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Is it right to do something wrong for the sake of a greater right?

Gods help me, I've come to believe that sometimes—sometimes—it is. That's what moral courage is all about.

I could have done it. I could have and, if I had, I honestly believe that things would have been the better for the deed.

But I failed the test. I ducked the burden of doing the wrong, of taking it upon myself to make that sacrifice. In so doing, I did a greater wrong by choosing the lesser right.

In general, I think of myself as a pretty courageous person. Sissy boys don't grow up to be happy, functional adults if they're not among the bravest of the brave.

But this was something different: a test of moral courage that, in the end, I failed.

It's too late to do anything now. If there's any consolation at all, it's that I'll know better next time—if ever there is one. That's why I'm telling you this. For what it's worth, here's my witch's counsel, one to another: for the sake of the greater good, sometimes it's better to make the sacrifice and do what's wrong.

No, I'm not going to tell you what it was; that's mine to me. By shirking one burden, though, I've taken on another, maybe greater, burden: the knowledge that I could possibly have made a difference, and chose not to.

The Virtues* are central to most Old Pagan systems of ethics, and chief among them is Honor.**

How's yours?

What do others say about you?

What do those that know you well say about you?

What do those that know you less than well say about you?

How good is your word?

If you say you'll do something, do you follow through?

If you take an oath, do you keep it?

In Ireland of old, there was a practice known as “fasting on” someone, and this was the way of it.

If someone had wronged you, you would sit at his or her doorstep, and keep a fast. There you would sit, if needful, to the death.

This was accounted by the ancestors as a powerful tool of persuasion and justice, even against kings.

For Hospitality is chief of virtues, and it were accounted a grave breach of it, that an unarmed stranger should die of famine at one's very doorstep, and the shame of it upon the house forever.

Nor might one take up violence against the faster, for this also was held a grave dishonor to the house.

But in these days there is neither sitting-out nor fasting-on.

For those that rule are accounted by all as people of no hospitality, as people of no honor.

When's the last time that you went out of your way for the gods?

Hospitality, Courage, Generosity: even in our times of political incivility and social dissolution, we find these ancestral virtues admirable.

Piety, not so much.

Piety: making the gods a priority in your life.

Piety is a little-valued virtue in our day. When you look at the way that many supposedly pious people act, one can certainly see why we've come to view piety as ostentatious, restrictive hyper-religiosity.

But the ancestors felt differently. For them, piety was among the foremost of virtues.

The news in America is hard to hear these days, and one sees others differently.

We all feel hatred from time to time, and probably that's as it should be. Sometimes it may even be a good. Surely it is good to hate injustice. Surely it is good to hate the wrong. Perhaps—the voices of the ancestors do not speak unanimously here—there are even times when it is right to hate other people.

But the ancestors never numbered hatred among the virtues. Love, however, is counted so. It is virtuous to love. To hate, though—appropriate though it may be—can never be a virtue.

While a virtue, though, love remains, in and of itself, insufficient. Love is not all we need. One virtue can never be enough; we need them all. To give away everything that one owns may be exemplary Generosity, but when one's family starves because of it, we have thereby acted unvirtuously because we have failed in Responsibility. Not to mention Love.

So: a hate group in Texas mounts an art show featuring cartoons of the Muslim prophet.

At the urging of a local imam, the local Muslim community decides to respond with silence. No one pickets, blogs, editorializes, or writes about it in the press. No one does anything whatsoever to give the show any publicity.

An expatriate American who has gone to Syria to fight for the So-Called So-Called spreads word of the show on the web, urging retaliation.

Two Muslim converts from another state drive to Texas, wound a security guard, and are themselves killed. “Allah, accept your mujahideen,” one tweets.

The So-Called So-Called claims responsibility.

As one who strives to live in accordance with the thews (virtues) of the ancestors, I ask myself:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/betweentheshadows/2014/11/a-pox-on-black-friday/