THE WELL-ORDERED HEART

When the heart is well-ordered, we are not only increasingly free from sin, but also increasingly free from the desire to sin. If the heart were truly well-ordered, we would love people so much we would not want to deceive or manipulate or envy them. We would be transformed from the inside out.

Imagine what the world would be like if it were filled with people who had well-ordered hearts. Television programs such as Miami Vice would be replaced by Miami Virtue. Tabloids sold at grocery stores would be filled with stories about acts of lavish generosity and spontaneous sacrifice committed by noncelebrities we have never heard of. Television talk shows would feature [morality and not immorality.]

We would sleep at night the untroubled sleep of innocence -- no staring at the ceiling at two o'clock in the morning because of regrets. We would have no need for "do-overs" or mulligans.

-- John Ortberg in The Life You've Always Wanted

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SPEAKING WELL OF EVIL

While extremely sensitive as to the slightest approach to slander, you must also guard against an extreme into which some people fall who, in their desire to speak evil of no one, actually uphold and speak well of vice.  If you have to do with one who is unquestionably a slanderer, do not excuse him by calling him frank and free-spoken; do not call one who is notoriously vain, liberal and elegant; do not call dangerous levities mere simplicity; do not screen disobedience under the name of zeal; or arrogance, of frankness; or evil intimacy, of friendship.  No, my friends, we must never, in our wish to shun slander, foster or flatter vice in others: but we must call evil evil, and sin sin, and so doing we shall serve God's glory.

-- François de Sales in Introduction to the Devout Life

#3700