Customer Reviews

Steering Through Chaos: Vice and Virtue in an Age of Moral Confusion

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Well, this is one of the "lighter" books of Os Guiness. If you've read "The Call," you know Os can pack a lot of content; this book isn't quite as much work.

The book is more a study guide that helps you work through issues about the 7 cardinal virtues and the 7 deadly sins. He is not going for lightweight topics, however. There are a lot of passages where one says "Ouch!" because it hits home.

A good introduction into basic virtues for an age that has forgotten classical education.

Guiness uses classical and modern literature to take the reader through the topics of the seven deadly sins and seven Beatitudes of Christ. A must read for the college freshman or sophmore getting ready for lit. classes. Provides and excellent framework for interpretation of some of the world's greatest literary minds.

This book is a must-read! I was skeptical at first because I didn't see the vital importance of learning about the seven deadly sins and seven virtues, but I could not put this book down after starting. I love the way the sins and virtues were compared- I recommend it to everyone, it really opened my eyes. The only word of caution is that it is slow in the beginning, but stick with it and you will be rewarded.

Os Guinness has put together an incredible collection of essays, quotes and works on the subject of moral clarity. The foundation for the study is the comparison of the "seven deadly sins" and how they contrast with the moral principles laid out within the "Sermon on the Mount" from the New Testament. While this study may not be unique, the presentation is so well done that the result challenges conventional thinking through ideological dichotomies that leave no doubt that morality can be defined as a moral standard.

What is amazing is the diversity of opinion presented. From Bertrand Russell and Friedrich Nietzsche, to Soren Kierkegaard and CS Lewis, from Isaac Newton to Calvin and Hobbes, the philosophy and moral presentations leave the reader with the task of sifting through the often opposing worldviews. Interspersed throughout are hundreds of quotes, poetry, and depictions of moral values - both post modern and ancient.

Each chapter looks at one of the "deadly sins" and it's "Beatitude" counterpart, and includes study questions and guidelines for further reading. This book could easily be the basis for a long study of philosophical morality from across cultural and generational perspectives. The study questions themselves are thought provoking and generate far too much to ponder and digest in one reading.

I would consider this book "very highly recommended" in every respect. This one will stay on my shelf, for repeated readings, for years to come. The index and citations alone are worth the price. I can also see this book as the foundation for study groups and further research. Simply put, it is well worth the time to read, review and consider.

This is a helpful collection of editorial articles, quotations, and excerpts from classics of literature or Christian devotion, accompanied by thoughtful questions for reflection and discussion. Each of the seven deadly sins is addressed by several descriptive excerpts and then countered by complementary virtues.

For those who appreciate Richard Foster's two anthologies of Christian devotional classics, "Devotional Classics" and "Spiritual Classics," this is an excellent volume to invest in. I actually found the content more accessible and more enjoyable to read for some reason.

This book is the second recently read by this reviewer from the "Trinity Forum Study Series" edited by Os Guinness that is intended "to help thoughtful people examine the foundational issues through with faith acts upon the public good of modern society". In his introduction, the editor comments that "right up to the end of the nineteenth century, the most important course in a student's college career was moral philosophy, or what we today call ethics. The course was taken as the crowning unit in the senior year, usually taught by the college president himself. Today a remarkable explosion of interest in ethics suggests to some people that we are going back to that morally robust era." The editor comments though that this resurgent interest is actually no cause for celebration because much of it is fashionable and transient, really about "prevention ethics" and taught at the social rather than personal level, and seemingly illogical due to the moral crisis in the West.

The two main sources for the tradition of the virtues and the vices are the Greek and Roman philosophers and the Old and New Testaments, but as the author explains, there is no exact parallelism between the former (prudence, fortitude, temperance, justice, faith, hope, and charity) and the latter, otherwise known as the Seven Deadly Sins (pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust), so a contrast with the vices is instead made with the Beatitudes (poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness, hunger and thirst after righteousness, mercy, those persecuted, and purity of heart). While the 49 classical and modern reading selections included here are just as well done as with the first book that this reviewer has read in this series, "When No One Sees: The Importance of Character in an Age of Image" (see my review), be aware that the reader will need to look elsewhere for an extended treatment of virtue since the vast majority of these selections center on vice.

Personal favorites include passages from "Strength to Love" by Martin Luther King Jr, which discusses what loving one's enemies is really all about, "Pensées" by Blaise Pascal, the renowned seventeenth century mathematician and philosopher, which discusses immortality, "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" by Leo Tolstoy, a short story about greed, and "Shantung Compound", by Langdon Gilkey, which discusses survival in a Japanese internment camp. As with "When No One Sees", what helps make this book work are the brief author biographies which introduce each reading, as well as the hundreds of sidebar quotes by a wide selection of individuals, from a broad spectrum of world views, conveniently inserted throughout. For example, Lyndon B. Johnson biographer Robert Dallek commented that in response to German chancellor Ludwig Erhard's remark "I understand you were born in a log cabin", the U.S. president responded "No, no, you have me confused with Abe Lincoln. I was born in a manger."

Awesome. He uses exactly the writing style I love - everything is nested in a broad view of the sweep of Western Civilization - and he quotes the great authors at length for each point (like Augustine! and Lewis!). The book examines deeply each of the classical Seven Deadly Vices, with the following pattern.

First, it demonstrates the ways in which a given vice is far worse than the reader had previously suspected. Then, it shows how that vice is much more prevalent in society than he could have imagined. Finally, it shocks the reader by (partially) revealing the extent to which the vice is operative within himself. Pretty convicting.

Some of Guiness's cultural analysis is particularly interesting. Check out this section from the chapter on envy:

"Envy is less often traced at the public level where it has enormous consequences in many areas - for example, the excessive egalitarianism of all socialism and some forms of modern democracy, the excesses of affirmative action, the barely concealed appeal of progressive taxation and much advertising, the twisted motivation of therapeutic victim playing, the rage for rights and entitlement, the destructive tearing down by gossip columns and television 'gawk shows,' and the fact that any Western societies are becoming increasingly angry, fueling a disturbing culture of rage."

You'll love owning this book.