Ashlee’s Reviews > After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters > Status Update

Virtue, in this strict sense, is what happens when someone has made 1000 small choices, requiring effort and concentration, to do some thing which is good and right, but which doesn’t “come naturally”- and then, on the thousand and first time, when it really matters, they find that they do what is required “automatically”, as we say.
It looks natural, but is the result of intentional effort and discipline.

The rich young ruler has kept all the rules and still has a sense that there just be something more. Jesus challenges him to a transformation of character.

This kind of transformation of character is- virtue.

Doing your own thing isn’t good enough, but rules won’t solve the problem.

Rules can be remade, bent, and worked around.

They system is really only healthy when the people who are running it are people you can trust to do the right thing. Not simply because there are rules, but because that’s the sort of people that they are.

How should I live, and how do I know?
Jenny looked for rules we must keep whether we like it or not.
Philip was eager for ways of being authentic, finding what is deeply true for yourself, and how to live without hypocrisy with deep and vulnerable honesty.

It is neither rules nor spontaneous self-discovery, but character.

On this bank you declare your faith, in that bank is the final result of final salvation. But what are we to do in the meantime?

The bridge between is called character.