• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

CJ Counts

  • About Me
    • Statement of Faith
  • Sermons
  • Radio Broadcasts
  • Professional & Ministry
  • Devotionals
  • Contact
    • Schedule Meeting
  • Resources
    • Free Bible
    • Leaders
    • Teacher Training
  • Donate

Extraordinary Ordinary Virtue

February 1, 2020 by Pastor CJ Counts Leave a Comment

On the day after New Year’s 2012,  Wesley Autrey, a construction worker and a Navy veteran, was waiting for the train with his two daughters at the 137th Street Station in New York.

Then, a man collapsed on the platform and began convulsing. After Autrey helped him get up, the man collapsed again and fell onto the tracks. With the lights of the Broadway Local visible down the tunnel, Autrey had to make what he later called a “split decision”—a decision that inspired a nation and taught us a powerful lesson about what it means to be human.
Autrey jumped onto the tracks, risking his own life, to save the stricken stranger. After visiting the man in the hospital, Autrey, who denied that he had done anything “spectacular,” went to work.

While Autrey didn’t think that his actions were spectacular, other people did. At a time when most of the news is disheartening, Autrey’s actions inspired millions of people. Americans have become jaundiced and skeptical. We need heroes every now and then, a role model—and that’s what Autrey has become.

Not only did he inspire us, but he also helps remind us of some important truths about being human.

One of these is that materialism can never provide a satisfactory, much less complete, account of human nature. While neo-Darwinism offers a superficial explanation for human evil, it can’t begin to account for human goodness, such as Autrey’s actions.

What we Christians call “altruism,” Neo-Darwinists call “enlightened” selfishness. Thus, a Neo-Darwinist would say that parents care for their children and siblings as a way of ensuring that their “selfish genes” get passed on to the next generation.

Even if this were true, it says nothing about why a man jumps in front of an incoming train for a total stranger, as Autrey did. For that, you need the capacity for self-sacrifice, an utterly un-Darwinian trait.

Autrey’s actions also reminded of what true virtue looks like. As Scott Carson, a philosophy professor at Miami of Ohio, pointed out, people like Autrey nearly always deny that what they did was “spectacular.”

This is more than modesty; it’s what C. S. Lewis meant when he wrote that virtue is “precognitive.” A soldier in a foxhole who jumps on a grenade doesn’t ponder the issues; he acts on instinct: that instinct being the product of believing the right things and living that way—what philosophers call “habituation,” or character. As Autrey himself acknowledged after the fact, his actions seemed a bit foolish. But, happily for the stricken man, virtue always doesn’t work in rational ways.

Few of us will ever have to demonstrate what Carson calls “the extraordinary virtue of ordinary people” in such spectacular ways. But all of us can aspire to live in a way that will make our “split-second decisions” just as virtuous and praiseworthy.

Filed Under: Devotionals and other Messages

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Primary Sidebar

Looking For Something Specific?

Recent Sermons

  • Legal is not always acceptable
    Pastor CJ Counts, January 24, 2021
    Bible Text: John 18: 19-24, 28-32, 1 Corinthians 10:23, Genesis 8:21,
  • Peters Denial
    Pastor CJ Counts, January 17, 2021
    Bible Text: John 18: 10-11, 15-18, 25-27, John 13: 36-38, John 16:33, 1 Peter 5:8, Matthew 10:33,
  • Power & Submission
    Pastor CJ Counts, January 10, 2021
    Bible Text: John 18: 1-14, Matthew 26:53
  • Vision Frame 2021
    Pastor CJ Counts, January 3, 2021
    Bible Text:
  • Complete Unity
    Pastor CJ Counts, December 27, 2020
    Bible Text: John 17:20-25,1 Timothy 2:3-6, Isaiah 59:2, John 15:12, Matthew 5: 23-24, Proverbs 27:17, 1 John 4:12

Recent Blog Posts

  • I just became a Christian January 20, 2021
  • Why should every Christian join a church? January 19, 2021
  • Christian Characteristics January 6, 2021
  • Share Testimony December 29, 2020
  • Aurora History Museum exhibit December 15, 2020

Recent Comments

  • Kim Stephenson on CJ’s Ordination Ceremony
  • Kim Stephenson on Invocation at Aurora City Hall
  • Jillian Goncz on What is a Disciple?
  • Kimberly Stephenson on Average Ordinary Men
  • Kimberly Stephenson on Average Ordinary Men

Footer

Learn More About CJ

Senior Pastor of Grace of the Lord

Outreach Chairman – Community Of Faith

Senior Pastor of Mission Under Grace

Family Counts LLC

All Content © 2021 CJ Counts