SOME GUIDING PRINCIPLES.
1 Bear in mind that it is not possible for you to please everyone. If you try to please everybody you will end up pleasing nobody, so it is important that you boldly prioritize people. Imagine that you are a mother of two twin boys who are 2 years old. Both are about to die from hunger and you have enough food to keep one of them alive. Would you share the food equally between them causing both to perish or would you give it all to one so that he lives and the other dies ? Not an easy decision to make. The Penguin Dictionary of Proverbs says : Where bad is best bad must be the choice. Another book says : Liberality consists not in giving much but in giving wisely.
2 Charity must first be towards those who are nearest and most loyal to you, i.e. the people who deserve your respect most. Which means the government of a nation must care for the basic needs of its own citizens before the wishes of illegal migrants or other less worthy outsiders. The Bible says : Withhold not good from THEM TO WHOM IT IS DUE when it is in the power of thine hand to do it (Proverbs 3:27). And consider the ethic of Jesus Christ's parable of the 10 virgins (Matthew 25). And the foolish said unto the wise : Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered saying : NOT SO, Lest there be NOT ENOUGH for us and you. End quote. If two parties are in conflict and both claim to have God on their side then one of them must be wrong : For God cannot be in favour of and opposed to the same thing at the same time.
3 Courage is a virtue only so far as it is directed by prudence. Aristotle explained in his Ethics that courage is a mean state between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency. The excess of courage is rashness and the deficiency is cowardice. Aristotle said : It is customary to say of well executed works that nothing can be added to them or taken away, the implication being that excess and deficiency alike destroy perfection while the mean preserves it. End quote. Remember there are 4 cardinal virtues which all others hang upon. They are Rational judgement, Justice, Courage and Self control. The supreme one of these is Rational judgement, sometimes called Prudence, because it is by this that we value things at their true and proper worth. Everything that we deliberately say or do begins with judgement in the mind. There is sound judgement, rough judgement and poor judgement.
George Warner
