The virtue of certainty: Memory, clarity, courage

With the release of the film Amazing Grace, people around the world are once again waking up to the legacy of songwriter and reformed slave trader John Newton. A man hardened by the soullessness of trafficking in souls, Newton eventually turned on the “peculiar institution” in a moment of clarity inspired by grace. Redirecting his energies to Christian service and the creative life, Newton inspired generations with his story, and with his legendary song, “Amazing Grace”:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me....

I once was lost but now am found,

Was blind, but now, I see.

In a very real sense, Newton had lived in darkness – blind to the humanity of the people he once enslaved – but then, in grace, he found clarity.

Have you ever had one of those “aha” moments? You’re confused. The fog descends, you are lost – then the blinders slip away. A truth you once rationalized becomes impossible to ignore, and suddenly, you have purpose, a calling, and conviction. In a moment you find clarity and the world falls into place.

But immediately, that clarity is tested, and you are tempted to fall out of the light. Your former certainty suddenly feels like a silly moment of exuberance or false hope. Either time wears on and you forget the reasoning that once seemed so convincing, or new information rises to test your faith. Forgetfulness, ambiguity, or wedges itself into your imagination and clarity falls away.

Those moments are tragic because they destroy the one thing that can inspire us to noble action. I have written about courage – action in defense of virtue; but there can be no courage without clarity. Before we can act on virtue, we must have clarity. From this clarity, we derive conviction, from conviction, the courage to act.

But how does one find clarity? We live in an age of moral obfuscation and rationalization (counterbalanced, I some places, by dangerous fundamentalism). There are alternative explanations for almost everything. It is easy to get lost, and question the correctness of one’s own conclusions. Certainly, there is room for self-doubt. We are fallible creatures with misleading emotions and hopelessly flawed capacities for reason and logic. But at the same time, we are thinking, moral creatures, and at some point we must drop anchor, stand for something, and make a leap of faith.

That’s the best I can come up with. Take virtue seriously, think about it hard, and find a place to make your stand.

And that leads me to what I believe to be the second component of clarity (after careful consideration and the will to take a stand): memory.

It is easy to forget the things that matter to us, and easier still to forget parts of those things – allowing what was truth to be twisted into lies or rationalized until our previous moral conviction inspires nothing but a flaccid apathy. And so, memory of our moments of clarity is essential to the sustainability of that clarity. That is why thoughtful people journal and religious devotees memorize holy texts. The written word, unlike memory is unchangeable. It confronts us with our own inconsistencies and rationalizations by holding firm to its original form. And memorization – word-for-word, perfect and without paraphrase – is a constant reminder that there is knowledge outside and beyond our changeable thoughts, and an aid when our ability to reason and decide fails. When in our moments of doubt we are confronted not by a vague recollection of our principles but by the written word or sound memory, our clarity persists, our conviction remains, and our courage is fortified.

Skepticism is my natural inclination. I see every side of an argument, and as a result, I fail to take any side with conviction. I find time for everything but recording my thoughts on paper and committing my principles to memory; but if I want to be a man of courage, I must first be a man of clarity; and perhaps, by grace, I’ll learn to see.

Comments

Amen