I’m polishing up a sequel to my first novel, A Hunger in the Heart. In the first chapter of the sequel, Coleman, the main character, sixteen years old at the book’s beginning, is preparing to leave home for a boy’s school. If you’ve read the first novel, you know the wisdom of the family’s gardener, Fig:
“We got stuff to talk about before you go off on your own, ‘bout the ways of the world.”
Coleman laughed. “What do you know about the ways of the world? You’ve never been anyplace but here.”
“Don’t matter. Here’s got the same worries you gonna find anywhere else. Best to get you prepared.”
The point is the root of all problems follow us anywhere we go, because most of our problems are caused by the weaknesses within us. They are humanity’s weaknesses. Catholics call them the seven deadly sins:
Pride, Greed, Envy, Lust, Anger, Sloth, and Gluttony.
And they are the way of the world. Just look around.
Each of the seven deadly sins is a form of Idolatry-of-Self, and we all know people who may be in danger of destroying their lives in selfish ways through one or more of them.
Except, just as we have capability of sin, human beings also have the capability of virtue. The seven virtues are:
Faith, Hope, Love, Prudence, Temperance, Courage, and Justice.
Are these virtues the way of our world today? Good news; many times they are.
Because whenever there is great evil, virtuous people will fight. Sadly, the reverse is also true. If a person is known to have virtue, there is usually someone to tear him/her down–even to crucify him.
So, like my characters Coleman and Fig, each of us are touched by conflicting ‘ways of the world.’ And the way we choose to take will make an eternal difference, in our own life and in the lives of others.
Translating a World on the Edge 