Tools for life
The Good Life: Truths That Last in Times of Need.
By Peter J. Gomes. HarperSanFrancisco, 388 pp., $23.95.
My church youth group once performed a musical featuring a song called "The Good Life." It parodied the consumerist notion of the good life: "boats and cars and kids that are all in good condition," visits to "Spain and France and Greece all part of our tradition" and "art and books and gems placed on exhibition." It concluded by acknowledging that when we have acquired all these things, "we still hunger, we still thirst." I knew that the song was right. Peter J. Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church of Harvard University, reinforces what I noted 22 years ago and reiterates much of what philosophy and religion have always claimed.
Gomes makes the obvious claim that "good people live good lives" and lists self-discipline and moral conduct as necessary tools for good living. Quoting Harvard President Abbott Lawrence Lowell's Baccalaureate sermon of 1914, Gomes defines success as "doing something that is worth doing." This is not groundbreaking news but, rather, a confirmation that good living takes a lot of hard work. Such a life necessarily includes germination and cultivation of the four cardinal virtues--prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude--and the three theological virtues--faith, hope and love. These are not inherent traits, but behaviors that must be taught to us, modeled for us and ultimately adopted by us.
Drawing on such thinkers as Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, Gomes reiterates that neither accomplishments nor possessions are the mark of a good life. He asserts that failure often teaches us more than does a constant string of successes. Character development requires much practice, and happiness is a fragile goal not always concurrent with goodness. In short, there's no blueprint for the good life. College administrators need not rush to design a new class based on this book to add to the already overcrowded "values" curriculum.
