Complete Book of Everyday Christianity
An A-Z guide to following Christ in every aspect of Life. Here in one book, is the complete guide you need for every part of your life—family, money, relationships, job, church, entertainment and more. The editors, Robert Banks and R. Paul Stevens, combine decades of ministry, scholarship, church leadership, parenting, and other sorts of practical wisdom.VALUES
Few words are used as frequently and with less clear meaning than the word values. The term has come to occupy a key position in all sorts of discussions, ethical, legal, political or religious. We speak of personal values, family values, traditional values, Christian values, organizational values and societal values. Yet it arose in its current usage only in the writings of German philosophers following Immanuel Kant (1724-1824) and particularly the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and, influenced by him, the German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920).
The Problem of Values Language
Of the many philosophers who have commented on the rise of values language, one of the most interesting is the late Canadian philosopher George Grant. Grant noted how values language was used by all sorts of people, whether religious or nonreligious, and that they took the term to be meaningful without realizing that it stems from a way of talking rooted in power and subjectivity rather than in objective virtue. So, he concluded, this language usurps “truth talk.” A classic example of the subjectivity of values in contemporary society is the case of Sue Rodriguez. She narrowly failed to get the Supreme Court of Canada to find a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide. Rodriguez, suffering from a terminal illness, expressed the modern view succinctly in these words, “Why on earth would anyone want to impose their own value system on me? I’ve got mine, they’ve got theirs” (Birnie, p. 116).
C. S. Lewis was well aware of this shift from the objective to the subjective, from truth to opinion, in which the thing valued came to be less significant than the fact of the choice of the subjective valuer. This is what he called the inflation of the subject and the deflation of the object. We see the flowering of this language in moral debates in which the issue is choice. But, of course, the idea that the issue is choice is flawed because a choice can never be judged as moral or immoral unless one knows the moral framework in which it is being exercised. So when people write and speak on values today, it is virtually certain that their meaning will not be clear to modern readers or hearers who have been schooled to view values as expressions of merely personal judgment that make no claim on them at all.
Whatever else values signify, the use of this language is highly ambiguous. When a person speaks of family values, community values or Christian values, they usually assume that they mean something objective (that is, something in the nature of things, something that is good or true irrespective of what they may or may not think personally). However, it is very much in the nature of contemporary usage that “you have your values and I have mine” (that is, values are essentially subjective, one person’s being inevitably different from another’s). When a Christian speaks of Christian values in the contemporary debates, what is likely heard by the audience is “the values in which a Christian believes.” Since values language is, at best, ambiguous and, at worst, relative, it is the enemy of a language of objective goodness. It is no coincidence that this language of values is one language coined by the same philosopher who noted that “God is dead.”
The Challenge of Value-based Education
The language of values raises a deep question about how we should approach education and why in our time we have so readily lost our philosophical moorings. Why have certain segments of the Christian faith been so easily derailed? The earlier language of truth was based on a philosophical and theological framework in which the virtues were known, discussed and learnt as true aspects of the human person, necessary for the proper formation of character. The virtues were moral (philosophical) and theological (the theological virtues being faith, hope and charity). That framework was maintained for many centuries but during the last few centuries has come under frequent attack. Fortunately, some recent philosophers have sought to restore the language and tradition of virtues, and their efforts are being taken seriously.
However, since the language of values dominates many Christian discussions, it is essential for us to renew our understanding of the objective language of truth and goodness in which valid principles are expressed as something more than personal or communal values. Instead of speaking in the muddied language of values, we should speak openly about good and evil, even though we may disagree as to what these are. As G. K. Chesterton once put it, “When you realize you are on the wrong road, the way to correct the error is to go back to where you went wrong.” Our study and curriculum in churches and schools should provide a place for teaching these classical categories in the light of Christian revelation.
References and Resources
M. Adler, Reforming Education (New York: Macmillan, 1988); L. H. Birnie, Uncommon Will: The Death and Life of Sue Rodriguez (Toronto: Macmillan, 1994); A. Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987); R. Guardini, The Virtues (Chicago: Regnery, 1963); S. Hauerwas, Vision and Virtue: Essays in Christian Ethical Reflection (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974); G. Himmelfarb, prologue “From Virtues to Values” to The De-moralization of Society (New York: Knopf, 1995); P. Kreeft, Back to Virtue (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992); C. S. Lewis, preface to The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth (London: Faber & Faber, 1952) 9-13; C. S. Lewis, “On Ethics,” in Christian Reflections, ed. Hooper (London: Bles, 1967); C. S. Lewis, “The Poison of Subjectivism,” in Christian Reflections, ed. W. Hooper (London: Bles, 1967) 72-81; J. F. Power, “George Grant’s Critique of Values Language,” in George Grant in Process, ed. Larry Schmidt (Toronto: Anansi, 1979) 90-98.
-Iain T. Benson
Originally published in The Complete Book of Everyday Christianity by Robert Banks and R. Paul Stevens. ©1997 by Robert Banks and R. Paul Stevens. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, USA. www.ivpress.com
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