“He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading. . . (1 Peter 1:3-4)
Is a life of virtue worth pursuing?
Several years ago, Michael Caine and Robert Duvall played two old curmudgeons in the delightful comedy Secondhand Lions. The two men reluctantly and begrudgingly take in Hub’s (Duvall) ten-year-old nephew. In their old age, they have developed a lasting grudge against the world, sitting on the porch of their tumbledown farmhouse, taking potshots with shotguns at any traveling salesmen foolish enough to venture on the property. They seem to want to be left alone, to die quietly in their misery.
But the boy’s presence begins to work a miracle in their withered hearts – they start to hunger for life and love again. They begin to spend their enormous fortune, hidden away mysteriously somewhere on their farm, on everything from garden tools and seeds to a catapult that flings plates skyward for shooting practice, to a Red Baron-style airplane, to a secondhand lion, a mangy old cat that hopes, like these two men, to finish out her days in comfort and joy.
Slowly, the men tell the boy the story of their earlier days. Uncle Hub was a swashbuckling adventurer, a poet-warrior, and Garth was his right-hand wingman. Together, they lived an enchanted, dangerous life, outwitting a cunning enemy in order to win the hand of a beautiful young woman for Hub. Spoiler Alert: while the young boy thinks the old men are simply spinning tall tales, at the end of the movie, we find that it’s all true, causing the now-grown nephew to exclaim about his two now dear and recently departed care-givers: ‘They lived. They really lived.’
Peter’s call to us at the start of his second letter is to Live: Really Live. ‘He has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature. . . be diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. . . in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.’ (2 Pet. 1:3-4, 10-11)
Virtue is designed to help us appreciate and apprehend life in all its fullness and wonder. Faith, Goodness, Knowledge, Self-Control, Steadfastness, Godliness, and Love are not qualities that lead us away from danger and exhilaration in this world – they actually cause us to engage in the battle for eternity in wonderful and surprising ways.
