In 1726, at the age of 20, Benjamin Franklin constructed a personal list of 13 virtues. His goal was to create a systematic development of character, so he carried a journal with a page for each virtue, marking a “tab” for each failure–what he called “defects.”
Franklin’s 13 virtues were Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity, and Humility. Each week he chose a different virtue as his focus, noting every mistake and starting over every 13 weeks in order to cycle through the list four times a year.
For years Franklin carried his little book, striving for a clean 13-week cycle, but as he made progress, he found himself struggling with yet another defect: In his own words, he wrote,
“There is perhaps no natural passion so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it. Struggle with it. Stifle it. Mortify it as much as one, please. It is still alive and will every now and then peep out and show itself… Even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.” 1
Franklin is right. Isn’t it true that the slightest hint of improvement in your life can cause you to feel superior to those around you? Thirty days of healthy eating, and unintentionally you can’t help but critique what everyone else is putting in their mouth. Thirty days of working out, and you can’t help but wonder why everyone else is so lazy. You get your infant to sleep through the night, and you can’t help but draw conclusions about other parents’ strategies.
Pride is the most deceptive evil because it disguises itself as improvement, but self-satisfaction is never satisfying enough. “I’m doing better” is not nearly as rewarding as the feeling that “I’m doing better than you.”
More or More Than?
A few years ago, students at Harvard University were asked to make a seemingly straightforward choice: would they prefer a job where they were paid $50,000 a year (option A) or one where they made $100,000 a year (option B)?
It seems like a no-brainer, right? Everyone should choose option B. But there was one catch. In option A, the student would get $50,000, and everyone else would only get $25,000. In other words, they would get twice as much as everyone else. In option B, the student would get $100,000, but everyone else would get $200,000, so they would get half as much as everyone else.
So option B would make the student twice as much money overall but half as much as their peers. It’s an easy choice, right? Wrong. More students chose option A. They preferred to do better than others, even if it meant worse for themselves. 2
Secret Success
When Jesus wanted to teach his disciples the acts of the Christian life, He emphasized an almost obsessive need for obscurity. “When you pray,” he told them, “be alone.” “When you fast, don’t tell anyone. When you give, go to great lengths to keep it a secret.” This message was absolutely counterintuitive to the religious scene of their time–and I would argue to our time as well.
Twenty years ago, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, Youtube, Tik Tok, and the iPhone did not exist. In two decades, we’ve learned to live our lives publicly for the world to see. What are you eating for dinner? What movie are you seeing? What are you wearing? What are your kids wearing? What are your opinions on politics? If you are under the age of 40, it never really occurred to you that other people don’t care what you are doing at this moment.
Jesus’ warning to his disciples may be more relevant now than any other time in history, “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 6:1)
The great irony of Christianity is that your actions cannot make you righteous, but they can make you self-righteous, which is why Jesus’ message cuts right to the heart of our self-obsessed culture: The most rewarding things you will ever do will be the things very few people see.
Footnotes
- Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin[↩]
- They preferred to do better: Solnick, S. J., and D. Hemenway (1998) Is more always better? A survey on Position Concerns. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. 37, 373-83[↩]
