Trading the Good for the Better

by Trisha Mammen

“She laid down her life and felt the weight of the cost for the rest of her life… And yet on the other side of that sorrow lay her belief that success in God’s kingdom comes by losing, not gaining.” —Russ Ramsey

Throughout the year, Donum Dei students are learning hymns that put words to the themes of our monthly virtues. The stories behind the poetry woven through the verses and choruses give glimpses of writers who did not pen their adoration from perfect circumstances, rather many were compelled toward worship almost as a command to their own souls to trust what they could not see.

In a recent blog post, Kristine Shiraki mentioned the story behind “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” and the ripple of conversation it created among our faculty and students. The writer of the hymn, Helen H. Lemmel, was inspired by a printed devotional by a missionary named Lilias Trotter who spent much of her life serving the people of Algeria. Lilias was a gifted watercolor painter in the late nineteenth century who was essentially set up for a life of untold fame and fortune. Her mentor, John Ruskin, believed her skills placed her among the greatest artists of the time—a time when Renoir, Monet, Degas, and Vincent van Gogh were shaping the European artistic landscape.

Lilias Trotter chose to follow God into Northern Africa where she spent her life reaching people with the Gospel instead of pursuing the celebrated life her mentor and others believed she deserved. In his book, Rembrandt Is In the Wind, author Russ Ramsey describes Lilias’s life as a picture of trading something good for something better.

Exchanging good for better is at the heart of virtue training. Virtue, as defined by St. Augustine, is the right ordering of our loves. “For bodily beauty is indeed created by God,” Augustine suggests, “but it is a temporal and carnal, and therefore, a lower, good; and if it is loved more than God is…that love is as wrong as the miser’s when he forsakes justice out of his love for gold.”

Rightly ordered loves come through surrender and obedience to the giver of all gifts and talents. Are we patient and trusting enough to reject good in full confidence that better is what the Christian life offers? Lilias’s talents as an artist were certainly good and beautiful. But she understood that the purpose was not her own glory; it was God’s.

Ramsey writes of Lilias, “She laid down her life and felt the weight of the cost for the rest of her life… And yet on the other side of that sorrow lay her belief that success in God’s kingdom comes by losing, not gaining.”

This ordering of loves is something our students are invited to wrestle with as they examine and question what truth, goodness, and beauty mean. What purpose do these things ultimately serve? What is lost in choosing the good if obedience to God is calling us to better? This is one way we train them to order their loves and live as virtuous people.

We hope that our parent community is also leaning into the hard work of letting good yield to better. It’s an incredible thread to weave into your family conversations as you simply invite discussion around letting go of the good and choosing to reach for better. Training our hearts this way confronts impulsivity and consumerism. It questions the utilitarian philosophy of education and replaces it with a formative one. It exposes a self-centered worldview and makes room for a self-sacrificing one. It discards counterfeit glory for lives rightly surrendered to God. “Service to the Lord is never wasted, even if people don’t see it,” Ramsey concludes. “God sees it and uses it. This wasn’t just Lilias’s hope; it was her confidence.”

There may be no work greater than exchanging good for better and rightly ordering our loves. We believe this week’s upcoming Parent Equipping Night is about this exact thing. We hope you’ll join us in talking about the ordering of loves and the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty around the topic of sex. How do we help our children and ourselves rightly choose better when it comes to this good gift? It’s never too early (or late) to help shape a view of sex that is healthy and holy. We’re calling this night "Confidence for the Conversation" with the hope that you will come away equipped with practical ideas for joyfully discipling your children in this area. Join us by RSVPing here so we can plan for childcare and dinner.

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Mrs. Trisha Mammen partners with Donum Dei Classical Academy as our Principal. After working in television news for over a decade, she obtained a master’s degree in professional writing at The University of Southern California, where she taught in their freshman writing program for a number of years. She couldn’t have realized it at the time, but that season was instrumental in nudging her toward classical education and, specifically, teaching and leading at Donum Dei.