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Even our virtues need the balancing influence of other virtues

I recently returned to an old devotional book that has spoken to me across the years: Abundant Living by E. Stanley Jones.

In a reading titled “Unbalanced Virtues,” Jones makes a surprising observation: a life may contain many good qualities and still become distorted when one virtue grows out of proportion to the others.

We usually think of our faults as the things that need correction. Jones invites us to examine our strengths as well.

A strength, isolated from other strengths, can become a weakness.

Enthusiasm without discernment can become fanaticism.

Integrity without mercy can become hard and unforgiving.

Thrift without generosity can become stinginess.

Patience without courage can become passivity.

Courage without patience can become recklessness.

Self-assertion without meekness can become domination.

Meekness without self-assertion can allow injustice to go unanswered.

Love without truth can become sentimentality. Truth without love can become cruelty.

Jones describes virtues that must be held together:

• Personal effort and dependence upon God
• Contemplation and practical action
• Being and doing
• Love and law
• Freedom and responsibility
• Self-denial and healthy self-assertion
• Meekness and mastery
• Loving ourselves and loving our neighbors
• Withdrawal for renewal and participation in the world

These qualities are not enemies. They are companions.

The goal is not to alternate between extremes—passive today and aggressive tomorrow, contemplative one week and frantically active the next. Spiritual maturity brings these qualities together in a living harmony.

We see that harmony in Jesus.

He could be gentle with a wounded person and forceful with those who exploited others. He withdrew to pray and then returned to the crowds. He submitted himself to the Father while speaking with unmistakable authority. He embodied both grace and truth.

This may be one reason Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit as a cluster of qualities rather than one isolated virtue:

Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control belong together.

Love needs self-control. Gentleness needs faithfulness. Joy needs patience. Goodness needs wisdom. When one quality is disconnected from the others, even something good can become destructive.

Perhaps our question should not simply be:

What are my greatest strengths?

We might also ask:

• What virtue needs to grow beside my strongest virtue?
• Has one of my strengths become exaggerated?
• Does my passion need more patience?
• Does my patience need more courage?
• Does my conviction need more compassion?
• Does my compassion need clearer boundaries?
• Does my activity need contemplation?
• Does my contemplation need action?

Jones concludes his prayer with a line that remains with me:

“For my virtues must be redeemed, too.”

That may be one of the more searching prayers we can pray. We do not merely ask God to forgive our sins. We ask God to bring our goodness into proportion, place our strengths into harmony, and form the balanced character of Jesus within us.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, examine not only my weaknesses but also my strengths. Where a good quality has grown out of proportion, restore balance. Join courage with gentleness, conviction with humility, contemplation with action, and love with truth. Shape all that I am into the harmony of your character. Amen.

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Source and acknowledgment: Inspired by E. Stanley Jones, “Unbalanced Virtues,” Week 23—Thursday, in Abundant Living (Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1942), p. 159. The book was originally published in 1942 and remains available in a contemporary edition from the E. Stanley Jones Foundation: https://www.estanleyjonesfoundation.com/shop/abundant-living/ or on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4gDdmjK