SAUL'S HOLLOW TRUNK AND DAVID'S DEEP ROOTS

Some trees look strong, but a storm shows what they’re really made of.

You know the kind of tree I’m talking about. From the street, it looks healthy and full of life. You might even think it could handle a tire swing and half the youth group hanging from its branches. But let a storm come through, and suddenly a branch snaps, the trunk splits, and the whole thing topples right into your flower bed. It’s a bit like those folding chairs at the church picnic that always seem to give out just as someone sits down with a plate full of fried chicken. The real issue isn’t what you see on the outside. It’s what’s happening inside the trunk that makes all the difference.

That, in a nutshell, is the story of Saul. 

Israel wanted a king like all the other nations had. They wanted someone tall, impressive, and who looked like he belonged on the cover of Israel Today—if they’d had magazines, that is. Saul checked every box. If Israel had a church directory, his photo would be right on the front page.¹ But Saul’s strength was all surface. He had enough charisma to get the job, but not enough character to keep it.

David, on the other hand, didn’t grow up in the spotlight. God shaped him out in the sheep fields, not on a stage.

Before David ever wore a crown, he wore out a few pairs of sandals chasing sheep. Before he sat on a throne, he spent plenty of nights hiding in caves. Before he led anybody else, he had to learn to lead himself—and sometimes that meant tears, mistakes, and singing psalms when nobody, except God, was listening. When God chose David over Saul, it wasn’t because David was perfect. The difference was deeper. Saul kept chasing the crown but never really gave his heart to God. David, even with all his failures, kept coming back to the Lord. That’s why the Bible calls him a man after God’s own heart—not because he never messed up, but because he kept turning back to God.²

This is where our “Christian Character Tree” comes in. If the soil is the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, the roots are the Beatitudes, the trunk is made up of the cardinal virtues, and the big branches are faith, hope, and love—then Saul and David are like two trees in the same storm. Saul looked tall, but his roots were shallow. David, on the other hand, was slowly formed by God’s grace into someone who could stand strong when the wind picked up.

And that difference still matters today. Like I’ve said before, the cardinal virtues—prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude—can show up in folks who don’t even know the Lord. You probably know someone who’s not a believer but still returns their shopping cart, pays their bills on time, and keeps their yard looking sharp. But faith, hope, and love are a different story. Those aren’t just personality upgrades; they’re gifts from God, the result of His work in our hearts.³ In the Old Testament, you see David’s heart waking up to God, while Saul is content to look religious without really surrendering.

Saul Had the Crown, but Not the Trunk

To be fair, Saul wasn’t your typical villain, nor did he intend to be. He had natural gifts. He had stature, battlefield energy, and at least some early modesty. At one point, he was literally hiding among the baggage when they went looking for him. That is not nothing. He was capable of decisive action in battle, and in flashes, he showed the kind of courage that rallies people in a crisis. If we were mapping him on the cardinal virtues, we might say Saul had hints of fortitude and leadership capacity. He could act. He could command. He could look the part.⁴

But Saul’s virtues didn’t go deep because they weren’t rooted in God.

He lacked prudence because he couldn’t control himself when things got tough. When Samuel was late, Saul panicked and made a sacrifice he shouldn’t have. When people pressured him, he gave in. When the Philistines threatened, he broke the rules and called it necessary. That’s not wisdom. That’s just fear dressed up as religion.

He lacked justice because he often chose to protect himself rather than do what was right. He disobeyed God’s command about Amalek, kept what he was supposed to destroy, and tried to cover it up with religious words. He kept the loot, blamed others, and acted like partial obedience with some worship music counted as faithfulness. It didn’t.⁵

He lacked self-control because his emotions ran his life. He made rash promises, threw spears, brooded, and got angry. He became jealous when people praised David. Saul couldn’t stand hearing someone else get credit. Once envy started, he kept feeding it.⁶

He also lacked real courage deep down. He could be brave in battle, but moral courage is different. C. S. Lewis said courage is not simply one virtue among others but “the form of every virtue at the testing point.” Saul failed that test again and again. He didn’t stand firm when obedience was hard, unpopular, or embarrassing. He was brave in a fight, but not brave enough to admit when he was wrong.⁷

That last point is at the core of why Saul fell.

Saul’s main problem wasn’t just that he sinned. David sinned too, and sometimes in terrible ways. Saul’s real issue was that he cared more about his image than about being honest. When Samuel confronted him, Saul said, “I have sinned,” but then quickly asked Samuel to honor him in front of the elders and the people. That’s the problem. Even his confession was about keeping up appearances. Maybe he wanted forgiveness, but he definitely wanted to look good. His need for the people’s approval was right up there with his need for air to breathe. 

Saul seemed far more troubled by losing the kingdom than by grieving the God who gave it. That’s why his confession always feels like he’s lifting his finger to see which way the wind is blowing. He was not mainly trying to get right with God. He was trying to keep the throne from wobbling.

In the language of my tree metaphor, Saul was a tall trunk with rot at the center. In the language of Lewis, he was a man without a chest—outer frame, inner deficiency.⁸ In the language of Tolkien, he’s the man who keeps thinking that power can be managed if he just holds it with better intentions. But power doesn’t politely stay in the tool shed. It gets into the bloodstream. At the Council of Elrond, the Ring is declared unusable because it is “altogether evil.”⁹ That is a useful warning here. Saul kept trying to hold onto kingship on worldly terms and then use it for godly ends. That never works. You don’t sanctify disobedience by stamping a Bible verse over it.

David Grew in the Field Before He Ruled in the Palace

David’s life is almost the opposite pattern.

He was anointed young but didn’t get the throne until much later. That waiting period wasn’t wasted time—it was God’s mercy at work.

Alan Redpath observed that conversion may happen in a moment, but the making of a saint is the task of a lifetime.¹⁰ That fits David exactly. God was not misplacing the crown while David was in the pasture and in the caves. He was seasoning the timber.

God sent David to “Oak School” in a sheep pasture. There, he learned hiddenness, faithfulness, and courage before applause. He killed lions and bears when no choir was singing about it. Then, when Goliath stomped into the valley running his mouth against the living God, David was ready—not because he had attended a leadership conference, but because his private life had already been formed by trust. He refused Saul’s armor and went out in the name of the Lord. That is faith, not as vague religious sentiment, but as in-the-moment dependence on God.¹¹

There, right at the front end of the story, David begins to show the theological virtues.

He has faith. “The battle is the Lord’s” is not a slogan on a coffee mug. It is a worldview. David lives as though God is actually there, actually holy, actually involved, and actually decisive.

He has hope. Read the fugitive psalms (psalms written while running from Saul and his army), and you find a man who gets afraid, grieves deeply, and still turns his face toward God. Hope in Scripture isn’t wishful positivity. It is confidence in valid promises. David hopes because he believes God’s character is sturdier than his circumstances.

And he has love. You see it in his zeal for God’s name, in his loyalty to Jonathan, in his mercy toward Saul, in his later kindness to Mephibosheth, and in his aching grief over Absalom. David’s love was not always clean and unconflicted, but it was real. The branch bent toward God and toward neighbor, not just toward self.¹²

Now add the cardinal virtues.

David had prudence, especially in his early years. He learned to wait. That may be one of the most underrated virtues in the whole story. Twice, he had Saul in his grasp. Twice, he might have sped up the promise with a knife. Twice, he refused. He wouldn’t seize by sin what God had promised by grace. That is practical biblical wisdom. It's knowing that the wrong means will deform the right end.

David had justice. At his best, he ruled with righteousness, sought the good of the people, honored covenant loyalty, and used power to bless rather than merely to dominate. His treatment of Mephibosheth alone is a flashing sign that he understood kingship as stewardship.¹³

David had temperance, though not perfectly. For long stretches, he showed remarkable restraint: he wouldn’t kill Saul, wouldn’t retaliate as quickly as his men wished, and repeatedly submitted his timing to God. But this is where we have to tell the truth. No playing favorites here. David’s collapse with Bathsheba and Uriah was not a small lapse. It was catastrophic. The man who once refused to grab a kingdom used his power to grab a woman. The man who once protected the weak arranged the death of a devoted soldier. In that chapter, the trunk cracked. But it didn’t split. This should give many flawed men hope that he may still be used by God. 

David also had fortitude. He faced giants, exile, betrayal, civil war, grief, and public shame. But the deepest form of his fortitude may not be in combat at all. It may be in his willingness to be humbled by God. Lewis was right: courage is every virtue at the testing point. For David, one of the fiercest tests was not whether he would face a Philistine with a sling, but whether he’d face his own sin without excuse when Nathan said, “You are the man.”

That is where the real difference between Saul and David becomes impossible to miss.

Both men sinned. Both men were confronted. Both men said, in one form or another, “I have sinned.”

But Saul’s confession curved back toward public image. David’s confession fell forward into the mercy of God. “I have sinned against the Lord.” No spin. No committee statement. No attempt to save face with the donors in the lobby. Then came Psalm 51, which I believe to be one of the most searching prayers in the Bible. Here, David asks not simply for consequences to be softened but for the heart to be remade. This isn’t a man trying to keep his reputation intact. This is a man asking God to tell the truth all the way down and then create in him a clean heart.¹⁴

That may be the clearest contrast between the two kings. Saul looked devastated at the thought of losing the kingdom. David looked devastated because he had sinned against the Lord. Saul grieved the collapse of his image. David grieved the rupture of communion. One wanted the throne secured. The other wanted the Presence restored. 

That's why David became a great king, even though he was never a perfect one. His greatness wasn’t that he never fell. His greatness was that grace had made him returnable. Oh Lord, may we all be returnable. 

Saul was hard.

David was breakable.

Saul defended himself against the light.

David eventually collapsed into it.

Saul wanted enough God to help preserve the throne.

David wanted God—even when the throne itself became part of the discipline.

That breakability is not frailty. It is one of the surest signs of spiritual life.

The Difference Was in What They Loved

This is where the Transcendentals help.

Saul had a disordered relationship to the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. He did not want truth in the inward being; he wanted manageability. He’d use truth when it helped him and dodge it when it threatened him. Goodness, for Saul, often became whatever preserved his position. Beauty, in the biblical and classical sense, requires rightly ordered love, but Saul’s loves were badly bent. He loved approval, control, and survival more than he loved obedience.

David, by contrast, shows a heart increasingly captured by the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. He wanted truth in the inward parts. He wanted goodness, not merely success. And he wanted the beauty of the Lord. When he says, “One thing have I asked of the Lord… to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord,” he isn’t speaking like a pragmatist or a religious performer.¹⁵ He’s speaking like a man whose loves are being reordered.

Peter Kreeft has argued that the deepest movements of the human heart are directed toward truth, goodness, and beauty because they ultimately point toward God.¹⁶ David increasingly lives that way. Saul increasingly does not.

Or, to borrow another Lewis image, Saul kept feeding the Tragedian. In The Great Divorce, Lewis portrays a tiny Dwarf dragged around by a grandstanding theatrical self.¹⁷ In my opinion, it is one of the best pictures of image management ever put on paper. Saul keeps polishing the public self while the inner man shrivels. David does ugly things, grievous things, but by grace, he keeps dragging the real self back into the presence of God, where truth can do its painful work.

What Saul Did Not Have, What David Was Still Learning

So what did Saul lack among the seven virtues, and what did David possess? Glad you asked.

Saul showed fragments of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude (courage) in natural form, but none of them were stable enough to carry the load. They were not rooted deeply enough in the fear of God. His faith was shallow, his hope collapsed into despair, and his love curved inward. He ended as a man consulting a medium in the dark because he’d spent years refusing the clear Word of God in the light.

David, on the other hand, showed all seven virtues in real, although imperfect, form. Prudence in waiting. Justice in ruling. Temperance in restraint. Fortitude in suffering. Faith in battle and exile. Hope in the Psalms. Love in worship, loyalty, mercy, and grief. But he remained weak in the places many gifted leaders are weak: sexual appetite, comfort, and family management. David’s story is not “be like David because David was awesome.” David’s story is “behold what grace can build in a man, and behold how badly that man still needs mercy.”

Dallas Willard loved to say that grace is not opposed to effort but to earning. David’s life illustrates that better than most. His hidden years weren’t earning the kingdom; they were training for it. His habits in the pasture and cave became what Willard would call a kind of habitual capability. When the moment of testing came, character did what character does. Saul kept reaching for hacks. David was being trained into a heart.¹⁸

And that, honestly, is where this lands for us in the church today, particularly in our Southern Baptist ones.

We in the church still know how to pick Sauls. We are suckers for height, charm, confidence, a big platform, and the kind of polish that makes you think someone was born holding a microphone. We still confuse giftedness with godliness and charisma with character. One does not preclude the other, yet we don’t often differentiate and then choose the more important. We still want kings like the nations.¹⁹

But God still looks at the heart, not the highlight reel.

He’s still less impressed with the shine than with the solid joinery underneath.

He’s still less impressed with the platform than with the root system.

He’s still less impressed with quick results than with long obedience in the same direction.

The crown doesn’t make the man stronger. It just shows what’s already there.

If there’s a final lesson here, it’s this: The real question isn’t whether you have public gifts—Saul had plenty. The question is what kind of person you’re becoming when nobody’s watching. Can truth get past your defenses? Does goodness matter more to you than success? Has God’s beauty started to change what you love? Are faith, hope, and love alive in you by God’s grace? And when the pressure comes, do you harden up like Saul or break open like David?

Because eventually the storm comes.

Eventually, the branch bears weight.

Eventually, the throne gets heavy.

And when that day arrives, hacks will not hold you.

Image management will not save you.

A borrowed suit of armor will not make you strong.

Only roots. Only trunk. Only Limbs. Only the slow, steady work of God’s grace.

God didn’t just hand David a throne. He spent years growing a tree that could hold the weight.

Know someone who could use this encouragement? Why not share it with them now?

Endnotes

1. 1 Sam. 8:5, 20; 9:2; 10:23–24 (English Standard Version [ESV] ).

2. 1 Sam. 13:14; 16:7; Acts 13:22 (ESV). See also S. A. Fix and J. Robert Vannoy, “1 Samuel,” TGC Bible Commentary, The Gospel Coalition, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/commentary/1-samuel/ ; Sinclair Ferguson, “A Man After God’s Own Heart,” Ligonier Ministries, November 20, 2008, https://www.ligonier.org/posts/a-man-after-gods-own-heart. 

3. Saint Thomas Aquinas. The Summa Theologica. Edited by Mortimer J. Adler et al., Translated by Laurence Shapcote, Second Edition, vol. 18, Robert P. Gwinn; Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990, pp. 60-61.

4. 1 Sam. 10:22, 26; 11:6–13 (ESV).

5. 1 Sam. 13:8–14; 15:1–24, 30 (ESV).

6. 1 Sam. 18:7–11; 19:9–10; 22:16–18 (ESV). See also John L. Mackay, “Was King Saul Possessed by Demons? (1 Samuel 19),” Crossway, June 24, 2021, https://www.crossway.org/articles/was-king-saul-possessed-by-demons-1-samuel-19/. 

7. C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: HarperOne, 2001), chap. 29. See also 1 Sam. 15:20–31 (ESV).

8. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 25.

9. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Illustrated ed. (New York: William Morrow, 2020), “The Council of Elrond,” p.267.

10. Alan Redpath, The Making of a Man of God: Lessons from the Life of David (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group, 2004).

11. 1 Sam. 16:11–13; 17:34–47 (ESV). See also Burk Parsons, “The Heart Restored,” Ligonier Ministries, https://learn.ligonier.org/articles/heart-restored; Alan Redpath, The Making of a Man of God: Lessons from the Life of David (Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 2004).

12. 1 Sam. 24:3–12; 26:7–11; Pss. 56:3–4; 57:1; 2 Sam. 1:17–27 (ESV).

13. 2 Sam. 8:15; 9:1–13; Ps. 27:4 (ESV); see also 1 Sam. 23:2; 30:8; 2 Sam. 5:19 (ESV).

14. 2 Sam. 11:1–27; 12:1–13; Ps. 51 (ESV). See also Matt Erbaugh, “The Heart of True Repentance,” Desiring God, December 26, 2017, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-heart-of-true-repentance; Trevor Laurence, “8 Steps for Real Repentance from Psalm 51,” The Gospel Coalition, April 24, 2018, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/steps-repentance-psalm-51/.

15. Psalm 27:4 (ESV). 

16. Peter Kreeft, Wisdom of the Heart: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful at the Center of Us All (Charlotte, NC: TAN Books, 2020). See also Peter Kreeft, “The Good, the True and the Beautiful,” PeterKreeft.com, accessed March 28, 2026, https://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/27_good-true-beautiful_org.htm. 

17. C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: HarperOne, 2001), chap. 13.

18. Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), 61–62. See also Dallas Willard, “Personal Soul Care,” Dallas Willard Ministries, accessed March 28, 2026, https://dwillard.org/resources/articles/personal-soul-care; Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2002).

19. R. Scott Pace and Jim Shaddix, “3 Ways That Scriptural Leadership Differs from Secular Leadership,” Crossway, January 9, 2024, https://www.crossway.org/articles/3-ways-that-scriptural-leadership-differs-from-secular-leadership/. See also 1 Sam. 16:7 (ESV).

THE LOAD-BEARING SOUL: THE ARCHITECTURE OF NON-HOLLOW CHARACTER

9th in the Wide Witness, Deep Root Series

There is a reason nobody hangs a swing from a branch of a hollow tree.

A branch like that may look sturdy enough from a distance. It may still have bark. It may still have leaves. But if you hang real weight on it, the branch gives way, the rotten tree comes down, and somebody ends up in the begonias. A lot of modern discipleship feels exactly like that. We want fruit before fiber. We want visible sweetness before invisible strength. We pray fervently for patience, but we want it delivered Next-Day Amazon Prime. We want a harvest without a growing season, attempting to hack-grow Christian character while our deeper spiritual structures remain dangerously hollow.

As I have written in previous blogs, the Apostle Peter will not let us play that delusional game. He tells believers that God's divine power has given us what pertains to life and godliness, and then—without flinching—he says, “make every effort” to supplement our faith with nutrients that keep us from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of Christ (2 Peter 1:3–11; Galatians 5:22–25).

That is why the Blueprint of the Christian Character Tree is so crucial. If we do not understand the architecture of the soul, we will collapse under the weight of an unhinged age. 

A BRIEF LOOK BACK

To understand why structural character matters, we must look backward before we look upward. As explored in the previous Light in the Attic series, the biblical narrative of King Josiah provides a terrifying warning about superficial reform. Josiah inherited a nation drowning in idolatry, and he instituted a massive, wide-reaching external overhaul. He smashed the altars, cleaned out the temple, and mandated total behavioral compliance. It was a spectacular outward witness.

But the reform was merely an aggressive cleaning of the national attic; the foundation of the house remained severely cracked.¹ The transformation was wide, but it was not deep. The moment Josiah died, the "rubber band effect" took over, and the people violently snapped right back to their pagan values. (You can get the complete download of  “The Light in the Attic” Series plus special worksheets to apply the five principles for free here.)

J.R.R. Tolkien captured this exact spiritual pathology in The Hobbit with the concept of "dragon-sickness". Thorin Oakenshield successfully reclaims his mountain and slays the external dragon, but he nearly destroys himself and his friends because the internal sickness of greed and narcissism still infects his heart.² Curing the external behavior without renovating the internal character is a fatal error. We can slay the cultural dragons outside the church, but if our people still possess the dragon-sickness within, we have accomplished nothing.

Currently, much of the church operates on a spreadsheet mentality, equating the mandate "I will build my church" with numerical attendance, budget surpluses, and cultural influence. (For more on this, see “The Gates of Hell Do Not Fear Our Spreadsheets”) This metric-driven pragmatism ignores the slow, invisible work of molding the heart, head, and hands into the image of Christ. To survive the modern unhinged age without snapping, the tree must be grown in a specific, deliberate order.

TREE AS ANALOGY

I used the tree as an analogy for Christian character because it gives a visual blueprint of how the whole life of formation fits together, from hidden roots to visible fruit. A tree shows that Christian character is not religious cosmetics or factory output, but a living whole rooted in Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, nourished by grace, and strengthened by virtue. It also makes clear that what people see in a life depends on what is happening beneath the surface. We will start there. 

Soil

The soil is the Transcendentals: the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. The objective, foundational reality that corresponds to our deepest human desires.³ They are profound, mysterious and even infinite because they are attributes of God.  

Roots

The roots are the Beatitudes; those hidden postures of poverty of spirit, meekness, hunger, mercy, purity, and peacemaking that let grace sink deep. Roots are entirely unglamorous. They live in the dark, they are never photographed, and nobody writes glowing blog posts about them, except here. Yet, they are the vital conduits that allow supplements to your faith to be absorbed deeply into the soul (Colossians 2:6-7). 

Sap

The sap is the Spirit of God moving through the habitual practice of the spiritual disciplines. The sap keeps moving as we place ourselves before God through the Word by the means of grace. This is not easy nor often pleasant. God is making the believer sturdy enough to handle the sheer weight of holiness. We often say we want the fruit of the Spirit while quietly resisting the means by which the Spirit shapes the tree. We want love, but not hospitality. We want hope, but not Sabbath. We want temperance, but not fasting. We want a harvest without a growing season. But God grows oaks, not plastic plants.

Trunk

The trunk is the four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. In the architecture of the soul, the trunk is the chest. Think of C.S. Lewis’ description of “men without chests”—people with vast amounts of information in their heads and raging desires in their bellies, but absolutely no moral center to stabilize them.⁴ The trunk is our moral center, our stabilization. If these virtues are weak, or absent then we are hollow.

Limbs

The limbs are the three theological virtues: Faith, Hope and Love. These reach Godward and are infused by grace. Fruit comes later. That order matters. If you reverse it, you do not get holiness. You get cosmetics.

No Fruit Yet

So this post is not yet about the fruit of the Spirit. That will come later. This one is about the load-bearing strength that comes before fruit. It is about the seven virtues—four in the trunk, three in the limbs—and about how a Christian actually grows in them. Not in theory. In real life—kitchens, meetings, temptations, family strain, loneliness, deadlines, conflict, prayer, repentance, and the ordinary Tuesday afternoon where theology either learns to walk or stays in the garage.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TRUNK AND THE LIMBS

The old Christian tradition called prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude the cardinal virtues. “Cardinal” comes from the Latin word for “hinge.” These are the hinge virtues because so much of moral life swings on them.⁵ Christianity then named faith, hope, and love as theological virtues. They are called theological because they are directed immediately toward God, are made known by revelation, and are not manufactured by unaided human effort. They are given by God and awakened in us by grace.⁶ In plain English: the cardinal virtues make a person sound; the theological virtues make a person Godward.

That difference matters. A non-Christian can show real courage, and a disciplined executive may outperform many church members in prudence and reliability. Common grace is real. But biblical Christianity is aiming at more than polished humanity. It is aiming at union with Christ, likeness to Christ, and life in the Spirit. That is why the theological virtues do not replace the cardinal virtues; they elevate, animate, and direct them toward God.⁷ The trunk gives structure. The limbs reach upward. The trunk keeps the tree from collapsing. The limbs receive light and carry the coming fruit.

VIRTUES STURDY ENOUGH FOR HOLINESS

And how do these virtues strengthen and grow? Not by moral posing. Not by stapling fruit to dead branches. They grow as the roots keep drawing proper nourishment from the right soil. And values matter because they help us to see all this in the needed perspective. (See my blog on what values root the tree in the soil of the Transcendentals: Stop Stapling Fruit to Dead Trees). Truth feeds prudence because prudence must see reality clearly. Goodness feeds justice because justice gives what is right and due. Beauty reorders desire, which is why it matters so much for temperance and love. The sap keeps moving as we place ourselves before God in the means of grace. Dallas Willard was right: grace is not opposed to effort; it is opposed to earning. Spiritual disciplines are not ways of buying holiness. They are ways of opening the sails to a wind we do not control.⁸

C. S. Lewis once pictured God as entering a house to rebuild it. At first the repairs make sense. Then the walls start shaking, additions go up where you did not ask for them, and the whole project feels wildly inconvenient. Lewis's point was that God is not satisfied with making us into a slightly improved cottage. He intends to build a palace and live in it himself.⁹ That is what virtue growth feels like. God intends to make you sturdy enough for holiness.

We will now walk up the tree, first through the trunk and then out into the limbs, and ask a very practical question at each point: what concrete practice most helps this virtue grow?

THE TRUNK: THE CARDINAL VIRTUES

Prudence: The Steering Wheel of the Moral Life

Prudence is practical wisdom. It is the trained ability to see what is fitting, true, and faithful in this situation, at this moment, with these people, under God's reality. Prudence keeps zeal from becoming stupidity. It is the steering wheel of the moral life. If justice is the will to give what is due, prudence helps you know what is due. If courage is the power to stand firm, prudence helps you know when standing firm is actually obedience and when it is just ego in boots.¹⁰

• Scripture Meditation

The single best discipline for growing prudence is Scripture meditation. Not merely reading fast to get the box checked. Meditation. Slow chewing. Repeated exposure. Lingering over the text until your reflexes start to bend toward God's wisdom instead of your impulses. Joshua is told to meditate on the Book of the Law day and night. Psalm 1 says the blessed man delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it like a tree planted by streams of water. That is not accidental language. Prudence grows when the mind stops treating God's Word like a McDonald's drive-through and starts treating it like daily bread.

Prudence does not usually arrive with fireworks. It comes by holy attention. It grows when the soul becomes less allergic to reality. A church member who meditates on Scripture for years will often outgrow the flashy leader who only knows how to react. Why? Because prudence is formed by saturation. The wise person is not merely informed. He has been marinated.

Justice: Repairing the Damage

Justice is the steady will to give God and neighbor their due. It is not the same thing as being nice. Niceness may refuse conflict because it wants to stay comfortable. Justice will enter discomfort because truth, fairness, and neighbor-love require it. Justice tells the truth, keeps promises, pays debts, refuses partiality, and honors image-bearers.¹¹

• Restitution and Repair

The most practical discipline for growing justice is restitution and repair. When you wrong someone, make it right quickly and concretely. That sounds almost too plain, but that is why it works. Justice grows when we stop treating sin as vapor and start treating it as damage. If your tongue injured someone, go back and repair it. If you were careless with what belonged to another, return it. If you benefited from a wrong, make restitution. Zacchaeus did not merely feel bad. He repaid (Luke 19). Jesus taught that reconciliation with a brother cannot be treated as an optional side quest to worship (Matthew 5:23-24). It belongs in the middle of worship. 

This discipline trains the soul out of self-justification. It teaches you that other people are not stage props in your private story. It also does something else: it makes you hate your sin more honestly. 

Sin always looks clever before restitution and expensive after it. That is a mercy. A man who regularly practices repair becomes more just because he stops thinking of righteousness as a slogan and starts feeling the cost of his own crookedness.

Temperance: Governing the Tiny Dictator

Temperance is self-government. It is not the hatred of pleasure. It is the refusal to be bossed around by pleasure. It enjoys created things without kneeling to them. Food, drink, sex, sleep, money, comfort, amusement, screens, applause—none of these are allowed to sit on the throne. Temperance is more than clenched-teeth restraint. It is ordered desire. It is the soul learning how to say, “This is good, but it is not God.”¹²

• Fasting

The best discipline for growing temperance is fasting.¹³ Fasting is not spiritual dieting and it is not an attempt to impress God with how hungry you can become. It is a way of exposing how noisy your appetites really are. Skip a meal and you will quickly discover whether your stomach is a servant or a tiny dictator. Abstain from some lawful comfort and all the buried monsters begin to crawl into the light: irritation, entitlement, panic, self-pity, control.

That is exactly why fasting helps. Temperance cannot mature while the flesh is always indulged and never contradicted. Fasting teaches the body that it is a body, not a master. It also retrains desire upward. Hunger becomes a kind of prayer. Need becomes a reminder. “Man shall not live by bread alone” stops sounding decorative and starts sounding necessary. In a culture drunk on immediacy, fasting is a firm and cheerful way of telling your cravings, “You are not in charge here.”

Fortitude: Courage at the Testing Point

Fortitude—often called courage—is steadfastness under pressure. A person may look virtuous while righteousness is easy. Fortitude shows up when telling the truth may cost reputation, when faithfulness becomes lonely, when temptation does not leave after one well-worded prayer, when grief lasts longer than your energy, or when you must do the next right thing without applause.¹⁴ Courage is what keeps the rest of the trunk from splintering under strain.

• Costly Obedience

The most effective practice for growing fortitude is deliberate costly obedience in small things.¹⁵ The phone call you do not want to make. The confession you do not want to speak. The hard conversation you keep delaying. The quiet refusal to flatter. The faithful presence in suffering. The continued obedience when nobody seems impressed. Fortitude is built like muscle. It strengthens under resistance.

That is one reason Scripture keeps connecting endurance with trial. James says the testing of faith produces steadfastness (James 1:3). Not because pain is magical, but because pressure reveals what rules us. If every hard thing makes me bolt, I will not become brave by admiring bravery. I become brave by obeying God when my comfort begins screaming. Lewis was right in essence: every virtue reaches a testing point. Fortitude is what keeps a conviction from dissolving the first time it is laughed at.

THE LIMBS: THE THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES

Now we move from trunk to limbs. Here the difference is crucial. The cardinal virtues can be practiced and strengthened as habits. The theological virtues are different. They have God as their direct object. 

Faith believes God. 

Hope expects from God. 

Love delights in God and seeks the true good of neighbor for God's sake. 

These virtues are not self-generated spiritual moods. They are gifts of grace, infused by God and nourished through union with Christ.¹⁶ If the trunk says, “Here is a structurally sound human life,” the limbs say, “Here is a life reaching into God.”

Faith: Dependence Made Audible

Faith is not vague positivity. It is not religious optimism wearing a smile. Faith is personal trust in the God who has spoken and in the Christ who saves. It receives rather than boasts. It leans rather than swaggering. Faith says, “I do not hold reality together. Christ does.” Peter's character supplements (2 Peter 1:5) begins with faith because everything else in the Christian life grows out of dependence, not self-congratulation.¹⁷

• Prayer

The most fitting discipline for growing faith is prayer—real prayer, not perfunctory prayer. Prayer is dependence made audible. Richard Foster connects prayer directly to the strengthening of faith, arguing that as prayer is learned, believers grow in “receiving more faith.”¹⁸ When you pray honestly, you are actively refusing the illusion of self-sufficiency. You are saying, “My life is not self-interpreting, my strength is not enough, and my needs are not finally solved by my own hustle.” Prayer forces faith out of abstraction and into relationship.

A person can know orthodox doctrine and still be thin in faith if he rarely prays except in emergency. Faith grows when we keep coming to God as needy children. It also grows when prayer is tied to promise. Romans states, “faith comes by hearing the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17)  So the pattern is simple and ancient: hear the Word, answer with prayer, and let trust deepen through repeated contact with the living God. The person who prays only when cornered often has panic more than faith. The person who learns daily dependence begins to develop a steadier soul.

Hope: Faith Stretched into the Future

Hope is faith stretched into the future. It is confident expectation anchored in the promises of God. John Piper has called it the present enjoyment of a future blessing.¹⁹

It is not sunny temperament. 

It is not denial. 

It is not pretending all news is good news. 

Christian hope can stare into a grave and still say, “This will not have the last word.” It can stand in the dark without believing the dark will stay.  Hope keeps fortitude from turning into steely stoicism. 

• Sabbath

The best discipline for growing hope is Sabbath—a regular practice of resting in God rather than living as if the universe will spin off its axle the moment you stop managing it.  Sabbath trains hope because it confronts one of our favorite lies: that everything depends on us. When you stop, worship, pray, rest, eat, and refuse productive panic for a set period, you are making a theological statement. You are declaring that God is God and you are not.

Dallas Willard called Sabbath a way of life because it loosens our bondage to our own effort and reminds us that the outcome of our work does not finally rest on our frantic control.²⁰ That is hope-training. In Tolkien's story, Sam sees a star above the reeking darkness of Mordor and realizes that the Shadow is only a small and passing thing.²¹ That is what Sabbath does to the Christian imagination. It lifts your eyes long enough to remember that Pharaoh is not forever, cancer is not forever, headlines are not forever, your exhaustion is not forever. Christ is forever. Hope needs that rehearsal.

Love: The Summit of Virtue

Love is the summit. Not mere niceness. Not conflict avoidance. Not sentimental religious syrup, no matter how good it tastes. Christian love seeks the true good of another for God's sake. It rejoices with the truth. It bears, believes, hopes, and endures. It is the greatest of the three theological virtues because it most fully participates in the very life of God, who is love.²² 

Faith receives. 

Hope expects. 

Love gives.

• Hospitality

The practice that most concretely grows love is hospitality.²³ Hospitality takes love out of theory and puts a plate in front of somebody. It opens the home and the table. It interrupts the narcissism that wants every room arranged around the self. In the New Testament, hospitality is not luxury entertaining for people who already impress you. It is neighbor-love made visible.²⁴

This is why hospitality is such strong medicine. Love does not mature mainly by being admired. It matures by being spent. Open your home to church members, strangers, the lonely, the inconvenient, and the person who cannot pay you back. You will quickly discover whether your version of love is real or just a slogan. Hospitality makes love concrete. It gives agape a front door, a casserole dish, and a towel by the sink.

HOW IT ALL HOLDS TOGETHER

Now step back and look at the tree trunk and limbs again.

Prudence learns to see reality through Scripture. 

Justice learns to make wrongs right. 

Temperance learns to master appetite through fasting. 

Fortitude learns to obey under cost. 

Faith learns dependence in prayer. 

Hope learns to rest in God through Sabbath. 

Love learns self-giving through hospitality. 

None of these practices earns grace. All of them are ways of keeping the sap moving. The growth pattern is both humbling and hopeful. Nobody drifts into virtue, but real change is possible. Peter does not say, “Pretend harder.” He says these qualities can be ours and increasing (2 Peter 1:8). Growth may be slow, but slowness is not the same thing as impossibility. Trees do not panic because they are not orchards by Thursday.

Many of us need a gentle but firm correction. I would be one of these people. As I wrote earlier, we often say we want the fruit of the Spirit while quietly resisting the means by which the Spirit shapes the tree. We want love, but not hospitality. We want hope, but not Sabbath. We want faith, but not prayer. We want temperance, but not fasting. We want justice, but not restitution. We want prudence, but not meditation. We want courage, but not costly obedience. In other words, we want a harvest without a growing season.

That is not how God usually works.

He grows oaks, not plastic plants.

So before we rush ahead to fruit, we need to ask harder questions. Is my trunk solid? Are my limbs alive? Am I drawing from the right soil? Are my hidden values helping the roots take in truth, goodness, and beauty—or are they poisoning the uptake? Do I only admire virtue in sermons, or am I placing my life under the disciplines that make virtue strong?

Sooner or later, the wind picks up. Family stress. Ministry strain. Temptation. Loss. Fatigue. Conflict. Success. Obscurity. Delay. Praise. Pain. One way or another, weight gets hung on the structure. That is when hollow trunks crack.

So no, this is not yet the post on fruit. This is the post before the fruit—the one about wood grain, fiber, rings, sap, and load-bearing strength. The one about the sort of person a Christian is becoming long before anyone takes a picture of the fruit.

And that matters, because nobody hangs a swing from a branch of a hollow tree.

ENDNOTES

1.  After The Attic Light: Why Reform Must Become Character  https://www.fairburnba.org/post/after-the-attic-light-why-reform-must-become-character

2. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit: Illustrated By The Author (William Morrow, 2023), pp. 236-239.

3. Peter Kreeft, Wisdom of the Heart: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful at the Center of Us All. Gastonia, NC: TAN Books, 2020. pp. 173-174. 

4. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. HarperOne, 2001, p. 26.

5. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Seven Virtues,” last revised and updated by Melissa Petruzzello, accessed March 22, 2026, https://www.britannica.com/topic/seven-virtues; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Virtue,” accessed March 22, 2026, https://www.britannica.com/topic/virtue-in-Christianity .

6. Saint Thomas Aquinas. The Summa Theologica. Edited by Mortimer J. Adler et al., Translated by Laurence Shapcote, Second Edition, vol. 18, Robert P. Gwinn; Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990, p. 60.

7. “Thomas Aquinas,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2024 ed., accessed March 22, 2026, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2024/entries/aquinas/. And: Saint Thomas Aquinas. The Summa Theologica. Edited by Mortimer J. Adler et al., Translated by Laurence Shapcote, Second Edition, vol. 18, Robert P. Gwinn; Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990, p. 61.

8. Dallas Willard, “Cultivating a Life of Worship and Joy,” Renovaré, accessed March 22, 2026, https://renovare.org/articles/cultivating-a-life-of-worship.

9. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. New York: HarperOne, 2001. bk. 4, chap. 9, “Counting the Cost.”

10. Kreeft, Peter. Back to Virtue: Traditional Moral Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusion. Ignatius Press, 1992, Chapter Four: Justice, Wisdom, Courage, and Moderation: The Four Cardinal Virtues.

11. Ibid.

12. Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the  Only Hope That Matters (New York: Dutton, 2009), xvii-xix.

13. Dallas Willard. The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives. New York: HarperCollins, 1991, 167–68. Richard Foster, a dear friend of Willard’s also concurs with this estimation in a general way. Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998, p.55.

14. Peter Kreeft, “Weakness Into Strength,” PeterKreeft.com, accessed March 26, 2026, https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/weakness-strength.htm 

15.  Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), 134–35.

16. Saint Thomas Aquinas. The Summa Theologica. Edited by Mortimer J. Adler et al., Translated by Laurence Shapcote, Second Edition, vol. 18, Robert P. Gwinn; Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990, p. 60.(Vol. II, q.62, art. 2) 

17. Ibid. Vol. II, q.4, art.7. 

18. Richard J. Foster, “Five Misconceptions that Hinder Prayer,” Renovaré, accessed March 26, 2026, https://renovare.org/articles/5-misconceptions-that-hinder-prayer 

19. John Piper, Future Grace: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God, rev. ed. Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah, 2012.

20. Dallas Willard, “The Key to the Keys to the Kingdom,” in The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2006, p. 34.

21 J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. bk. 6, chap. 2, “The Land of Shadow.”

22. Andrew David Naselli, “Why Is Love Called the Greatest of These? (1 Corinthians 13),” Crossway, February 10, 2024, https://www.crossway.org/articles/why-is-love-called-the-greatest-of-these-1-corinthians-13/ 

23. Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, rev. ed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998, pp. 129–131.

24. Ibid., pp.131-137.

Good vs. God: Why Being "Nice" Is Not The Goal

8th in the Wide Witness, Deep Roots Series

I’m circling back to values and the Beatitude roots again because we still underestimate how much they matter in Kingdom ministry. A plane can be one degree off and look fine at takeoff, but given enough distance, that tiny error becomes a major miss. The same is true in the church. When we try to do God’s work with the world’s value system, we may look sincere, productive, and successful while drifting farther from the Kingdom the whole time. Think Constantine trying to “Christianize” the empire by the sword. Sincere? Likely. Faithful? That is another question. That is the power of values.

The church has a dangerous habit of mistaking results for righteousness. If attendance is up, giving is strong, the brand looks polished, and the room feels inspired, we are tempted to call it “good” and move on. But the Kingdom of God is not dazzled by polished optics, inflated metrics, or ministry success powered by worldly instincts. Something can look fruitful, feel strategic, and still be rotten at the root. You can build a ministry that helps some people, flatters many more, and quietly trains everyone to love the wrong kingdom.

That is the problem with “good” done without God. It is not neutral. It is not harmless. It is not even truly good. It is often rebellion with better branding. Scripture does not let us grade righteousness on a curve. Jesus warns that religious acts can be done to be seen. Paul says even costly sacrifice can amount to nothing without love. The world asks, “Did it work?” The Kingdom asks, “Was it true? Was it faithful? Was it from faith? Did it honor God?” That is why the Ring in The Lord of the Rings is such a useful picture: evil power does not become holy because a good man picks it up. It just becomes evil with a sermon outline.

The Ring Always Comes with a Reason

If you want to understand the modern, respectable church person, you would not start with Judas. You might start with Boromir. Boromir is one of the most useful men in Middle-earth for diagnosing respectable church folk.

He is not a cartoon villain. He is brave, loyal, patriotic, and he genuinely loves his people. In our setting, Boromir is the guy who serves on the stewardship committee, never misses Wednesday night, and volunteers to drive the youth van to D-Now. He sees darkness gathering in the culture and wants to stop it.

His problem is not that he wants a bad thing. His problem is more frightening, and much more common: he wants a good thing in a godless way. He looks at the Ring of Power and thinks, Why shouldn’t we use this for something noble?¹ That is exactly what makes him dangerous.

The Ring is evil not merely because it does bad things, but because it teaches a false doctrine of goodness. It whispers that you may seize power, bend wills, manipulate outcomes, and still call the result righteous. That is why it ruins good people first. Not by making them love evil in the abstract, but by teaching them to pursue good as little gods.

Miss this, and you will misunderstand how temptation usually works. The worst temptations rarely arrive with horns and a pitchfork. If Satan showed up offering open heresy and obvious depravity, most church people would run him out of the sanctuary. Usually temptation shows up with a Bible under its arm, a printed bulletin in hand, and a very reasonable explanation.

That is why one of the deepest battles in the Christian life is not good versus evil in the obvious, comic-book sense. If it were, sanctification would mostly be a matter of not robbing banks and not setting things on fire. No, the real battle is more subtle than that. It is my definition of “good” versus God’s definition of the good. It is the daily clash between what seems right, useful, efficient, protective, impressive, or compassionate to me, and what is actually holy, fitting, and obedient before God.

And that battle is closer to home than most of us want to admit. We are masters at spiritualizing fleshly desires. We say we want peace, but often we mean comfort. We say we want justice, but often we mean our side finally getting the microphone. We say we want love, but often we mean affirmation without repentance. We say we want strength, but often we mean control with a Bible verse taped to it. We say we want a healthy church, but often we mean a church that is polished, efficient, conflict-averse, numerically reassuring, and unlikely to embarrass us at associational or convention meetings.

In other words, the human soul is not usually seduced by obvious evil first. It is seduced by a rival good. Boom.

Nice Is Not the New Birth

Jesus walks straight into this problem in Matthew 5:17–20. He says He did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets but to fulfill them, and then He drops the line that should make every polished, well-mannered religious person sit up straighter in the pew: “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20, ESV).

That is not Jesus handing out gold stars for respectable morality. That is Jesus detonating the illusion that niceness, religious habit, and moral presentation are enough.

We read the Pharisees as the obvious bad guys because we know the ending. In their own day, they were the serious people, the careful people, the Bible-quoting people, the tradition-guarding people, the policy people. Their problem was not that they cared too much about righteousness. Their problem was that they had learned how to keep righteousness at the surface. They had mastered the art of managed behavior without surrendered affections. They had the look without the life. The finish without the joinery. Fruit stapled on, but no sap in the tree.

Southern hospitality is a fine thing, but it is not a fruit of the Spirit. You can smile, say “bless your heart,” bring a casserole to the sick, and still harbor bitterness, pride, greed, and envy. Jesus is after something much deeper than improved optics. He is after the renovation of the whole person.

That is why the Beatitudes do not read like a strategy session from a modern church leadership conference. That is why they are the roots in my Christian Character Tree. If we wrote the Beatitudes today, they would sound very different. But Jesus does not say, “Blessed are the impressive, the efficient, the platformed, and the impossible to criticize.” He says blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted.

That is not how the world defines winning. Frankly, it is not how many churches define it either. Tell me I’m wrong.

Jesus Redefines the Good

The Beatitudes do not merely tell us how to behave. They tell us what kind of life God actually calls blessed.

Take meekness. D. A. Carson points out that meekness is not weakness or servility. It is not being a doormat. It is a God-centered posture that yields one’s rights and future into God’s hands rather than grasping, retaliating, and insisting on self-assertion.²

That matters because the world’s vision of the good is built on self-protection. The secular gospel preaches this liturgy all day long: protect your image, protect your comfort, protect your tribe, protect your options, protect your leverage, protect your brand, protect your right to be left alone.

Jesus, by contrast, calls blessed the person who has stopped making self-protection the center of the moral universe.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5, ESV).

The world hears that and thinks, “That’s adorable. Meanwhile, the ruthless bought all the prime real estate.” But Jesus is not confused about how reality works. He is telling us that the Kingdom of God is not inherited by the grabby, the brash, the perpetually offended, or the power-addicted. It is inherited by those who trust the Father enough to stop reaching for the Ring.

John Piper describes meekness as trusting God, committing our way to Him, waiting patiently for Him, and therefore not giving way to quick and fretful anger.³ That is strong medicine in an age where perpetual outrage is treated like discernment and wrath is confused with courage. Spend five minutes on social media and you will find believers shredding each other while imagining they are defending the faith. Some of us are not nearly as principled as we think. We are just baptizedly irritated.

When Good Things Start Asking for Worship

Peter Kreeft is helpful here because he insists that truth, goodness, and beauty are not decorative ideas floating in the air. They are realities grounded in God Himself.⁴ Thomas Aquinas, in the great Christian tradition, treated them as bound together in being: what is truly true and truly good is not finally severed from what is beautiful.⁵

That means “good” is not a toy we get to rename every election cycle or every time the culture updates its playlist. The good is not whatever works. The good is not whatever sells. The good is not whatever keeps me comfortable, admired, and unbothered. The good is what corresponds to God’s reality, God’s character, and God’s purposes.

And here is where things get uncomfortable for conservative, well-meaning Christians: a lesser good can become a functional god in about ten minutes. Maybe faster.

Family is good. Safety is good. Competence is good. Influence is good. Ministry growth is good. Being thought of as balanced and reasonable is good.

But when any created good begins demanding the trust, fear, sacrifice, and obedience that belong to God alone, it has stopped acting like a gift and started acting like an idol.⁶ That is why the difference between “good” and “god” is only one letter on the page and a whole universe in the soul.

Tim Keller often said that idols are not usually bad things, but good things turned into ultimate things. That is exactly the danger. We do not usually wake up, pour our coffee, and say, “Today feels like a great day to deny Christ and worship Baal.” We say things that sound spiritual. I just want stability for my family. I just want influence for the gospel. I just want success so I can do more good. I just want peace in the church.

Then the lesser good climbs onto the throne. And once that happens, compromise starts getting renamed. We call fear “prudence.” We call cowardice “unity.” We call self-protection “discernment.” We call worldliness “strategy.” We shade the truth to protect the ministry. We flatter people to protect access. We avoid necessary conflict to protect the church’s brand.

That is not holiness. That is interior public relations.

Justice, Love, and the Right Order of the Soul

This is why justice and love must stay tightly joined.

Justice, as a cardinal virtue, means giving God and neighbor their due. It begins by giving God His proper place as the One who defines reality, goodness, and moral order. If God does not define the good in my life, someone else will. Usually that someone is me. And let’s be honest: I am a deeply unreliable deity.

Love, as a theological virtue, keeps justice from becoming cold, mechanical, and self-congratulatory. Love refuses to use truth as a club or people as props in our own spiritual success story. Love remembers that the goal of obedience is not merely to be correct, but to be rightly ordered toward God and toward those made in His image.

Justice without love becomes a hammer in the hands of proud people. Love without justice becomes pudding—sweet, shapeless, and unable to bear weight. The Kingdom needs both.

This also helps explain why “good vs. God” is not really a contest between two equal options. God is not competing with the good. God is the source, measure, and fulfillment of the good. John Piper is right: the greatest gift of the gospel is God Himself.⁷ Forgiveness is glorious because it brings us to God. Justification is glorious because it brings us to God. Eternal life is glorious not because the streets are gold, but because it is life with God.

So the real conflict in the human heart is not finally between God and goodness. It is between God and all the lesser goods that try to replace Him. Christian maturity is not merely learning to reject bad things. Plenty of pagans reject bad things. Christian maturity is learning to keep good things in second place.

We Live in Two Kingdoms, Not Two Planets

Dallas Willard kept reminding the church that the gospel is not merely an evacuation plan for the afterlife. It is the invitation to live now in the kingdom of God, which he defined as the range of God’s effective will.⁸ That means this struggle over values is not theoretical, abstract, or confined to seminary debates.

It is right here. Right now. It is painfully ordinary.

This battle shows up in board rooms and browser histories. In church budgets and group texts. In how we staff churches and how we speak to our spouses when we are tired. In what we reward, platform, excuse, fear, and celebrate.

You can affirm the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, pass an ordination council, and still run your life on worldly fuel: speed, image, leverage, comfort, outrage, and control. You can say you are against “the world” while borrowing its methods, metrics, and cravings almost by reflex. Just mention the Guidepost Report on the SBC Executive Committee or the public failures at Truett McConnell University and the point lands with a thud. Ouch.

C. S. Lewis warned about “men without chests”⁹—people with sharp minds and strong appetites but no formed moral center. That diagnosis lands hard in our moment. That is why I keep using it. We have information everywhere. We have opinions stacked to the ceiling. We have instincts, takes, reactions, and rhetoric. But too often we do not have a chest: a trained heart with rightly ordered loves.

That is why Willard’s old warning about “vampire Christians” still stings.¹⁰ Plenty of people want the benefits of Jesus’ blood but not the burden of His life. We want rescue without apprenticeship. Forgiveness without formation. Salvation without surrender. Heaven without holiness.

But the Kingdom of God is not in the business of recruiting nicer consumers. It is in the business of forming an entirely new kind of person.

The Two-Column Kingdom Test

So let’s move from polemic to practice.

Take one significant decision you are facing right now—family, church, money, schedule, conflict, calling, whatever—and draw a line down the middle of a page.

On the left side write: What the World Calls Good.

On the right side write: What Jesus Calls Good.

Then be honest enough to make yourself uncomfortable.

Does the world call this option good because it is efficient, safe, admired, lucrative, impressive, validating, fast, or powerful? Does Jesus call it good because it is true, meek, just, merciful, pure, faithful, and obedient?

Then ask the harder questions. What outcome am I most desperate to protect? What fear is driving me? Which Beatitude am I resisting because it feels weak? What fruit of the Spirit would obedience require here? And if Christ’s way costs me status, speed, comfort, or applause, do I still have the faith to call it good?

That little sheet of paper may expose more about your functional theology than a month of vague religious self-talk.

Choose Your Good Carefully

In the end, the question facing the modern church is not whether we value the good. Everybody does.

The real question is: who gets to define it?

The kingdom of this world keeps preaching the same sermon: the good life is found in autonomy, appetite, image management, comfort, and appearances. It is a slick sales pitch. It is also spiritually hollow.

The kingdom of God tells a very different story. The good life is found in surrender, holiness, truth, mercy, meekness, quiet faithfulness, and sacrificial love under the lordship of Christ.

That path looks foolish until the storm comes. Then suddenly roots matter a great deal.

So no, the goal of the Christian life is not to become a “nice person.” Let’s retire that pathetic ambition. Nice people can still be cowards. Nice people can still worship comfort. Nice people can still dodge truth to keep the peace. Nice people can still protect idols with impeccable Southern manners. And nice people, just like Boromir, can still reach for the Ring.

Jesus did not bleed and die to make us nicer Pharisees. He came to make us new creatures.

So yes—be kind. Be patient. Be gracious.

But do not confuse pleasant with holy. Do not confuse cultural respectability with biblical righteousness. Do not confuse good intentions with godliness. And do not confuse a lesser good with God.

Because sooner or later every disciple has to face the question underneath all the others:

Do I want what seems good to me? Or do I want God enough to let Him redefine the good?

That is where surrender begins.

And that is where deep roots begin.

Endnotes

1. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Illustrated ed. (New York: William Morrow, 2020), “The Breaking of the Fellowship,” 398-99.

2. D. A. Carson, “Kingdom of Heaven: Its Norms and Witness,” sermon on Matthew 5:1-16, April 26, 1975, The Gospel Coalition. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/sermon/kingdom-of-heaven-its-norms-and-witness-matthew-5-1-16/

3. John Piper, “What Is Meekness?” Desiring God, May 15, 2012. https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-is-meekness

4. Peter Kreeft, “Lewis’s Philosophy of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty,” in C. S. Lewis as Philosopher: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, ed. David Baggett, Gary R. Habermas, and Jerry L. Walls (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008), 16-17.

5. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 16, a. 3; cf. I, q. 5, a. 1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province.

6. Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters (New York: Dutton, 2009), xvii-xix.

7. John Piper, God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005).

8. Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), 25. (This is my favorite all-time book outside of the Bible. If you’ve read my blogs, I can hardly write one without at least one Willard quote..and one Lewis quote as well)

9. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 16.

10. Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 14.