing grace.

Leader: For families who have been disrupted, separated, or whose homes have been destroyed or lost,

People: Lord, hear our prayer for mercy and peace amid the storms of life.

Leader: For those who are sheltering, grieving, or searching in despair,

People: Lord, give them a sense of your presence amid pain, grief, and loss.

Leader: For those who have lost their lives in this disaster,

People: Receive them by your grace, and give comfort to those they left behind to mourn their loss.

Leader: For first responders, volunteers, and state, federal, and local officials who must work under tremendous pressure and exhaustion.

People: Lord, give them your strength.

Leader: For the many churches in the communities impacted and beyond who seek to provide refuge and help for the suffering,

People: Lord, give them success in their mission.

Leader: For the gift of life eternal and the hope of the resurrection,

People: Lord, give the families impacted hope amid their pain.

Leader: O Lord of the wind and storm, who brings order out of chaos and peace out of despair,

People: Be with those impacted and help restore the homes, families, and communities affected by this great tragedy.

Leader: For all, let the love of Christ who shares in our humanity, our failures, and our suffering,

People: Allow us to sense your presence in our pain and loss.

Closing Prayers:

Oh God, whose property it is always to have mercy upon your servants, we humbly and earnestly pray for the souls of those whom this disaster has taken from us. We give you thanks for our memories of the departed, trusting that you have delivered them from all suffering and pain, and brought them into your presence and the eternal life that only you can bestow. We look forward in hope to seeing them and being rejoined with them through the glorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen.

The peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and souls in the love of God, and the blessing of God, Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be among you and remain with you always.

Amen

An old friend of mine, who was also a debate partner and fellow camper at the YMCA Camp in Springfield, Missouri, recently published an article in the Springfield Daily Citizen, a newspaper in my hometown.[1] Dan happens to be an environmentalist and has encouraged my occasional environmental comments in these blogs, as well as my hope to write a somewhat longer piece. His farm outside of Springfield has encouraged many people, including one of my children, who works in the environmental area and is an organic farmer herself. In his article, he wrote in part:

I step over glowing green plants crisscrossing the hobbit trail.  Sparkling water gushes from every opening along the bluff: a gift from hundreds of sinkholes higher on the Springfield plateau and now headed for Stockton Lake by way of the twisty Sac River.

The Oracle has put away her delicate ephemeral spring flowers and she watches over a riot of chlorophyll fueled fauna leaping out of the ground and staking out their claim before the heat and drought of August. I can’t find proper footing for my lawn chair and all my clattering and mumbling tells the Oracle something is wrong. She sends a butterfly and waits for me to hold forth.

…

She explained the forest around us is a complex, balanced ecosystem composed of a web of dependent relationships between plants, animals, fungi, geology and climate. Millions of independent actors live and work in this system that survives tornadoes, fires, droughts and biblical plagues. Ecosystems can thrive for eons until the arrival of the invaders.

Invading plants and animals spread with aggression and malice for those in the web: not because the system is weak, but because these intruders ignore cooperative interrelationships and the value of diversity. They leverage their single-minded strategy to capture shared resources and spread their genes at the expense of everyone else. Kudzu eats the South. Burmese pythons invade the everglades. Fire ants fill Texas pastures. Hog weed carpets corn fields. Multiflora rose, bush honeysuckle and poison hemlock crawl over the Ozarks.

These invasive newcomers shrink cooperation and resilience to a minimum,” she said. Invaders may release allelochemicals to poison native plants. Keystone species die; colors fade. Productivity and genetic diversity disappear. [2]

An Organic World

The kind of postmodernism I frequently argue for in these blogs is often called “organic.” [3] A part of the reason for using the word organic is that it implies a kind of logic and view of the world that is not mechanical, but rather organic in the sense that nature is organic. The modern world has been dominated by the idea that the world is like a gigantic machine built up of parts. The best way to understand how this machine works is to take everything apart (called reductionism in the parlance) to see how it works. Reductionism is, of course, diametrically opposite of what is called “wholism,” or the idea that we cannot understand a thing reductively but must also understand it wholistically.

When people indicate that we are entering a “postmodern world,” they say that the idea that we can understand the world by taking it apart doesn’t work. In fact, from quantum physics to environmental studies, it’s become a kind of buzzword notion that wholism characterizes reality. That is the say, matter how useful it may be to take things apart to see how they work, the fact is that the whole is very often greater than the parts. Just to give an example that might be relevant, if we were to have a nuclear disaster and thousands of years from now, people from another planet were to discover a brand, new automobile, they could take it apart all they wanted to, but in the end, it couldn’t really be understood unless they viewed it as a whole, as a machine designed to take people from one place to the other.

A second characteristic of any organic philosophy is that it is inherently historical. From quantum phenomena to the rise and fall of great nations, our world is fundamentally shaped by a history of events. Each moment is built upon previous moments. Each thing in the world is a part of an emergent process in which “decisions” are made. Once again, from the famous double slit experiment of quantum physics to the decisions of governments, the past must be taken into account, and that past limits current decisions.

While sometimes these previous moments may appear to be mechanically connected and flow in a predictable manner, this is not always the case. For example, at an atomic level, one can only statistically predict where an electron might be. There is an element of freedom or chance in how the subatomic world operates. The same principle applies to human society. There is always an element of freedom in how history unfolds. In this sense, in an organic ecological logic, the past both restricts our choices and opens up avenues for future growth.

Dan’s Helpful Narrative

Now, back to my friend. When I responded to his insightful article, I told him that I believed he exemplified a kind of organic logic. Logic is simply a way of understanding things—it’s a form of rationality. Whether we’re talking about mathematical logic, Aristotelian logic, symbolic logic, or the various forms of computer logic, logic is an orderly way of understanding reality. That doesn’t mean that it’s a way of predicting reality. It is at this very point that the modern world view begins to deteriorate. The world is simply not mechanical.

Dan’s article helps us see some of the factors that characterize the “logic” of organic systems. Among them, it seems to me that Dan mentions five:

1. Independent Actors (Free Actors)
2. Web of Dependent Relationships (Ecosystem)
3. Thriving for Eons (Constant Adaptation)
4. Value of Diversity (Multiple Actors)
5. Invading Plants or Animals (External Forces)

It can be helpful to look at each one separately.

Independent Actors

It may be useful to note where modernity and postmodernity (often a form of hypermodern thinking) begin to differ—with the importance of the particular. Things have an independent reality, a reality that they can create and maintain. Modern science tends to examine and define these independent realities into smaller and smaller units (reductionism). But reductionism can only tell us a part of the story.

The “ephemeral spring flowers” of which Dan speaks will do. Here in Texas, we have a version of spring flowers called “bluebonnets,” which my wife particularly likes. They are specific things that need to be seen and respected for what they are. No matter how many of a particular there may be, each particular is in some way unique. Bluebonnets are a case in point. They are most beautiful and most commonly seen in great numbers along the roadside and in fields. From a distance, they look very much alike. Up close they are particular.

From subatomic particles to galaxies, things are what they are. This is particularly true of living things and especially of human beings. Each human being is unique and different carrying a different DNA (the carrier of uniqueness and historical determinism). For those of us of a religious bent, not only are human beings unique, but they are also infinitely valuable in their unique humanity.

Web of Dependent Relationships

The “ephemeral spring flowers” do not, however, exist without relationships with other things. The soil, surrounding plants, the sun, weather, and many factors determine what can and cannot be grow. My father grew roses in Springfield, Missouri, but in San Antonio, Texas, the roses my father grew cannot survive. The summer heat, the July and August drought, and the nature of the soil in the Texas Hill Country all make growing roses difficult in our part of the world. (There are a few breeds that do grow here, though I have had a hard time getting them to grow in my own yard.)

 All of reality is like this: Everything is related to some degree or another to other things, and ultimately to everything. When we ignore that relationality, we create problems for ourselves and other parts of the common reality we all inhabit. This web of dependent relationships should also make us humble. It is very rare that any decisionmaker can foresee or understand all the relationships that can and may impact the results of a decision. This is especially true in human relationships, personal and social.

Value of Diversity

When I go see the person who manages my retirement, we often talk about the need for “diversification” in my portfolio. Smart investors are diversified in the companies and industries that make up their portfolios. Nature, and all of reality, is no different. There is strength in diversity. I no longer grow vegetables in my garden (too small and too hot) but it is always good to grow a diverse crop of plants. If in a summer there is a particular blight or infestation, and something does not grow well, other plants take up the slack.

A couple of summers ago, I planted three roses in the flower bed outside Kathy’s office window. It happened to be one of the driest summers San Antonio has ever experienced. We came home after a vacation to find that two of the three had died. Luckily, the cactus and other plants we had planted survived the summer.

Modernity, and especially what I may call “arrogant modernity,” is inclined to think it can predict what will work the best and demand uniformity. This is a big mistake. There is power as well as beauty in diversity.

Invading Plants and Animals

We have a small home out in the country. It is near a river, and we are very proud of the pecan trees on the property. Last summer, we took a long trip to Greece and Turkey following the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul. When we returned, we were shocked to see that webworms had invaded our pecans, covering the entire property with their destructive ugliness. Fortunately, the arborist said the trees would recover, and they have. When I was young, Springfield had many beautiful elm trees. Then the Dutch Elm Disease invaded the town, and they all died. These are both examples of invasive destruction.

Nature is like that. Things do not last forever. There are invasive plants and animals, and there are also natural disasters. Millions of years ago, a meteor hit North America, and the mastodons went extinct as a result. Science tells us that the universe itself will not last forever. Either it will experience what they call the “Big Crunch” and collapse upon itself, or it will experience the “Big Inflation,” continuous expanding and descending into chaos.

Currently, one of the most invasive animals on the planet is the human race. We have finally, after millennia of trying, achieved a kind of mastery over nature. Today, our mastery of nature threatens our own existence. If we do not want to be the invasive cause of our own destruction, we need to find what ecologists call a more sustainable relationship between the human race and nature. Mother Earth, our home, depends on it.

Wise and Loving Stewardship

We cannot deny that humans influence nature. Our impact is unavoidable. What we can prevent is wasteful, excessively violent, or overuse of nature and its resources. This is not a matter of the political left or right getting its way. Years ago, I traveled in Russia. One would be hard-pressed to find a greater case of environmental abuse than that caused by the “master planners” of the Soviet state. On the other hand, Kathy and I have lived very close to a center of the refining industry, and we saw what it was like before modern environmental protection. It was not a pretty sight.

Ultimately, responsible stewardship of nature relies on the commitment and effort of all of us. We all make choices that impact our environment. This might seem like a minor example, but plastic water bottles and bottled water are a particular concern for me. Having traveled extensively, I can attest that you can’t go deep into the jungles of Africa without seeing how nature has been polluted by people dropping plastic water containers along roads or trails. In the central Pacific Ocean, a vast area is entirely covered with discarded plastic containers.

It’s hot in Texas, and I enjoy playing golf. I’ve learned to carry my own thermos and avoid buying water from the pro shop. Of course, sometimes I forget my water and end up buying a plastic bottle or two. It happens about once or twice each summer, but not every week. I’ve driven a small, fuel-efficient, and relatively safe car for many years. Its size helps conserve metal and plastic, and its good mileage saves gasoline. And guess what? I can go wherever I need to.

We all need to develop a different and better way of looking at the world, and Dan has given us a small glimpse of what that means.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved 

[1] Dan Chiles, “The Oracle says, ‘Be True to Your School Even in the Face of Federal Pressure’” Springfield Daily Citizen (June 9, 2025).

[2] Id.

[3] See, A. N. Whitehead Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York, NY: Free Press, 1929, 1957), at 90, Adventure of Ideas (New York, NY: Free Press, 1933), Modes of Thought (New York, NY: Free Press, 1938, 1968).

 

Some years ago, I spent a long time helping an organization in transition. After a couple of years, the problems were resolved (or at least the beginnings of solutions had started), and a new group of leaders was ready and chosen to move forward. In the process, I think I learned more than anyone else involved. After a few months, someone asked me for a summary of what I had learned, and I wrote the following, which I am publishing in this blog.

I have learned over the years from my involvement in leading six or more churches and several nonprofit organizations that there are no perfect leaders. Some people love to criticize and judge leaders, especially in the media. This is fair, and those in leadership should listen to their critiques. However, I sometimes suspect that those criticizing have the luxury of never truly being responsible or facing failure in leadership. Most leaders would agree that they have learned the most from their failures.

Failures rarely mark the end of leadership. The real disaster is not recognizing failures and mistakes. Those who listen, learn, and grow can recover and attain new heights of leadership potential.

My 29 Summary Thoughts

1. Contribute Positive Energy. A leader’s primary responsibility is to infuse positive energy (wisdom and love) into the organization’s social system. (“Leaders do not have the luxury of going negative.”) I consider this the first principle of leadership. Leaders introduce positive energy into the system through wise love.
2. Demonstrate Sacrificial Love. In a Christian organization, one key form of positive energy is expressing other-centered love (Christlike love, Cruciform love, etc.), being willing to suffer for the good of the organization and its members. This means being willing to sacrifice your own ego needs for the group.
3. Discern with wisdom. Credibility is primarily built on wise decision-making. Even when facing opposition, if you prove to be right in the end, you will become a stronger leader. Opponents often criticize the best decisions. Don’t let that fact deter you from seeking the counsel of others and seeking the wisest course of action.
4. Exude confidence in your Leadership. Results require patience, and good plans often face difficulties during implementation. A strong leader maintains patience and demonstrates confidence, even when privately concerned about the outcome. You may have private fears about the odds of success. Most often, it is best to keep them to yourself. Courage is grace under pressure. The more challenging the situation, the calmer the leader must remain.
5. Calculate Carefully. A good leader considers the likely outcomes of several options before deciding. Examining the problem, seeking advice, and understanding the possible results of different courses of action lead to sound decisions. This means seeking advice and counsel from many people, including those who may not appreciate the course of action you may choose.
6. Get the Facts. Often, bad decisions result from wrong or inadequate facts. Look beneath the surface and ask, “What is happening here?” The worst decisions are made when the leader does not seek the facts or believes false facts to be true.
7. Think about what others will do. In a conflict, leaders often don’t know what opponents will do. Focus on what they are capable of and likely to do.
8. Count the Cost of Conflict. Conflict in an organization can be positive and lead to growth, but it often damages a leader’s credibility. Therefore, it is essential to count the cost of conflict.
9. Discern the Spirits. Often, conflict in an organization signals spiritual conflict at a deep level. A good leader recognizes that spiritual dimension and asks, “Am I part of the spiritual issue?” Surface problems, which are symptoms of deeper conflicts, are never solved superficially.
10. Seek Good Advice. Proverbs reminds leaders that victory comes from good advice and defeat from bad advice. No leader can get too much good advice, especially during a crisis.
11. Plan Thoroughly. There’s no replacing careful planning—events almost never go exactly as planned, which is why adaptability is a crucial leadership trait. Still, a plan details your initial expectations and helps guide adjustments for unexpected developments.
12. Disengage from Your Ego. A good leader is self-aware and seeks to discern the wisest and most loving result. This means disengaging from one’s own ego and opening oneself to the needs of others. We all have ego needs. Good leaders are conscious of their needs and resist being driven by unconscious motives.
13. Aim for a Win/Win outcome, especially during serious conflicts, particularly if you think you will “win.” Remember to try to achieve a win for everyone as much as possible. You can’t always give people what they want, but you can strive to ensure they get something valuable.
14. There May Be No “Pain Free Result.” Leaders must make decisions in the best interests of the entire group. Unfortunately, everyone rarely wants or needs the same things. Therefore, there is no pain-free result. The goal is to anticipate and reduce the pain of a good decision.
15. Decide at the Right Moment. Too many Christian leaders are constantly studying without ever making a decision. Some leaders are impulsive. To move an organization forward, a leader must be patient and decisive. The key is to decide at the right moment and take action.
16. Never Make Decisions Out of Fear. Leaders often feel anxious about a course of action, and anticipating problems is valuable, but it should never be the main reason for making a decision. Decisions made from fear are rarely good decisions.
17. Don’t React. Act. Never make decisions reactively. Threats, failures, difficulties, mixups, and similar issues often cause a leader to react. Don’t. Act from wise love.
18. Stay relational. During conflicts, avoid withdrawing from personal friendships with opponents. Maintaining relationships is a key leadership trait.
19. Maintain the Moral High Ground. If a leader appears petty, self-absorbed, dishonest, or devious, they lose the moral high ground. Especially during conflicts, it’s crucial to stay on the high ground.
20. Say Yes. Whenever possible, say “Yes.” The only time to say “No” is when the action would go against the organization’s Mission, Vision, and Values or Biblical truth. Yes has the potential to move an organization forward; no leaves it where it is.
21. Act Promptly with Love. Good leaders act quickly with love, humility, humanity, vigilance, and courage. Once a decision is made, act promptly. Remember, problems rarely improve with time. They tend to get worse.
22. Be direct. It is crucial to communicate with calm, rational frankness. Deceit, circuitousness, and indirection weaken the leader’s ultimate authority.
23. Adapt to Change. Good leaders don’t cling to fixed ideas; they let events guide them. This doesn’t mean good leaders lack morals and values. Having a fixed goal is okay, but there are usually many ways to reach it.
24. Communicate Constantly. Leaders often know where they and the organization are headed, but forget that most people don’t. Keep regularly sharing the organization’s plans, goals, purposes, and strategy. Remember: Good communication also means listening. Keep in mind that those who disagree might be right.
25. Keep Your Own Counsel. Every word a leader says eventually spreads throughout the organization. Be discreet and speak as little as possible when facing difficult decisions or dangerous situations.
26. Align Yourself with God. Prayer, meditation, contemplation, alone time, retreat, and other spiritual disciplines help leaders align their will with God’s. Make time for alignment. Seek to understand where Christ fits in the decision.
27. Guide and Coach Subordinates. Good leaders like to lead. The best subordinates are those who can take initiative. Therefore, a good leader guides and coaches whenever possible. The need to give orders or ultimatums is often a sign of failure.
28. Support Subordinates. Senior leadership’s primary role is to set overall direction and provide general guidance for staff. Once a decision is made, support your subordinate unless there is a moral issue. The leader who makes a subordinate look good also looks good.
29. Never hurt anyone more than is Necessary. Leaders must make tough decisions, and sometimes people get hurt in the process. This is especially true in personnel matters when employees need to be let go. Never cause more pain than is truly unavoidable.
30. Work hard as a Leader. Expending energy is part of injecting positive energy. Leadership sets a standard and example through its work ethic. This does not mean ignoring self-care, family, and close friends. It means setting the standard for co-workers. Especially in crises, people must work hard. They need to see an example to follow from the leader.

Conclusion

Of course, there are many other principles that leaders might follow. This is not an exhaustive list. Leadership is more of an art than a technique. It is highly personal. A leader may be very successful in one situation with one group of people and fail in another situation with a different group. We might say that these are not strict rules but rather tips that each leader must adapt to their own personality.

General Eisenhower once said that anyone could be a leader. I don’t believe he meant that anyone could be President of the United States or the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force. Instead, he emphasized that all of us can exercise appropriate leadership within our social situations and among friends and colleagues. It’s important to remember that there is never just one leader in any organization. Organizations are communities, and communities are made up of many people and diverse interests. This is especially true in large organizations with many people, programs, and operations.

Eisenhower’s comment about leadership was made to students at Sandhurst, some of whom would eventually lead small units on D-Day. It’s worth repeating exactly what he said:

You must know every single one of your men. It is not enough that you are the best soldier in that unit, that you are the strongest, the toughest, the most durable, and the best equipped technically. You must be their leader, their father, their mentor even if you are half their age. You must understand their problems. You must keep them out of trouble. If they get in trouble, you must be the one to go to their rescue. That cultivation of human understanding between you and your men is the one art that you must yet master, and you must master it quickly. Then you will be doing your duty….(Dwight David Eisenhower, March 11, 1944)

It is worth noting that Eisenhower was not speaking to senior commanders but to new graduates who would lead small units in virtual anonymity. His rise to leadership came unexpectedly, and after many years of remaining relatively anonymous, working behind the scenes for others who received credit for his efforts. His leadership exemplifies the virtues of humility, wisdom, and compassion.

This is my last post for the time being from The Ethics of Beauty. [1] In this particular Blog, I will focus on the relevance of a focus on Beauty for the Great Commission and the Christian endeavors of Evangelism and Discipleship. It turns out that beauty is essential in drawing people into God’s church.

When I was a new Christian, the first books I read were C. S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity,” Francis Schaeffer’s “The God Who Is There,” and Josh McDowell’s “Evidence that Demands a Verdict.” It sounds as if (as was somewhat the case) that my conversion was a “truth first” conversion. However, there is more to the story.

In a broken part of my life, a woman who worked in a law firm with me invited me to a Bible Study in Houston, Texas, one spring Friday night. Although there were a few singles (one of whom I eventually married), most participants were young married people about my age. Over the next few months, I got to know many of them, had meals in their homes, and saw the difference between their lives and mine. The common denominator for these happy couples was their faith in Christ and participation in a Christian community. There was something present in their lives that I desired for my life. Eventually, I came to Christ.

Let us dwell on the phrase, “something present in their lives that I desired.” When I teach on the “Four Loves” (there are more than four, but Lewis made famous “the Four Loves”), I am always careful to note that, while Eros is used for sexual love, its Greek meaning is broader and deeper than merely sex. “Eros” is an evoked love. Something in the beloved draws us out of ourselves with a desire to be in community with it. Eros is a response to beauty.

I can eros a person, a house, a painting, a social entity, a community, etc. The beauty of the thing loved draws the lover into the relationship with the beloved. Do you remember my mentioning Francis Schaeffer’s “The God Who Is There”? Shortly after reading Schaeffer’s book, I read Edith Schaeffer’s “L’Abri,” the story of their life and ministry in Switzerland. Believe me, I was motivated to read the rest of Schaeffer’s works more by his wife’s book, and the loveliness of the life and ministry they created in Huémoz, than by Schaeffer’s books, which can be hard to read. Schaeffer is known for his apologetics, but people forget the attractiveness of the place he created in Switzerland.

The point is simple: If Christians wish to attract other Christians to their faith, then the first thing we must do is show them by our lives and relationships that Christianity is a beautiful thing that will bring them happiness, wholeness, and pleasure. We must create little communities of beauty where people can find forgiveness, healing, and wholeness for their lives. That is precisely what I saw at what we knew as “The Friday Night Bible Study.”

Balancing “Show” with “Go”

Evangelical Christians know all about the Great Commission:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely, I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Matthew 28:18-20).

Just as foundational for the church and discipleship is the description of the first church in Acts, where it is recorded:

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who needed them.  Every day, they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the people’s favor. And the Lord added to their number daily those being saved (Acts 2:41-48).

While the apostles’ teaching formed the intellectual basis for the little community, it was also characterized by community, table fellowship, and prayer, and the church’s generosity attracted everyone. The table fellowship and hospitality of the early church were just as crucial as its proclamation for the growth of the early church. When people saw the beauty of the first Christians’ fellowship, community, faith, and morals, they desired to join to experience the same joy. “Show” was as important as “Go” in the early church.[2]

A Vision of the End

People are motivated by love to seek the ends they choose; therefore, people need a vision for the end of life they desire. This week in my daily devotional, I was reminded that nothing is more important than falling in love. Furthermore, the most important love we can have is a love for God. As one author put it,

What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you will read, whom you will know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.” [3]

Many times I’ve told a story from my early Christian life. The men of our Bible study were playing touch football with the senior high from our church. The game was over, and I watched one of my friends holding hands with his wife, walking off the field. I was suddenly captured by the notion that that was exactly what I wanted my marriage to look like. Notice I hadn’t attended a seminar where a pastor or psychologist articulated the “seven secrets of a successful marriage.” I just looked and saw—and what I saw was beautiful.

In the Revelation, the apostle John gives us a vision of beauty when he describes the church as a beautiful bride or a city made of jewels and gold descending from heaven (Revelation 21:1-21). The idea is that faith in Christ and his Church is so attractive that it’s like the most beautiful bride you’ve ever seen or the most beautiful city you’ve ever imagined. This vision of a bride and a city was intended to motivate the early church to keep on in the face of persecution because of the attractiveness of the end for which they were striving. They were to show the people of the decaying Roman Empire a better, healthier, and more beautiful way of life.

The Final Judgement

In Matthew, near the end of his life, Jesus speaks of the end of times. He reveals himself as the judge of the Earth who will separate the sheep from the goats. The separation will be strictly based on how Christ was treated in the face of the victims of history:

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the world’s creation. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me’ (Matthew 25:34-36).

How an “Ethics of Beauty” deals with this passage is important, and it is a position that illuminates the entirety of The Ethics of Beauty and its underlying meaning and purpose: The sacrifice of Christ on the Cross was not only a juridical action of God/Man dying for the sins of the world; it was also the most beautiful act of human history and an act that reveals the true nature of beauty, for sacrificial love is the most beautiful action of all. [4]

As Christians embody the beauty of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, there are many ways in which we act to reveal that beauty to the world. In addition to mission work, philanthropy, doing a good job in our ordinary lives in the world, serving other people, and taking care of our families, we also reveal the beauty of Christ when we pray, meditate, and live out the wisdom and love of God.[5]

Beauty in the Season of Pentecost

Christians best demonstrate the beauty of Christ when we take care of all of our responsibilities, from the smallest to the greatest, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which is, after all, the wisdom and love of God with us. There is a certain unpredictability about how the Spirit will lead us from time to time and in situation after situation. Love must be wise, but it really doesn’t have many rules. Instead, love adapts itself to the needs of those being loved. [6] Pattisis puts it this way:

When the Holy Spirit is moving, life becomes unpredictable…. It becomes fractal, and more than fractal; that is, fractals are a part of nature, but in the Spirit, we enter the realm of the supernatural. Each of the excellent ways of ministering to Christ in the least these of is present within all other ways.[7]

Here, we have an excellent statement of the freedom of the Spirit to move, which will create harmony and healing in human relationships. We are not mere automatons but people created in God’s image and being conformed to God’s image in Christ.

The Church as a Reflection and Symbol of Divine Love

Without in any way denigrating the activities of para-church and other organizations, the primary vehicle in which God intends to evangelize the world is the church. In the church, the world is to see the beauty of the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, reflected in the world. When the church fails to be that community of love, a beautiful thing set among the nations, it fails to disciple the nations. More than once in my pastoral career, I’ve had the opportunity to watch a very effective church destroy its effectiveness amid church conflict. I often tell my wife, “People are not attracted to a church that’s unhappy or arguing.” Everything the church does, from its worship to its fellowship to its teaching and other ministries, should be carefully constructed to reflect not just the truth of the gospel but its beauty. When we go astray—and all people and all churches do go astray—we confess what we have done, return to fellowship with God, and go forward. Not only is God’s original intention beautiful, but what God does with our brokenness and flawed beauty is lovely as well.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Timothy Pattisis, The Ethics of Beauty (Maryville, MO: St. Nicholas Press, 2020).

[2] Id, 522.

[3] Pedro Aruppe, quoted in Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Relationships Day By Day (Grand Rapids, MI, Zondervan, 2017), 42.

[4] The Ethics of Beauty, 536-539.

[5] Id, 545ff.

[6] Id, 554ff.

[7] Id, 551.

At one point in The Ethics of Beauty, Timothy Pattisi emphasizes that the American Constitution and the system of government it established are products of the Enlightenment.[1] Indwelling the notion that the universe operates like a machine, the founders aimed to design their new nation as a mechanism that guarantees reliable governance. The entire notion of “separation of powers” and “checks and balances” is the constitutional equivalent of “regulators” on a machine.

This paradigm for visualizing the world and human society arose when Sir Isaac Newton depicted the universe as mechanistic, composed of matter and forces. From this viewpoint, human reason is merely a force (mental power) that is useful for altering the physical world and human society. In the realm of industry, this involved technology; in the political realm, it meant harnessing the mind’s power in pursuit of political and economic dominance. This inevitably led to a perception of society as consisting of isolated individuals interconnected by various forces.

I’ve been writing this series of blogs because of this perspective’s social, cultural, and political consequences on the world. If those who believe we are at the end of the modern world and at the beginning of what is called the postmodern world are correct, and if it is necessary to adopt a more organic and human-centered view of the world—one that encompasses mind, body, and spirit—then it is not surprising that our political institutions are under great stress. We see the results of a mechanical view of reality taken too far all around us.

As I have said before, if all that is involved is a will to power, and if politics is simply war by another name, then the destructive political behavior we read about daily is warranted. However, if the materialistic view of the world is incorrect, then there is hope to avoid the decay of our social institutions. Achieving this will require changes in our perspective on the world and the way we structure our political institutions.

Basing Politics on an Outdated Model of the World.

The modern worldview that produced the United States Constitution views reality as ultimately materialistic. The “real” consists of material things (ultimately particles) connected by various forces. In this perspective, the universe, including the human race, is visualized as a complex machine made of matter and energy. In recent years, this materialistic model of the world has been replaced by one that assumes deep interconnectedness, relationality, freedom, and inner sensitivity. It is an “organic model” that perceives the universe not as a machine but as an organism or a process. In my view, and that of others, the older mindset has led modern politicians, policy-makers, and intellectuals into numerous errors. Henry Sapp puts it as follows:

 [We] are faced today with the spectacle of our society being built increasingly upon a conception of reality erected upon a mechanical conception of nature now known to be fundamentally false. … As a consequence of this widely disseminated misinformation, “well-informed” officials, administrators, legislators, judges, educators, and medical professionals who guide the development of our society are encouraged to shape our lives in ways predicated on known-to-be-false premises about “nature and nature’s laws.”[2]

The world, as modern relativity and quantum theories describe it, is deeply relational, historical, and sensitive to minor information inputs. If the world itself is organic, relational, traditional, and sensitive to minor information inputs, then so are human beings and the societies they create. This insight leads to a much different and more relational view of human society—a view consistent with an older classical view of human society.

As Pattisis puts it, “our ignorance of this basic being of society is one reason why, since the Enlightenment, domestic political disagreements have frequently evolved into violent civil wars.”[3] It does not take a lot of imagination to see this truth in the kinds of domestic violence that the United States and other Western nations have experienced in recent years. The breakdown of the enlightenment idea, ideals of government, can be seen this week in the rioting in Los Angeles and the responses of politicians to that violence. Some are egging on the violence, and others are using violence to stop the violence. In each case, there’s a belief that the violence is justified.

The Insight and Structure of the Founding Generation

It is widely recognized and universally accepted that the United States of America was the first great democracy of the modern world, born from the Enlightenment and its focus on human freedom. Consistent with their worldview—that the world was fundamentally a machine—the founding generation sought to create a system of government that would reflect that reality. The legislative, executive, and judicial functions were separated as “powers” competing with and checking one another’s behavior. It was the naïve belief of the Enlightenment that this would happen automatically. In a way, our system of government was meant to introduce Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” into the realm of governance.[4]

In Pattisis’s view, this division of government into executive, legislative, and judicial functions replicates the insights of Plato in The Republic and Jane Jacobs in her work on political philosophy. Both Jacobs and Plato saw society as made up of certain kinds of special interest groups. Plato sees that an ideal state requires ideal rulers to administer its political and governmental affairs. If these rulers are to be able to rule effectively, then the various social classes that make up any society must be harmonized. Otherwise, there can be no justice. Any society is made up of different classes of people. Plato was familiar with Greek societies and those of the surrounding area. In these societies, there were six fundamental groups:  Rulers (charches), Soldiers (polymystes), Farmers (perioikoi), Craftsmen (tekton), Laborers (helots), and Slaves (douloi).

The first two groups are related, for the rulers generally came from an aristocracy (aristoi) with military training and ability. In the Republic, Plato sometimes reduces the various groups to three: rulers, philosophers, and everyone else. [5] In her musings about politics, Jane Jacobs simplifies the Platonic vision of society into two categories, Guardians and Traders. Guardians administer and guard the social system. In our society, the guardians are those active in politics, in the executive, legislative, and judicial parts of governments, as they are found in various national, state, and local bodies. Guardians populate modern bureaucracies.

The problem, as Jacob sees it, is that the interests and perspectives of Guardians and Traders are inevitably at odds with each other. She goes into great detail, illustrating how Guardians and Traders view the world in completely different ways and hold entirely different opinions on politics and morality. For instance, generally speaking, Guardians don’t like the trading aspect of business; it’s too chaotic. Conversely, traders disapprove of regulation and order, preferring the freedom to conduct business as they wish; it’s too restrictive. Guardians change the rules of society to create their vision of stability. Traders highly value predictability in law and the enforcement of contracts, whereas Guardians prioritize administrative, military, legal, and political power.[6]

Complicating matters is that Traders and Guardians hold different views on the nature of justice. Traders generally believe that justice means everyone receiving what they have earned and deserve. Guardians, conversely, see justice as about equality in outcomes. Both perspectives are partially correct but ultimately limited. For instance, social status and luck often play significant roles in success. There’s nothing just about being born to wealthy parents or experiencing moral luck. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that equality of outcomes can stifle productive striving and the pursuit of excellence. According to economic theory, if pushed too far, equality of outcomes leads to moral hazard. For social peace to prevail, some “third force” must operate within any society to balance these competing ideals.[7]

This point precisely connects the work of Jacobs and Plato to The Ethics of Beauty. Due to the intractable conflict among various social groups, a third force is necessary to unify and harmonize society in order to achieve social peace. Jacobs recommends, and Pattisis follows her approach, that a “third force,” which can take the form of love, serves as that social bond. As Pattisis puts it:

“What is required in order to have a civilization is a concert of the two social justices under the influence of love. Love is what makes it possible for us to balance the two opposing main kinds of social justice into one social harmony. This is why the Byzantines called their social and political theory “symphonia”—they were after a concert, a musical and artistic balance and proportion of the merchant approach and the warrior approach to social order.” [8]

I have previously described the necessary change as a return to a fundamentally organic, communal, wisdom-oriented view of social life, which I call sophio-agapism. As I put it in another context:

Sophio-agapism embraces a communitarian viewpoint that sees all participants in society as part of a common community bound together not just by power but fundamentally by a willingness to sacrifice for the community, whose interests must be considered in addition to the selfish interests of individuals that make up that community (the agapic move). In particular, nurturing families, neighborhoods, mediating institutions, and voluntary societies create social bonds that give stability and restraint to the state’s power and can accomplish goals that state power alone cannot achieve.

Political love is fundamentally a recognition that society is a joint endeavor requiring the cooperative efforts of all participants to achieve human flourishing. It is a social bond that transcends individual grasping and searching for personal peace, pleasure, and affluence. It requires confidence that the existing social order, as flawed as it may be, provides positive benefits to all members of society and should be protected while at the same time advancing in the realization of justice and human flourishing.

Sophio-agapism embraces the ideal of social harmony as the goal of political life. The modern, revolutionary focus on equality dooms political life to unending conflict among persons and classes. Political life aims to achieve progressively more significant degrees of harmony among the various participants in any society. A return to viewing social harmony as the aim of wise and just decision-making is implied by the interconnectedness of the world and the various societies humans inhabit. Equality

is undoubtedly an essential component of justice, as are opportunities to achieve, the acquisition of property that one can call one’s own, respect for all citizens, and a host of other components of a functional society. [9]

Overcoming the Delusions of the Enlightenment

One Enlightenment delusion was the belief that creating a universally accepted moral and political system would be possible solely through human reason. The organic approach advocated in The Ethics of Beauty and my work, Illuminated by Wisdom and Love, holds this idea to be fundamentally flawed. Human history and social institutions are inherently historical and reflect the traditions that preceded them. There is not, nor has there ever been, a “universally accepted moral and political system” nor is one possible. There cannot be a single fixed system of social harmony.[10] We live in a constantly changing historical flow of culture and society. Whatever the current state, someone will be dissatisfied and suggest changes.

Any serious reader of the Federalist Papers and the history of the Constitutional Convention recognizes that Madison, Hamilton, and others were well-versed in the earlier, classical view of society. They were influenced as much by Cicero and Edmund Burke as by Thomas Hobbes. The problem we face is that contemporary political thinkers and actors are overly-influenced by Hobbes and the intellectual optimism of the Enlightenment. Fundamentally, this must be overcome for the postmodern world to flourish.

Instead of believing that we can construct the perfect political system solely through human reason, we need to focus on fostering social harmony and refining our current political system. This reflects the principles of sophio-agapismand The Ethics of Beauty. Most importantly, we must move past our fascination with the idea that politics is merely war by another name. Politics is a collaborative effort among the members of society to achieve the optimal balance of interests at any given moment. If it seeks to be anything more, it leads to the tragedies seen in Germany, Russia, China, and other evident calamities of the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

[1] Tomothy Pattisis, The Ethics of Beauty (Maryville, MO: St. Nicholas Press, 2020), 584, note 30.

[2] Henry F. Sapp, “Whitehead, James, and the Ontology of Quantum Theory” 5(1) Mind and Matter (2007) downloaded at https://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/WJQO.pdf (June 16, 2020), 85. In this quote, Sapp is not speaking of the exact phenomena that I am concerned with here—the tendency to view all reality as a machine—but his quote is equally applicable to what I am saying in this essay. Sapp is concerned with the assumption of materialistic theory that our experience of human freedom and the efficacy of human thought is an illusion. This quote from Sapp is one of my favorites and appears over and over in my writing.

[3] Ethics of Beauty, 583.

[4] Ethics of Beauty, 584, note 31..

[5] Plato, Republic tr. G. M.A. Grube rev. C.D.C Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992)

[6] Ethics of Beauty, 561. Pattisis creates a page-long chart showing the differences, which is well worth reading.

[7] Id.

[8] Id, at 566.

[9] G. Christopher Scruggs, Illumined by Wisdom and Love: Essays on a Sopio-Agapic Constructive Political Philosophy (College Station, TX: Virtual Bookworm, 2024), 258-9.

[10] This was the mistake of Plato criticized by Karl Popper in his magisterial work The Open Society and its Enemies (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).

 

The Ethics of Beauty is a multidisciplinary work. Interestingly, the book does not begin with an analysis of beauty per se. [1] Instead, it starts by examining how the ethics of beauty can clarify certain occurrences in post-traumatic stress situations, with particular emphasis on the psychological damage caused by war. The author, now a professor of ethics, also assisted soldiers in recovering from war trauma.

In a way, this blog serves as a bridge to the next week, which will discuss the application of the ethics of beauty to our constitutional system and its moral underpinnings. This week, however, I want to focus on the specifics of why beauty and the ethics of beauty are relevant for those recovering from PTSD. It begins with a difference in how Orthodoxy and Western theology traditionally view war. In the West, we’ve developed a doctrine of “just war.” This doctrine outlines when a government may resort to war (Jus ad Bellum) and how war must be conducted (Jus in Bello).

The Least Unjust War

Under just war theory, for a war to be just, there must be a just cause for war and just intentions in commencing hostilities. A legitimate authority must be involved. The extent of the war must be proportional to its reasons, and resorting to war should be the final option in a series of steps to prevent conflict. Conducting a war justly requires discrimination on the part of combatants, avoiding injury to non-combatants, and proportionality, using force proportional to the strategic benefits sought.

In the East, they’ve adopted a slightly different approach. In Eastern Orthodoxy, there has been a tendency to start with the belief that war is inherently evil. In other words, the destructiveness of war, no matter how necessary it may be, is itself evil. Consequently, those who participate in war are engaging in something fundamentally evil. Since it is inherently evil, the more violent the conflict and the more deeply involved the actor becomes, the more likely it is that significant spiritual and psychological damage will occur to the warrior. War is inevitably damaging to the human soul. [2] One might say that, as opposed to a just war, there’s a notion of the least unjust war in the East. Both recognize that war is a feature of human history.

The Ugliness of War

If war is somehow inherently ugly, and if the fact that war is being fought means that the harmony intended for creation is being broken, then recovering from psychological injury due to war involves more than just learning to cope with prior trauma. As opposed to developing coping mechanisms, the soldier needs to be healed of the spiritual injury done to them by the mere fact that they were required to engage in an inherently destructive activity. This means, among other things, that the person involved must accept their responsibility for the damage done to them by the battle. Trauma is connected to the human feeling that a moral order has been violated. [3]

In connection with my years as a pastor, I’ve had to counsel soldiers suffering from PTSD more than once. In many cases, they felt guilty about things they had done due to combat. On more than one occasion, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with soldiers who were responsible for firing munitions at an enemy facility in which civilians happened to be present.

Let’s take a bridge, for example. When the weapon was fired, no one was on the bridge. But a group of children arrived on the bridge before the munition hit. They were all killed. A soldier may feel that they should not have fired under such circumstances. A special forces officer may be ordered to enter a village and remove a perceived enemy, only to learn later that the person killed was not an enemy combatant. We might call this combat guilt. Whether they were morally culpable or not, the fact is, they killed someone, and they feel some degree of guilt.

There were also circumstances in which soldiers may feel guilty for things beyond their control. For example, a soldier ordered to report to headquarters, whose entire combat unit is killed while he is absent, is not responsible for the deaths of his friends. He received a legitimate order that had to be obeyed. On the other hand, it’s been my experience that soldiers feel guilt for not having been with their unit in such a situation, even though it is almost certain that they would have died had they been present; we might call this false survivor’s guilt.

Shame and Guilt

Psychologists sometimes distinguish between shame and guilt. Shame is a sense of unworthiness; it makes a person feel they lack integrity, are unattractive, and so on. They feel that as a person, they are flawed and inadequate. Conversely, guilt is the sense of responsibility for a specific action or inaction that a person perceives as sinful or wrong. Shame attaches to the person who feels shame. Guilt attaches to the action the person is guilty of taking or not taking.

In all cases, there can be appropriate and inappropriate feelings of shame and guilt. I may feel ashamed of a particular aspect of my personality, but that’s really nothing to be ashamed of. I might feel guilty for something I’ve done, even when I bear no real responsibility. Modern psychology, however, doesn’t necessarily clarify things by suggesting that people shouldn’t feel shame or guilt. The reality is that they do.

The feeling of shame or guilt itself indicates that a person feels somehow responsible for their circumstances. Telling them they are not accountable or helping them see that they are part of a larger machine does not alleviate the guilt. This is where Grace comes into play. God can remove guilt through the operation of Grace, and that removal can restore a portion of the lost harmony. The mediated forgiveness of Christ is the best way to heal the trauma war inflicts. [4]

To expand on a prior example, soldiers who survive combat in which their closest comrades are killed often feel what is called “survivor’s guilt or shame.” In some cases, a person may have nothing to feel guilty about. On the other hand, if one deserted a unit and was the cause of the deaths, then perhaps that person does have something to feel guilty about. If one was ordered to a different location and thus escaped the incident, one has nothing to be ashamed of. A character flaw did not cause the deaths of comrades. Conversely, if I knew of the danger and took action to ensure that I was exempt from that danger, then perhaps I should feel shame.

Here is a point that is sometimes overlooked in contemporary psychology: In any of the four cases, the harmony and beauty God desires for the human personality have been defaced. The person involved feels shame and/or guilt. Telling them they should not feel this shame or guilt does not solve the problem. In some cases, they are troubled by the sense that they might have done something to save their comrades. The goal of an “ethics of beauty” or a “psychology of beauty” is to restore the integrity of the individual. However, what needs to be done to restore that integrity may differ from case to case.

The Beauty of Christ and Our Beauty

At this point, it’s helpful to introduce a common motif in The Ethics of Beauty: the sheer beauty of Christ, the Cross, and the Resurrection. For Christians, Christ embodies the divinely intended beauty of the human person. The Cross and Resurrection symbolize God’s decisive action to undo the effects of evil and distortion, restoring humanity to its originally intended state. When considering the disciples recognizing the resurrected Christ, one must realize their initial thought was probably not, “It’s true!” but something like, “Oh my gosh.” Witnessing the resurrected Christ, a complete restoration of his disfigured body, must have filled them with awe—the awe one feels when experiencing a powerful, transcendent beauty.

This notion that we are restoring the beauty intended by God in the human person has profound consequences. Each person with PTSD, and indeed every victim of any sin or distortion, is meant to be a subject of Christ’s redeeming power. The primary goal of the doctor, psychologist, or pastor is to restore the image of God within the person before them. This restoration is not primarily an act of “getting them to see the truth,” but rather of resurrection, by the power of the Holy Spirit, an inherently beautiful person.

True and False Liturgy

When attending an Orthodox liturgy, I’m always struck by the sanctuary’s beauty, the chanting, the physical participation of the congregation, and the sacraments. It is as if the liturgy is an attempt once a week to restore the initial harmony of the human soul, not so much by what it says, but what it says primarily comes from scripture, but through the entire experience of being drawn into the mystery of Christ.

As Pattisas sees war as the opposite of the orthodox liturgy. If the orthodox liturgy is all about restoring the harmony of the human soul, war is all about destroying any form of harmony, physical, mental, moral, or spiritual. In a sense, it’s “an anti-liturgy.” To use the thoughts of C.S. Lewis and Walter Wink, if the Christian story is the “true myth” of God’s love for the world and the human race and desire for its restoration, then the “myth of redemptive violence” that war creates is a “false myth,” “anti-myth” in which human beings can find wholeness in the destruction of the wholeness of others. [5]

Lewis puts it this way in his letter:

Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things’. Therefore, it is true, not in the sense of being a ‘description’ of God (that no finite mind could take in) but in the sense of being how God chooses to (or can) appear to our faculties. The ‘doctrines’ we get out of the true myth are of course less true: they are the translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. [6]

I think it’s interesting to note that for Lewis, the literary images contained in the biblical narrative (the thing of beauty) come before church doctrine and are, in some sense, more important than church doctrine. In other words, for Lewis, Beauty comes before Truth. [7]

Conclusion

The discussion of trauma and PTSD in the ethics of beauty has an application far beyond victims of war. To some degree or another, all trauma of whatever type causes a wounding and defacing of the human soul. Therefore, all counseling, Christian or otherwise, must be concerned with the restoration of the beauty of that soul.[8] That which is true of soldiers is also true of neglected children, of those who have committed crimes, for those who have been victims of crimes, and every other victim of trauma.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Tomothy Pattisis, The Ethics of Beauty (Maryville, MO: St. Nicholas Press, 2020).

[2] Id, 3.

[3] Id, 16.

[4] Id, at v.

[5] C. S. Lewis, Letter to Arthur Greeves (1931) and Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992).

[6] Id.

[7] This very weekend, I talked to an Orthodox priest about the fact that Lewis is constantly found in Orthodox bookstores and that Orthodox children are encouraged to read him. His approach is profoundly Orthodox and “Merely Christian.”.

[8] Id, 19-20.

As I mentioned in my first blog, The Ethics of Beauty is a multidisciplinary work that includes commentary based on the work of Christopher Alexander, an architectural theorist. [1] Alexander’s books outline his theory of patterns present in architecture and art that the human eye finds pleasing and the human soul finds nourishing. Alexander believed there is fundamentally one timeless way of building, as old as the world itself. It involves creating villages, homes, and public buildings where human beings can feel a sense of belonging and find meaning.

For example, Alexander noticed that certain medieval towns and villages contained features that people found pleasing and that they experienced a pleasant living environment. This leads to the opinion that we can discover certain patterns in these examples, which, when assembled appropriately, create a beautiful landscape. These patterns are not static but dynamic and emerging, which humans can use when creating living spaces. A practicing Roman Catholic, Alexander recognized the religious implications of his work. He believed there was a connection between the order of nature, traditional practices, the beliefs of various cultures, and recent scientific advancements.

The Order of Nature

There exists in nature what is sometimes called “The Golden Ratio.” The Golden Ratio, also known as the Golden Number, Golden Proportion, or the “Divine Proportion,” is a ratio between two numbers that equals approximately 1.618. Usually written as the Greek letter phi, it is strongly associated with the Fibonacci sequence, a series of numbers wherein each number is added to the last. The Fibonacci numbers are 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on, with the ratio of each number and the previous number gradually approaching 1.618, or phi. [2]

Euclid’s Elements mentions the Golden Ratio from around 300 BCE. Euclid and other early mathematicians like Pythagoras recognized the proportion but didn’t call it the Golden Ratio. It wasn’t until later in human history that the proportion took on its current mystique. In 1509, Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli published the book De Divina Proportione, which, alongside illustrations by Leonardo da Vinci, praised the ratio as representing divinely inspired simplicity and orderliness.

The Golden Ratio is commonly found in the natural world and is regarded as pleasing by human beings. It appears in various aspects of nature, from the structure of seashells to that of certain flowers and other areas. Artists and others have discovered that the golden ratio is significant because humans find it aesthetically pleasing. Artists, architects, and designers have extensively used the golden ratio in creating visually appealing works of art.

Studies have shown that the golden ratio also impacts what features humans find beautiful. Certain ratios between aspects of the human face contribute to the sense of beauty, and people find certain ratios between the hands, arms, and other parts of the human body beautiful. The Golden ratio would seem to be an example of a feature of nature that contributes to the human experience of beauty and forms of foundation for aspects of the science of aesthetics.

The Roman Architect, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, who wrote De Architectura (c. 25 B.C.), remarked on a similarity between the human body and a perfect building: “Nature has designed the human body so that its members are duly proportioned to the frame as a whole.” He inscribed the human body into a circle and a square, the two figures considered images of perfection. In recent times, mathematical analysis of physical features humans find beautiful has disclosed the importance of symmetry to the experience of beauty.

Leonardo da Vinci utilized the Golden Ratio in his artistic works. Most famously, the Mona Lisa (1503) was created using what is known as the Golden Section, which is applied in modern design systems. This technique produces organic and natural-looking compositions that are pleasing to the human eye. In other words, not only does the perfect ratio influence our perceptions of human beauty, but people also recognize beauty by incorporating that ratio into their own creative works, both artistic and architectural.

Patterns in Architecture and Life

In his book, The Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander outlines simple patterns that humans use to create physical spaces and enjoy them as we inhabit them. Some of these patterns include limitations on four-story buildings, sacred sites, access to water, promenades, shopping streets, the presence of educational institutions, marketplaces, the inclusion of all ages—such as old people and children—small public squares, holy sites, ample parking, and parallel roads. Regarding human homes, Alexander mentions common areas at the heart of the house, flow-through rooms, tapestries of light and dark, a couple’s private realm, the children’s private spaces, farmhouse-style kitchens, private terraces, adequate light, beds in alcoves, windows overlooking outdoor life, child caves, secret places, and outdoor gardens.

The point is not the specific applicability of each of these patterns to every city or home but the fact that they are suitable for human beings, who require a certain kind of space to thrive. Both publicly and privately, we need buildings scaled for humans, sacred places, a connection with nature, and a diverse community. These human needs create patterns that architects and artists can use to foster human flourishing. Conversely, there are particular patterns, exemplified by the Stalinist architecture of Soviet Russia, that people find stifling.

The Quality without a Name

For Alexander and the author of The Ethics of Beauty, patterns mediate what is called the Quality Without a Name into our lives. The Quality Without a Name is that feeling of wholeness that emerges when we ihhabit physically, mentally and emotionally good life patterns. This idea that certain patterns promote human flourishing goes beyond art and architecture. Pattisis writes:

The quality without a name that arises in good patterns and good ritual is a gift of the twofold anointing of the Holy Spirit; that is why it can have a “bittersweet” quality, why the experience of it can make us sad. The quality without a name is God’s uncreated glory fed to us through the created world when we respond to that world liturgically.[3]

For Pattisis, humans can experience living through the power of the Holy Spirit. God has revealed Himself through the word in nature. For Pattisis and Orthodoxy generally, that quality we find so hard to name is our participation in something divine. For Christians, this means participating in the life of Christ, whose life provides the ultimate pattern for human flourishing. In the end, the Quality Without a Name is that which we experience when we encounter the Transcendent God.

In the letters of John, the author describes God as Light and Love (1 John 1:5; 4:8), as the perfection of both order and relationship. This perfection of order, or symmetry, and relational unity, found perfectly in God, is mediated through the word of God into human existence and impacts human life and human flourishing. While Christians may have a unique experience of this perfection of being in relationship, all of creation and all of humanity participate in this creative grace of God and can experience the benefits or detriments of following or not following, of appreciating or not appreciating, and of submitting to or not submitting to the ultimate patterns of creation.

This is a particularly important insight: Whenever any human engages with the Beautiful, the Good, and the True, they are participating in the life of God. Therefore, Christians can make common cause with all those who seek the Good, True, and Beautiful in whatever way they do so. (We don’t necessarily agree with their motivations but admire and support their quest.)

Beauty is and is Not a Matter of Choice

The thoughts of Alexander and Pattisis imply that beauty is not something irrational or sub-rational. It isn’t merely an opinion or a prejudice. The recognition of beauty is ingrained in the created order and within human beings as part of that order. However, it must be appreciated by the whole person—mind, body, and soul. It encompasses a rationality that is deeper than other forms of rationality, including the recognition of Truth and Goodness within it. Once again, for Christians, this beauty, this Quality Without a Name, involves sensing the Uncreated Light of God and the Love of God made manifest in the Word by the power of the Holy Spirit.[4]

Patterns and Plato

For Patisis, the Patterns represent a modern interpretation of the Platonic Forms. For Plato, the Forms existed outside of nature and were not necessarily incorporated within it. For Pattisis, these forms signify the potential for recognizing beauty, which must be integrated into a specific work of art, home, or building to be acknowledged as part of Beauty. Rather than static ideals, the patterns are dynamic and are actively incorporated into works of Beauty.

If an artist simply repeats a pattern or slavishly incorporates patterns as a kind of preexisting blueprint into a design, the result is deadening repetition, not beauty. Imitation is not a form of beauty. It is creation by incorporation that creates a work of art. The archetype does not dominate the creative work; it is incorporated within it. Thus, every act of creation is a marriage of the universal and the particular.[5]

Uniqueness and Pattern

As an Orthodox thinker, Pattisis believes that each human being achieves perfection by seeking to incorporate Christ, the ultimate model for human existence, into their individual lives. When a person falls in love with God in Christ, they begin a process of divinization, incorporating that aspect of God they can, given their human imperfections and limitations.

In fact, Pattisis goes beyond a merely human incorporation by implying that all of creation finds its “telos,” its proper end, as it incorporates the “pattern” of Christ into their limited level of existence:

All of creation does this, and this is the mystery of creation, its hidden side. Every existing thing is following this cruciform pattern, this path of loving God and loving neighbor, which is why when we sin against God or others, it is so painful to us. Because on the level of our existence as souls and bodies, as humans, part of us is still loving Christ (eros) in the logos of himself which he gives uniquely to us, and part of us is still choosing to die with him (agape) for the life of the world. [6]

In its unique way, all of creation—every created being, including humans—fulfills the twofold movement of God’s erotic love and self-sacrificial giving. It is part of God’s world and is in a relationship with God. I cannot help but see this as an application of a process-oriented way of viewing the world. According to process philosophy, reality has both a mental and physical pole. All of reality contains at least the potential for feeling and consciousness. This potential for consciousness means that the mental aspect of reality reaches all the way to its foundation.

One possible implication of this is that all of reality expresses, within its created limits, the love of God and the rationality of God through every act of its creation, maintenance, and ultimate passing away. Where conscious choices are made, as in the case of human beings, we either positively or negatively bring levels of love into our lives or the reverse. In either case, we are either bringing ourselves closer to the logos of God or further away. In either case, it increases the world’s loveliness or the reverse.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Tomothy Pattisis, The Ethics of Beauty (Maryville, MO: St. Nicholas Press, 2020).

[2] Adobe, “An Introduction to the Golden Ration” https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/design/discover/golden-ratio.html (Downloaded May 26, 2025

[3] Ethics of Beauty, at 427.

[4] This is what I have called the “Deep Light” and “Deep Love” of the triune God. See, G. Christopher Scruggs, Centered Living/Centered Leading: The Way of Light and Love Rev. Ed. (Booksurge, 2016).

[5] Ethics of Beauty, at 436.

[6] Id, at 442.

The Ethics of Beauty challenges common Western ideas about the relationship between beauty, goodness, and truth. [1]From the perspective of Eastern Orthodoxy, the division of the church around the year 1000 A.D. over the unauthorized actions of the Roman Pope in adding what is called the “filioque” to the Nicene Creed without an ecumenical council initiated a process of division that ultimately led to the Reformation and the numerous Christian denominations we see today. [2] From a philosophical perspective, influenced by Augustine and later Thomas Aquinas, Western philosophy and theology subsequently developed what might be considered a “truth-first” approach to knowledge, including knowledge of the Good and the Beautiful. In the eyes of the Orthodox, this aspect of Western culture has resulted in the West’s intellectual, moral, and artistic decadence.

As a Presbyterian pastor and, therefore, student of Calvin and the Reformed tradition, I often noticed that our disputes focus not so much on liturgy but on fine distinctions of theology. This tendency has spread to the massive differences among Protestant groups on moral matters, most notably abortion, which the church has always condemned. These endless disputes may be connected to a misguided  “ Truth-First” approach to spiritual matters.

In the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, the church somehow takes precedence over any particular theological system, several of which can exist simultaneously within the greater church. In Protestantism, the tendency is to split over these kinds of disputes. But its very nature embodies a truth-first approach to faith.

Beauty First Worship

Perhaps even more importantly, the lack of a common liturgy creates significant theological and cultural vulnerability in many Protestant churches. One aspect I find restful about attending liturgical churches is that wherever I am on any given Sunday morning—whether the church is Anglican, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or a variant—I hear almost the same liturgy and, generally speaking, sermons on the same texts. With three readings, regardless of the quality of the sermon, I’ve heard an Old Testament text, a Psalm, a Gospel text, and usually a text from one of Paul’s letters. Finally, there’s also a communion service with a liturgy tied to the ancient liturgies of the church.

As a young pastor, I spent much time designing church worship services. As a former lawyer, I want things to be “logical.” I spent a great deal of time being sure that the worship service flowed logically. Then, when we began to develop what we call “contemporary worship,” There was a need to redesign worship services again, with the need for a “time of worship” near the beginning. [3]

When I first began attending an Eastern Orthodox service, I noticed some differences that I initially found disconcerting. For one thing, the service had a large amount of repetition. Things were said over and over again. It was a long time before I realized that this repetition was gradually drawing the congregation into an experience of the living God through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Then there was the incense, the icons, genuflections, and crossings. For a good Protestant, this can be a bit disconcerting. It was for me. Then I realized that Orthodox services deliberately draw the congregation into a physical experience of God. We smell the incense, visualize the icons, and cross ourselves; in other words, the Orthodox service does not merely appeal to the head but also to the body and emotions, what the ancients would’ve called “the heart.”

As a Protestant, I am accustomed to sermons being the center of the entire worship service. Pastors spend a lot of time preparing sermons, which can be between 30 and 40 minutes long. In liturgical churches, it’s rare to have a sermon longer than about 15 minutes. The center of the worship service is not a pastor, preaching a sermon, but the entire liturgy itself, especially the Lord’s Supper. The sermon is only a portion of the whole, not necessarily the service’s most important feature. Remarkably, I remember more of these 15-minute sermons than most of the 40-minute sermons I hear. I think holding yourself to fifteen minutes helps pastors and priests be succinct and focused in what they say.

Beauty-First Worship Space

For most of my professional career, under the influence of the “Megachurch Movement,” especially the views of Willow Creek, pastors with whom I’ve been familiar and churches I’ve known have been very reluctant to create traditional worship spaces. In evangelical churches today, it is common to have screens, a stage, a Praise Band, and other features in worship areas. The worship area resembles a setting for a rock concert. The reason is both cultural (“people feel more comfortable”) and practical (the setting is appropriate for the way the worship is designed).

In Orthodox churches, the entire church is opulently decorated with icons. An altar is behind a screen, where the priest conducts many worship service activities. Typically, Eastern Orthodox churches have a very traditional Orthodox architecture. When you’re in an Orthodox church, you don’t wonder for one moment whether you’ve drifted into a rock concert or you’re in a church. You’re definitely in a church.

I’ve had the opportunity to visit an Orthodox congregation in Austin, Texas, one of the most secular cities in America. It is filled with young people, all worshiping in a facility I was warned never to create. I’m not sure my earlier views were correct. Perhaps more importantly, the absence of beauty in many Protestant churches exemplifies a truth-first approach to religion. A service surrounded by art, highly crafted handiwork, and lovely vestments is a beauty-first worship service.

Truth in a Beauty-First Church

Lest you think that somehow, these beauty-first worship services lack intellectual content, each of the churches I visited has had bookstores filled with theological books that one does not usually see even in evangelical churches with bookstores. It is customary to find copies of Athanasius’ On the Incarnation in an Orthodox bookstore. Thus far, I haven’t seen any copies of the Left Behind Series or other mass-market Protestant literature. Perhaps more to the point, it’s unusual for the sermon not to include some theological discussion of the passage as it relates to Nicene faith. In addition, vast amounts of the liturgy are taken from the Bible.

Even the process of becoming a member is saturated with the Bible, the Orthodox tradition, Orthodox theology, and Orthodox worship. One member of an Orthodox church that I have come to be friendly with has a five-volume set of the history, tradition, theology, and worship of the Orthodox Church. It’s well over 2000 pages long. He read it as he became a member of the church. He’s the very same person who loaned me a copy of The Ethics of Beauty, upon which these blogs are based. Before becoming Orthodox, this person and his wife had been active members of more than one Reformed congregation. Both of them are highly educated, and they did not find the Orthodox beauty-first approach lacking concern for either truth or goodness.

Social Implications

In closing this week’s blog, I want to highlight the connection between a Beauty-First approach to theology and creating a beautiful society. I’ve had the opportunity to travel widely in both capitalist and Marxist countries. One of the things I find striking is the ugliness present in much of Western society and a significant portion of what we observe in the communist world as well. Somehow, an intellectual focus on Right Philosophy and Right Theology can blind leaders to the necessity of building a wholesome society where people can thrive. From this focus, we ultimately derive the scientific, materialistic, and technological focus that drives our culture.

I may talk more about this next week, but a Beauty-First approach is almost inevitably organic. It rejoices in the “small garden.” It believes that families are more important than political units. It believes that small businesses where people can use their talents and abilities are superior to great corporations, in which most people are simply units of production. It believes that society should not be overly “master planned,” but space should be given for the gradual emergence of an order created by beauty-seeking individuals. One of the essays in The Ethics of Beauty draws on the work of Jane Jacobs and his entitled “The City as a Liturgy.” The idea is that a thriving form of city is a joint movement of its citizens, freely undertaken, following a form or pattern of life that leads to human flourishing.

The liturgies we follow each week in church should be designed to build in church members a form or pattern of life that leads to human flourishing. This form or pattern of life cannot help but impact how they view their families, neighborhoods, cities, and larger political entities. It cannot help but impact how they view their businesses and economic life. We will not build the City of God in its entirety in this world. But we can make a beginning.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Tomothy Patisis, The Ethics of Beauty (Maryville, MO: St. Nicholas Press, 2020). The ethics of beauty is a long book, almost 750 pages, and somewhat difficult to follow for a layperson. I am going to try to unpack the importance of its ideas for laypersons. I do not recommend it for those unwilling to read a book on ethics from an Eastern Orthodox perspective.

[2] In the West, we speak of the Holy Spirit as proceeding from the “Father and the Son” (filioque).  As approved by the Council of Nicaea, the Nicene Creed (325 A.D.) spoke of the Spirit as proceeding from the Father. No ecumenical council ever approved this; the Pope authorized the addition on his own authority. The Orthodox believe this was a theological mistake and an error of church organization: no pope can modify the church’s dogma. I believe they are correct on both counts.

[3] Contemporary worship often includes a “worship time” featuring several songs at the start of the service. Band members and attendees have told me that this period is designated for worship, whereas the sermon is considered the time for teaching. However, the Orthodox tradition would strongly disagree with this idea. They believe that the entire liturgy constitutes worship, and in this regard, they are correct.

The Transforming Beauty of Motherhood

I’m beginning this blog on Mother’s Day. Once each year in May, we all celebrate our mothers and motherhood. As I pondered Mother’s Day, getting together flowers, making a card, and arranging for dinner, I was captured by the thought that Mother’s Day is not enough. The American Mother’s Day may mask the fact that we don’t value motherhood much at all. If this is true, then Timothy Pattissa’s book, The Ethics of Beauty, serves as a much-needed corrective. [1] For Pattisas, motherhood lies at the foundation of society, the family, and any reasonable social order. And, of course, for the Orthodox and Roman Catholics, there really can’t be any discussion of motherhood without some mention of Mary.

The gospel of Luke records the visitation of Mary by the Angel Gabriel:

And the angel said to her, Fear not, Mary: for you have found favor with God. And, behold, you will conceive in your womb, and bring forth a son, and shall call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end (Luke 1:30-33).

Mary responds with an act of acceptance, “May it be to me according to your word” (v. 28). As Pattisas notes, Mary opens her womb and life to the life of God in an act of holy hospitality.

This act of hospitality by Mary has a theological significance beyond the mere acceptance of Mary. In opening her womb to the Holy Spirit and embracing God from the moment of conception, Mary becomes the “Theotokos,” the mother of God. The Incarnate Word has a mother, and with Joseph, a family. Thus, marriage and family are not a mere human institution; it is a divine institution made holy by God’s participation in the human condition from conception forward.

In this act of “holy hospitality,” Mary has become the human agent of God’s entry into the world in a great act of divine condensation to the human condition, In the incarnation, God makes visible in one human life what has been invisibly true from the beginning of time: Love and family lie at the center of human life and human society. Just as Mary consented to bear Jesus, our human mothers in their own act of divine hospitality welcomed us, nurtured us, fed us, clothed us, watched over us, taught us, and sent us on our way into the world.

Every conception is and should be seen as an act of divine hospitality welcoming a new child made in the image of God and intended to be a child of God into the world. This sits at the root of a Christian attitude towards the value of human life. This sits at the Christian view of the importance of motherhood, of family, of the home and homelife, and of the gradual entry into the world of God’s universal family through the church. The mother provides the womb of the family, the family offers the womb of social interaction and life, and society forms the womb of human life and culture in the broadest sense.

Motherhood and its importance have profound importance for our notions of society, for all of human society is founded on and depends on motherhood. Pattisas likens the emergence of human society from motherhood by analogy to fractals. The emergence of order in chaotic systems is the emergence in ever more complex ways of the original fractal order on which it is based. In other words, the order of society is dependent upon the order of the family as it exists from the moment of conception.

We see all around us the consequences of ignoring this reality. If a well-ordered and fruitful human society depends upon the womb’s hospitality, then the reverse is also true. The disorder of our society begins with the disorder of the womb. It starts with the disorder of human sexuality, committed marriage, holy conception, loving, birth, and nurturing care.

“Pantocrator,” the word we translate as “Almighty” in the creed describing “God the Father Almighty,” can mean “Almighty,” but it can also mean “All Embracing”. If we believe that God is a God of love, and if we think that an all-embracing Divine Love sits at the foundation of the created order, then all of creation reflects the womb of God. What Mary and our earthly mothers consented to reflects God’s embracing and nurturing love. It is this love that entered the world in Christ, and it is towards this love that Mary, the mother of God, showed holy hospitality.

It is also to this love that we respond by faith. In the gospel of John, there is a long discourse between Jesus and Nicodemus, in which Jesus teaches Nicodemus that to enter the kingdom of God, we must be born again. In part, it reads as follows:

Nicodemus saith to him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say to you, Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God (John 3:4-5).

Just as Mary welcomed the Holy Spirit into her womb, we welcome Christ into the womb of our hearts.

I think this way of looking at faith is a healthy complement to the legalistic and contractual view of salvation that emerged from the Reformation. Our faith in Christ and welcoming God into our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit is precisely analogous to human conception. We open our hearts by faith and welcome the seed of divine life into our human life. Just as the ovum welcomes the sperm in an act of passive hospitality, so we welcome God into our lives (faith alone) in an act of passive hospitality (grace alone) by which we are born again into the family of God (the Church Universal) as children of God.

This conception and new birth is our birth into a family. We must be nurtured and grow in the faith (Christian discipleship), as we learn to be part of God’s family of worship, prayer, and service to the world. This involves a continuing act of birth and rebirth in Christ as we mature in God’s family into which we have been born anew. As Pattisas puts it:

Yes, if we would be born again as Christ commands us to be (Jn 3:3), then we must allow him to be resurrected, or born again, within us. Now Paul uses the words “formed within us” in Galatians 4:19 but he uses these words of connection with the “pains of childbirth,” so “resurrection“ is a valid paraphrase for being born again for us to be born again, Christ condescended to be born again within our hearts. [2]

This passage from Galatians is of special importance. Paul is admonishing the Galatians who have drifted away from appropriate discipleship. He describes himself as in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is fully formed in them. In other words, Paul has welcomed the Galatians into the womb of his loving care for them that he might give them birth and form them fully into the Christian family. In other words, our Christian birth and maturity are not transactional but organic and should be seen in light of human childbearing. The church itself is to be seen in light of the Theotokos and Mary’s act of holy hospitality and the holy hospitality our human mothers showed in giving us birth.

This realization of the importance of motherhood to human civilization has significant consequences in other areas. For example, if the universe and our world resemble the womb of a mother giving birth to creation, then just as we care for pregnant mothers and the womb that bears our children, we will care for the creation that is very much like this womb. We will not abuse it. We will not treat it as unimportant. We will nurture it. We will care for it. We will see that we don’t in any way do anything that would deprive future generations of the womb in which human society grows and upon which it relies for nourishment.

America’s Mother’s Day is a secular holiday, and most of us, if we can and are inclined, take our mothers to church. However, Christians ought to see it as a holy holiday—more like Christmas and Easter than like the Fourth of July. Our mothers embody a divine mystery in giving us life. They embody the reality of a God who is love, who nurtures his creation, and who gives birth to beauty, health, wholeness, and all the blessings of life we can enjoy.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved 

[1] Tomothy Patisis, The Ethics of Beauty (Maryville, MO: St. Nicholas Press, 2020). The ethics of beauty is a long book, almost 750 pages, and somewhat difficult to follow for a layperson. I am going to try to unpack the importance of its ideas for laypersons. I do not recommend it for those unwilling to read a book on ethics from an Eastern Orthodox perspective.

[2] Id, 408

This begins a series of blogs based on Timothy Patisas’s book, The Ethics of Beauty. [1] Philosophers categorize the world into three domains: epistemology, the study of what we can know about the nature of truth (The True); ethics, the examination of the nature of goodness and how we should act (The Good); and aesthetics, the exploration of beauty (Beauty). Western civilization has tended to emphasize truth and what we can know, and it has treated the good and the beautiful as secondary characteristics. The position taken in the ethics of beauty is that this is wrong-headed.

Indications of the Importance of Beauty

To determine whether the author is right, we have to ask the question, “Is there any evidence that indicates that it might be true?” I think there is. For example, mathematicians and physicists often view the beauty and elegance of an equation as indicative of its truth. One of the reasons why quantum physics and relativity theory gained acceptance is the sheer beauty and elegance of the mathematics involved.

Another indication might be the study of beauty itself. There have been a considerable number of studies of human beauty, many of which have looked at the symmetries that often characterize human beauty among cultures. Lost in this analysis is the fact that we already knew this person was beautiful before we understood mathematics or the science of that beauty.

From an ethical perspective, the ethics of beauty emphasizes the aesthetic beauty of the good life and suggests that beauty comes first. Once again, to provide an example, there’s something beautiful about the life of Mother Teresa. We could list all the good things she did, analyze the wise advice she shared throughout her life, and examine the ministries she established. However, somehow, we recognized her life as beautiful before we learned all those details. Beauty preceded goodness.

Challenge to the Enlightenment

Beginning with Plato, Aristotle, and the early Greek philosophers, Western civilization has been deeply interested in the question of truth. During the Middle Ages, the primary question was the nature of religious truth. In the modern world, the primary question has been the nature of material or scientific truth. Since the Enlightenment, Western civilization has been inclined to view. Scientific truth is somehow privileged over all other forms of truth. What Patisas calls “The Beauty First Approach” represents an alternative to modern thinking. It privileges beauty over scientific truth.

In his argument, Patisis draws from Western literature, architectural theory, orthodox theology, Wendell Berry’s works, and other sources. I believe he makes a compelling case. Focusing on beauty, aesthetics, and harmony may provide us with a clue about how to escape the deadening moral decay associated with the decline of the modern world and the avant-garde decorators in some forms of postmodernism.

The Greeks used the word eros, from which we get our word “erotic,” to describe that kind of love that is evoked by the attractiveness of that which we love. I like to say that erotic love is not sexual primarily, though it includes sexual love; it’s an evoked love. The beauty of the beloved evokes in us love. For example, if I love a painting, the beauty of the painting evokes that love. If I love a particular scientific theory, it’s the beauty and fruitfulness of that theory that evokes my love. If I love a specific form of life, it’s the beauty and attractiveness of that form of life that captures my desire. In other words, Beauty First.

The Religious Basis

During my pastoral years, there was a praise song that we used to sing quite a bit. It was called “Beautiful One”

Wonderful, so wonderful is Your unfailing love
Your cross has spoken mercy over me
No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no heart could fully know
How glorious, how beautiful You are

Beautiful one, I love You
Beautiful one, I adore
Beautiful one, my soul must sing

Powerful, so powerful, Your glory fills the skies
Your mighty works displayed for all to see, beautiful
The beauty of Your majesty awakes my heart to see
How marvelous, how wonderful You are

Beautiful one, I love You
Beautiful one, I adore
Beautiful one, my soul must sing

Beautiful one, I love You
Beautiful one, I adore
Beautiful one, my soul must sing

You opened my eyes to Your wonders anew
You captured my heart with this love
Because nothing on earth is as beautiful as You, Jesus

You opened my eyes to Your wonders anew
You captured my heart with this love
Because nothing on earth is as beautiful as You

Beautiful one, I love You
Beautiful one, I adore
Beautiful one, my soul must sing

Beautiful one, I love You
Beautiful one, I adore
Beautiful one, my soul must sing

And You opened my eyes to Your wonders anew
You captured my heart with this love
Because nothing on earth is as beautiful as You. [2]

This Christian praise song beautifully illustrates the point that the author is trying to make in The Ethics of Beauty. It also gives us a clue as to what is sometimes wrong with Christian evangelism and discipleship: We fail to emphasize God’s beauty and the beautiful life Christians are called to live. This is a point lost on me for a great deal of my Christian life and discipleship.

When I’m in Austin, Texas, I have the opportunity to visit a rapidly growing, vital Eastern Orthodox congregation. My wife and I are not Orthodox, and getting used to their worship took us a while. Nevertheless, having been to several worship services by now, we’ve learned that some things the Reformers criticized about Orthodoxy are subject to question. For example, when you enter an Orthodox church, you’re surrounded by icons of Christ, Mary, his mother, the apostles, and the church saints. These icons are beautiful. Much of the service is sung in a kind of rhythmic chanting. The responses are beautiful. The entire liturgy of the service is designed to create a sense of the holiness of God in his transcendent beauty. Instead of emphasizing the Cross and the sacrifice of Christ, the focus is placed upon the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ. In other words, the beauty of the resurrected Christ sits at the center of the service. In other words, the orthodox worship service takes a Beauty First approach to God.

Conclusion

In the next few weeks, I will post several blogs, teasing out the implications of a Beauty First approach to life. Interestingly, a beauty approach to life has much to say about how we should live. It has something to say about what is good and what is true. It also has something to say about the societies we should try to build. It has something to say about the ugliness of war. It has something to say about the kind of houses we should build and the kind of cities we should try to create. It has something to say about how one overcomes psychological trauma. It has something to say about the ugliness of war. It has something to say about how one overcomes psychological trauma. I hope readers enjoy the blogs.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Tomothy Patisis, The Ethics of Beauty (Maryville, MO: St. Nicholas Press, 2020). The ethics of beauty is a long book, almost 750 pages, and somewhat challenging to follow for a layperson. I will try to unpack the importance of its ideas for laypersons. I do not recommend it for those unwilling to read a book on ethics from an Eastern Orthodox perspective.

[2] Jeremy Camp, Beautiful One Released by Encounter Worship (2008).

The final week of Emotionally Healthy Discipleship involves creating a structure of life whereby we can progress to becoming more emotionally healthy. There is a similar need for those interested in creating emotionally healthy organizations. For an organization to embody a healthy culture, it is necessary to develop systems by which that emotional health is created, maintained, and improved.

This week’s blog is based on the following premises:

1. There cannot be emotionally healthy organizations without emotionally healthy leadership.
2. Leaders must first become emotionally healthy before instilling emotional health in their organizations.
3. Healthy leaders can create organizational structures that result in healthy teams and organizational culture.

Consequences of a Lack of Emotionally Healthy Leadership

Anyone with organizational experience has experienced emotionally immature and dysfunctional leadership and cultures. At some point, organizations can be so dysfunctional that their culture is toxic—harmful to everyone involved—leaders, followers, customers, stakeholders—everyone. In recent years, I have had the opportunity to study dysfunctional and toxic organizations. They have one common characteristic: emotionally unhealthy leadership.

It might be helpful for me to give some examples based on my experience as a lawyer and pastor over the years.

• Company X recently declared bankruptcy due to massive financial fraud. The court-appointed trustee announced that they had discovered considerable financial fraud involving many senior management members, much of which was ordered by the company’s president.
• Company Y just made a massive restatement of its financial results. It turns out that senior management instituted a bonus system that incentivized risk-taking among sales and trading personnel. Since bonuses were paid on current-year transactions, most of which would take years to pay out for the company, employees booked many unwise transactions. Senior management was also paid bonuses on the anticipated profits of current-year transactions. In fact, they designed the system.
• Company Z was just hit with a massive lawsuit alleging various forms of sexual harassment of female employees. As one magazine put it, the company has been famous for years for a kind of “fraternity boy” atmosphere. The Chairman and President were personally named in the litigation.
• Church A has just experienced a massive split and laid off many staff members. The Senior Pastor has become the subject of a sexual misconduct scandal. For years, the Board of Elders knew the pastor was ignoring his family, traveling with female employees, and working 70 or more hours weekly.
• Church B just lost an extremely effective discipleship pastor. His wife and family had been complaining about his schedule and many late-night meetings for some time. Finally, one of the children developed a serious addiction and rebellion. The pastor resigned to spend more time with his family.
• Non-Profit C has recently paid huge settlements due to misconduct charges against many volunteers. Some years ago, the non-profit changed its qualifications for adult leaders and its way of training them, lowering its standards under pressure from governments and special interest groups.

In these imaginary cases, and in many cases I have studied over the years, the fundamental failure was poor leadership, sometimes motivated by greed, lust, or desire for power and status. In other words, the problem was fundamentally a spiritual and moral problem created by spiritually and morally unhealthy leadership. In many cases, that leadership was never held accountable for what they did. In other cases, the accountability was insignificant compared to the social and monetary damage done by the leadership.

Healthy Organizations begin with Healthy Leaders.

Of course, emotionally unhealthy leaders are emotionally unhealthy people, which is why the past few weeks have focused on attaining and maintaining personal emotional health. Because none of us is completely emotionally healthy all the time and in every situation, emotionally healthy leaders embrace systems of self-care—regular habits of rest, recreation, retreat, self-examination, and other disciplines designed to maintain emotional health.

The concept of a “rule of life” or what might be called “a healthy structure for daily living” is simply a tool to enable people, and especially leaders, to attain and maintain emotional and spiritual health. For most people, including most Christians, our “rule of life” is not in writing. For example, it is nowhere written down that I will walk at least 8,000 steps a day and stretch three times a week, but I religiously do so. Before I knew anything about a rule of life, I did not usually work on Sundays, attended worship regularly, exercised, followed a healthy diet, avoided unhealthy behaviors, and many other elements of a wholesome lifestyle.

Nevertheless, there are real advantages to putting a rule or order for life in writing. For many years, I kept a long “to-do list.” Interestingly, most of the time, all the items on that list were accomplished. There is something about putting things in writing that encourages one to achieve them. Putting 72,000 sensible words on paper initially seems impossible when writing a book. In my list of things to do, I have a 1000-word-a-day target. Guess what?  If I write 1000 words daily, I will write a book draft in seventy-two days. When I fall behind, I do catch up. Having a rule or order of life has the same function: It reminds us what we intend to do and gives us a practical way of achieving our goal.

Good leaders have goals for their lives. Some things need to be done, and priorities that must be maintained. Peter Scazzero suggests the following priorities for Christians and their leaders:

• Relationship with God
• Relationship with Others (including family)
• Relationship with Self
• Relationship with Work [1]

A good order for life assures us that we are taking care of our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual lives by attending to each area systematically and often daily. For example, if I spend at least 30 minutes a day in prayer and Bible study daily, and pray on at least two other occasions during the day, I will go a long way towards keeping my relationship with God in good order. If I set aside time daily for my spouse and children and prioritize that time, I will go a long way towards maintaining my family’s health. If I walk at least 6,000 steps a day and work out three times a week, I will go a long way towards maintaining my physical health.

Taking Emotional Health to the Workplace

Very few people work entirely alone. Most of us work in an organization where various groups join to reach a common goal. Within large and small organizations, there must be leaders who see that the work gets done and organizational goals are accomplished. One of the leader’s primary responsibilities is maintaining the workplace’s health to accomplish organizational goals.

In The Emotionally Healthy Leader, Pete Scazzero sets out some indications that an organization needs a more emotionally healthy approach to leadership:

• The organization and its leadership define success too narrowly (for example, profits only or membership numbers only).
• Plans are instituted without sufficient time, attention, energy, mediation, and prayer to determine their impact on stakeholders, i.e., management, employees, shareholders, contributors, customers, and others.
• The organization emphasizes performance standards that exceed human limits, so employees are constantly challenged to work longer, harder, and more intensively beyond their limits. The organization does not accurately understand its financial, personnel, and other limits. [2]

Conversely, an emotionally healthy organization has specific characteristics:

• Success is defined holistically with due consideration of the needs of all stakeholders.
• Planning is done with a clear understanding of its impact on all stakeholders.
• Planning is done in a way that is prudent and loving towards all stakeholders.
• The organization and its employees are encouraged to find ways to succeed within natural and other limits.
• The leadership and staff have clear, written covenants that define acceptable behavior and commitment to healthy goals and outcomes. [3]

Good Leaders build Healthy Teams.

Many books have been written about the impact of a healthy corporate culture on business and organizational performance. Few aspects of an organization influence its success more significantly over time than its culture. Consequently, wise leaders invest considerable time cultivating the best possible culture within their organization. This requires a slow process of working with people to see that they are transformed as they impact the organization’s culture. Here are some basic principles that can help in achieving that goal:

• Our primary goal is to impact human flourishing among our leadership, employees, clients, members, shareholders, partners, customers, etc.
• Success includes building teams of people with various backgrounds and abilities who can work together without fear, prejudice, or anxiety.
• Success includes caring about the emotional, moral, and physical health inside and outside the organization. [4]

Developing a Meditative Leadership and Organizational Culture

In another context, I have written about meditative leadership styles and cultures within organizations. [5] In our society, most corporations, especially large and successful for-profit companies, employ a “scientific, results-driven, measure-intensive style of leadership and corporate decision-making.” There is nothing wrong with any of this. In the churches I served, we had annual budgets and multi-year forecasts. But they resulted from deeper planning centered on the question, “What would God have us do next?”

In making decisions, we spent much time in prayer, meditation, and conversation trying to discern the ultimate impact of any decision on not just the group as a whole but as many individuals as possible within the whole. I have spent days in my office praying and listening to people as they described their hopes or fears related to decisions of importance. I believe that those days were important.

Using Scazzero’s work, a meditative style of leadership looks something like this:

• Leaders and team members define success as broadly as possible in planning and making decisions for Christians in the context of God’s will.
• Leaders and team members prepare their hearts for sound decision-making by taking time for prayer, meditation, and other spiritual preparation.
• Leaders and team members seek the most prudent and caring option in devising plans.
• Leaders and team members live within their limits, seek solutions to problems, and develop plans that allow everyone to succeed within limits.

Conclusion

This blog concludes this series related to Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and The Emotionally Healthy Leader. I have reviewed these books on more than one occasion and suggest reading and working through them for all Christian leaders. I also suggest congregations and intermediate church administrative bodies use this material with all pastors and church leaders. There is more to know about leadership than can be contained in any book or program, and Scazzero’s work only scratches the surface of servant leadership and meditative leadership. But his works are, in my view, must-reads.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] As mentioned previously, these blogs are based on Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), hereinafter EHL. See also Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to Deep Transformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2021). Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Updated Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017). The Emotionally Healthy website is https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/. The materials needed to guide individuals through emotionally healthy discipleship training are available on the website and most Christian and secular online book retailers. The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Relationship Courses are offered as the “Emotionally Healthy Disciples Course,” which includes books, study guides, teaching videos, devotional guides, and teaching aids. This list is slightly different from Scazzero’s, which I have simplified and secularized for this blog.

[2] EHL, 180-185.

[3] Id, 187-197. I have slightly changed Scazzero’s listing, which is centered on churches and non-profit ministries.

[4] Again, I have slightly changed Scazzero’s listing to apply his ideas more broadly.

[5] G. Christopher Scruggs, Letters to Leaders (Bay Village, OH: Bay Presbyterian Church, 2019).

For many years, I worked closely with not only one of the most successful church planters in my former denomination but also one of the most effective leaders. Dave Schieber had two qualities that never ceased to amaze me:

1. He could accept and love everyone just as they were, even if he knew their faults and shortcomings well.
2. In every situation, however busy, he could be entirely present for the person in front of him.

I’ve often shared stories about walking down the hallway with him on the way to a worship service, just a few minutes late, when someone approached us with a problem. Dave would immediately direct 100% of his attention to that person without hesitation, irritation, or distraction. This didn’t occur just once, but often enough for me to remember and internalize this quality.

Love and Leadership

It wasn’t until several years later, when I read The Emotionally Healthy Leader and Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, that I realized Dave was instinctively in touch with one of the most essential spiritual qualities leaders can have: genuine empathy born of loving concern for the other. [1] For those of us who are introverted, or who may have been damaged in childhood and have difficulty connecting with people, this quality must be developed as a part of the broader task of achieving emotional health and the ability to lead people truly.

It doesn’t take a lot of experience in business, government, the church, or any other form of social organization to realize that many people who exercise leadership positions care about nothing but themselves. The fact that leaders struggle with narcissism has been well documented, perhaps too well documented. One reason why narcissistic leaders are tolerated, and even occasionally celebrated, comes from the mistake of equating the position of a person with the authentic leadership of a person. If all that matters is getting a position, then the person’s internal health doesn’t matter. However, if the accurate measure of leadership is the ability to love others and build an organization conducive to their flourishing, the character and spiritual development do matter.

Signs of Trouble—and the Solution

If we are honest, we can see signs that we may pay attention to, and they warn us that our leadership is not optimal. For example, in meetings, do I speak more than I listen? Do I get angry with those who don’t immediately grasp my thoughts? Am I able to talk about the truth to other people in a way that they know that I love them? Do I try to avoid unnecessary conflict? Do I sympathize with the weaknesses, failures, and misdeeds of others even when I can neither agree with them nor allow the behavior to continue? Am I continually comparing myself to others? Am I jealous when others succeed? All of these characteristics warn us that we are both emotionally immature and inclined toward self-centered narcissism.[2]

On the other hand, emotionally healthy leaders recognize, manage, and take control of their natural human tendencies toward narcissistic behaviors. They can respect and love other people unconditionally, and without the expectation that they will change as a result. They give people the opportunity to make mistakes and not be perfect. They appreciate people for who they are, with their strengths and weaknesses. Because they are deeply in touch with their emotional world, they can enter into the emotional world of other people. In other words, they are empathetic. In cases involving conflict, they can maintain their emotional self-control and resolve conflict maturely. [3]

Sitting behind this capacity to make decisions and maturely resolve conflict is the ability to enter other people’s emotional world. Scazzero puts it this way:

As emotionally mature Christian adults, we recognize that loving well is the essence of true spirituality. This requires that we experience connection with God, with ourselves, and with other people. God invites us to practice his presence in our daily lives. At the same time, he invites us “to practice the presence of people,” within an awareness of his presence, in our daily relationships. [4]

You can see why Dave Schieber has made such an impression on my life. He embodies the ability to maintain an awareness of God while being fully present to others.

Overcoming “I You” with “I Thou”

We human beings are inevitably self-centered. We have no choice but to see the universe, including others, from our center within ourselves. That center and our natural self-concern incline us to view other people as objects. The great Jewish theologian Martin Buber wrote a book entitled “I and Thou,” which I’ve had opportunities to talk about before, and which Pete Scazzero uses in Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. [5] At the very heart of the I/Thou relationship is the ability to see another person, not as an object, but as a person to be accepted and loved as they are.[6]

Truly transformational leaders can see others not as objects but as individuals motivated and loved to accomplish tasks within their abilities, talents, and interests. Although we occasionally treat other people as objects (something every leader has experienced), the capacity to transcend a merely objective approach and love all human beings defines a truly transformational leader. In discussing this within the context of Christian spiritual formation, Scazzero provides an excellent graphic of two concentric circles: one representing my world and the other representing your world, with a sacred space between them. [7]

Conflict and the I-Thou Relationship

Every leader, sooner or later, must deal with conflict. It is a natural tendency to avoid such conflict. However, avoidance is not always a good strategy. If the conflict is inevitable, and a decision must be made where people disagree, there will inevitably be a type of conflict. A mature leader can accept the reality of that conflict and manage it without engaging in, minimizing, ignoring it, or settling for a false peace. [8]

Listen and Ask Questions. As a pastor, I’ve often marveled at how much conflict is merely the result of misunderstanding. Many times, I’ve experienced conflict in a board meeting where everyone was really saying the same thing using different words. This is where listening is essential. I don’t mean just superficially listening to the conversation while you’re doodling on your notepad. Instead, one must pay attention to the meaning behind the words used. Are people talking past each other?

Avoid Mind Reading. A second problem in dealing with conflict is our tendency to believe that we know what’s going on in other people’s minds. I find myself especially inclined to judge people’s motivations without knowing what they are. Based on my understanding of the person, I assume I know what motivates them. But people are infinitely complex. At any given time, a person may reveal a new aspect of their personality amid this conflict and understand that deeper motivation requires asking questions, listening to conversations, and engaging in a dialogue concerning the matter under discussion.

Clarify Expectations. People often have unrealistic or impossible expectations of how a conflict will be resolved. Much of the time, people want their side to win and the other side to lose. Unfortunately, this sets the organization up for failure and one party up for complete failure. A better approach is to motivate people to verbalize and own their expectations so that they can come to their own conclusions concerning how realistic their expectations are in achieving the desired result.

For example, I was once involved in a lengthy conversation about when worship services should be held and what their nature should be. The session unanimously agreed that they wanted the church to prosper and grow. Unfortunately, there were two differing perspectives on how that would happen. One group believed it would involve embracing contemporary worship, while the other thought it should focus on continuing the traditional worship we enjoyed. Most importantly, many people felt attached to the worship time they were currently experiencing. It took considerable time for everyone to understand their motivations and recognize where they needed to adjust their perspectives in order for the group to prosper. Interestingly, the solution finally chosen was not the one that I and the other pastors desired; however, it worked marvelously.

Conclusion

This week, Christians celebrated Easter Sunday. This year, Kathy and I were priviledged to celebrate Easter in a new way, from Maundy Thursday and the Last Supper, with its emphasis on Christ giving his life for his disciples and the footwashing seen in John, both of which celebrate the servant leadership of Christ, to his crucifixion, death, and burial on Friday, to his descent into Hell while in the Tomb on Saturday, to his glorious resurrection, which we celebrated just after midnight on Sunday morning. The various Easter Vigil liturgies are one constant reminder of the true nature of God, and the true nature of Christian leadership, all of which is summarized with the words, “Greater love has no one than this: that he give up his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

There can be no Christian maturity without self-giving love—and there can be no Christian leadership without cross bearing. This is why Jesus told his disciples, who would share the gospel to the ends of the earth, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).Leaders, of all people, must be cross-bearing lovers of those they lead.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] As mentioned previously, these blogs are based on Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), hereinafter EHL. See also Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to Deep Transformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2021). Emotionally Healthy Spirituality,Updated Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017). The Emotionally Healthy website is https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/. The materials needed to guide individuals through emotionally healthy discipleship training are available on the website and most Christian and secular online book retailers. The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Relationship Courses are offered as the “Emotionally Healthy Disciples Course,” which includes books, study guides, teaching videos, devotional guides, and teaching aids.

[2] EHS, 167-168.

[3] EHS, 169-170.

[4] Id, at 170.

[5] Id, at 172, see Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958).

[6] Buber, 14-15.

 ⁷ EHS, 171-172. If I were to prepare a similar graphic, I would depict the two worlds overlapping in the I-Thou relationship, indicating the true entry of the I into the being of the Other.

[8] EHS, 172-175.

For the next several weeks, we’ll discuss developing a leadership lifestyle conducive to wise and loving leadership. In our Emotionally Healthy Spirituality course, Kathy and I must take time to do devotionals twice a day, incorporating times of silence during each pause. We’ve taken the course before, but for some reason, the silence has become a central feature this time. Additionally, Kathy and I decided to regularize our Sabbath habits in preparation for leading the course. It has also been a pleasant and transformative experience.

Many years ago, I preached a sermon on the Ten Commandments. When we got to quotes,

“Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy,” I observed that this was the only commandment among the Ten Commandments that almost anyone could violate at will, and no one would think less of them for doing so. If this observation was accurate thirty years ago, it is even more accurate today. Unfortunately, the advent of the Internet and working from home has made it even easier for people to ignore sustained periods of rest and recreation. (Notice I said rest and re-creation, not recreation.)

For most of my professional career, I worked in occupations that demanded long hours. When I practiced law, it was customary for everyone to work on Saturday and high performers to work on Sunday as well. That meant we did some work seven days a week, fifty or so weeks a year. The only difference between me and the highest performers in the firms was that I was a Christian and did not work on Sunday unless a client demanded it.

When I became a pastor, I continued this “work ethic,” completely unaware that what I termed a work ethic was actually workaholism. Our marriage, our children, our social relationships, and even my physical health, especially toward the end, paid a price. As I mentioned last week, it was only late in my professional career that I seriously acknowledged the need to slow down. As everyone will see as this blog unfolds, I believe the spiritual necessity for a Sabbath applies not only to Christians and Jews but to everyone else. We are all mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual beings. Therefore, we all need time for rest and recharging.

A Rhythm for Life

Many people take time to rest. Many individuals practice mindfulness, which helps them center themselves during certain periods of the day. In Christian circles, we typically refer to this as “quiet time.” Quiet time is a period, usually in the morning, dedicated to prayer, Bible study, and perhaps some meditation. For many years, this quiet time lasted between fifteen and twenty minutes and primarily involved Bible study. In later years, I began to include a more significant prayer component, praying for needs beyond our immediate family. It was only after the turn of the century that I started practicing a form of silent prayer. Unfortunately, like many others, I struggled to maintain this discipline.

In Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and The Emotionally Healthy Leader, Peter Scazzero suggests an alternative to the inadequacies of quiet time.[1] He suggests that Christians, including evangelical Christians, rediscover Sabbath-keeping and some ancient practices of the Roman, Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox churches, particularly the Daily Office. Before discussing both, it’s essential to make a point: The purpose of rediscovering the Sabbath-keeping and the ancient Daily Offices is not to create a new legalism but to help Christians and Christian leaders develop a healthy rhythm of life.

In keeping with the purpose of these blogs, I would say that discussing Sabbath keeping and the daily office for secular people involves encouraging everyone to reach into the Christian and other traditions to find ways for them to create a balanced rhythm of life conducive to their health and wholeness, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

What is a Sabbath?

I’m afraid to admit it, but during my entire Christian life until recently, I took at most one day off. During that day off, I had to mow the lawn during the spring and summer until the grass went dormant. I had to do certain chores around the house. I had to do things like balance a checkbook. Ultimately, my “Sabbath” was simply a day when I did work for which I wasn’t paid. It wasn’t until I read The Emotionally Healthy Leader that I realized I had not been keeping a Sabbath at all!

Being a pastor, I usually took off Fridays and part of Saturday afternoons before I had to begin working on the sermon for the final time. A good bit of the time, my Thursday, the time I usually prepared sermons, was interrupted by meetings. Therefore, it was not unusual for me to write sermons on Friday. For a good bit of the time, I would go into the office to do this. Once the children ran out of the house, at least I would stay home. But I wasn’t enjoying a Sabbath.

Scazzero defines a “biblical Sabbath” as a 24-hour block of time during which we stop work, enjoy rest, practice, delight, and contemplate God.[2] Notice that a biblical Sabbath is not merely a time when we don’t go to the office. It’s not just a time when we refrain from our daily responsibilities. It’s a time to focus on God and enjoy His presence.

Genesis tells us that God created the world in six days, and on the seventh day, He rested (Genesis 2:2). Many scholars, including Scazzero, note that the Sabbath is the unique contribution of the Jewish people to the world’s civilizations. They were the first to observe a day of rest, devoted not to transient pursuits but to ultimate truths. Our world needs to reclaim this practice because we are wholly dedicated to material and fleeting things, rarely taking time to ponder eternal matters. Christians, Jews, and every other type of human being can benefit from setting aside time to reflect beyond the present and the immediate demands of our lives.

For Christians and Jews, the Sabbath holds a deeper purpose. By taking a day off, we acknowledge that we are not ultimately in control of our lives, our successes and failures, our prosperity or lack thereof, or any other aspect of our existence. Whatever control we have achieved through our work, great or small, remains limited compared to the vast forces of chaos that can and do periodically disrupt our lives. Much of the frenetic busyness of our society could be alleviated if we would just stop once a week and meditate.

Four simple principles underline a good sabbath:

1. Stop working and rest
2. Delight in things like Sabbath meals, enjoying nature, worshiping God, etc.
3. Meditate on ultimate things. [3]

There are many ways that Christians can organize their Sabbath, but these are the main components of a good Sabbath habit. Notice that, if possible, there needs to be an additional day off when we conduct business for which we are not paid.

A Daily Rhythm of Life

Some years ago, while still employed as an evangelical pastor, I had the opportunity to spend a week at a monastery near Atlanta, Georgia. It was one of several opportunities I took to retreat in monasteries and retreat houses. For evangelicals, this may seem like an odd thing to do. However, one cannot live in a monastery with the rhythm of the daily offices, most of which involve reading scripture and liturgy based upon scripture, without recognizing that modern society, and even modern evangelical Christian Society, often mischaracterizes the monastic life.

The purpose of the monastic life was to create an order or rhythm of life through which members of the order could order their lives around the ultimate. They still worked, most of them with their hands, raising crops, cooking food, cleaning, and taking care of the common life of the monastery. Only a very few were involved in leadership. Even fewer were involved in scholarships. The purpose was to order their lives as an example to the world of how it might be organized peacefully and conducive to human flourishing.

The Daily Offices consist of a structured sequence of prayers, readings of the Psalms, Bible readings, canticles, and the Lord’s Prayer. The entire Psalter is read over time.  For priests and monastics, seven daily offices have developed: Matins, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. St. Benedict’s Rule (ca. 540) establishes a common pattern:  Nocturns and Lauds (midnight), Prime (6:00 AM), Terce (9:00 AM), Sext (noon), Nones (3:00 PM), Vespers (sunset), and Compline (before bed). [4] In the Anglican tradition, morning and evening prayer have persisted as part of the Book of Common Prayer across all Anglican groups.

In his books, Peter Scazzero suggests that lay people attempt to create two or three times of prayer and silence consistent with the ancient daily office. The most common of these would be morning, noon, and evening. In the courses he developed, there are two periods of time involving a short Bible reading, a meditation, a time of prayer, and silence.[5]

Conclusion

Over the next three weeks or so, I will have additional opportunities to describe what a rule of life, or “order of life for human flourishing,” might look like. Modern life, especially modern American life, is relentlessly busy, acquisitive, and hedonistic. Taking time to step away from the pressure to conform to our culture’s demands allows one to rest, gain perspective, and flourish mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. For Christians, this is important, and the Christian tradition provides many examples that help deepen and nurture our growth. Other religious traditions offer their own examples and support. Even in the secular world, we can find examples and guidance in the pursuit of a more balanced and healthy life. Each of us must begin the journey in whatever way we feel called. As a Christian, I do not desire to do more than encourage people to step out in the search for a more emotionally healthy spirituality and lifestyle.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] As mentioned previously, these blogs are based on Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), hereinafter EHL. See also Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to Deep Transformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2021). Emotionally Healthy Spirituality,Updated Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017). The Emotionally Healthy website is https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/. The materials needed to guide individuals through emotionally healthy discipleship training are available on the website and most Christian and secular online book retailers. The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Relationship Courses are offered as the “Emotionally Healthy Disciples Course,” which includes books, study guides, teaching videos, devotional guides, and teaching aids.

 

[2] EHL, 144.

[3] EHS, 134-160.

[4] The Episcopal Parish of st. John the Evangelist, “Praying the Daily Office,” https://www.stjohns-hingham.org/praying-the-daily-office(downloaded, April 12, 2025). There are many other introductions to be found online and in books.

[5] These are found in the two devotionals accompanying  Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Emotionally Healthy Relationships.