Character (noun):
“The comprehensive set of traits that make up the intellectual and ethical substance of a person. A character is primarily a set of dispositions to behave in certain ways in characteristic circumstances. To evaluate a person’s character is to focus on the abiding virtues, or excellences, in a person over time instead of simply looking at individual actions.”
When I was asked to write on the topic of Character, based on the book The Titus Ten by J. Josh Smith, I immediately thought of a motivational poster on my office wall. It has a quote from late author James Lane Allen “Adversity does not build character, it reveals it”. It was given to me by a brother in Christ who I have worked with over the last 20 years solving incredibly hard problems in the Automotive Electronics space under difficult circumstances.
We knew about adversity and had stories to back it up. We also knew about the fruit of good character. It allowed us to jump into various companies' engineering teams that were in panic mode and be “a non-anxious presence”*, establishing credibility, and then serving these teams to get them to success.
On occasion, this led to people wanting to know why we were at peace in the face of significant adversity, and people came to know the Prince of Peace.
However, if adversity does not build character, how is it built? What does the Bible say about why it is important? Since my job is all about staying on top of leading-edge technology, I have been tinkering with an Artificial Intelligence tool called ‘ChatGPT’ and using it as an effective research assistant. So, I gave it a carefully worded question about what the Bible says regarding the important character. The answer it gave me was actually pretty good:
“Ultimately, the Bible teaches that good character is important because it reflects the character of God, who is holy, just, and righteous. As believers grow in their faith and become more like Christ, they should naturally exhibit good character in their lives.” – ChatGPT
This serves as a great one-liner on character, but we need to go deeper. ChatGPT gave me several standard verses you would find if searching a Bible for character, but of all those verses the foremost is:
Romans 5:3-4 “Not only this, but we also rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance, character, and character, hope.”
Well, that sounds a lot like an adversity-producing character indirectly! Though James Lane Allen was brought up in a Jesus-following family, he may not have had that verse in mind when he penned his famous line. In reality, adversity both develops character as well as reveals it.
Now, let’s go deeper into character and drop into the Greek and see what we find:
It turns out there is no word that cleanly translates into “character” in Greek. The word character attempts (and falls short) to embody a much more complex meaning in the Greek word.
The word translated into character in Romans 5:4 is δοκιμάζωa ("dokimazo”): to try to learn the genuineness of something by examination and testing, often through actual use—‘to test, to examine, to try to determine the genuineness of, testing.’
Interestingly, this sounds much like adversity revealing character! Character is not a thing that exists apart from being used and found genuine.
As observed earlier, our character should increasingly reflect God’s character. And how that happens is from learning to walk in the Spirit and not the flesh. In other words, learning to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit in us and following that voice, vs the voice of our old self.
Galatians 5:16 “ But I say, live by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.”
Galatians 5:22 “ But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things, there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also behave in accordance with the Spirit.”
So, it is in learning to walk by the Spirit that we allow God to develop godly character in us through the fruit of the Spirit. If we tie in Romans 5:3-4 with this, we know that for character to develop in us there needs to be suffering in our lives. Wait, what?! Where was that in the brochure? It gets deeper. The Bible says this about Jesus:
Hebrews 5:8-9 "Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him."
If even Jesus had to suffer to be made perfect, how much more do we need to suffer to be made perfect? To develop character that reflects the nature of God's Character.
In fact, the Apostle Peter writes:
1 Peter 1:7 Such trials show the proven character of your faith, which is much more valuable than gold—gold that is tested by fire, even though it is passing away—and will bring praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
The fact of the matter is that sometimes love allows suffering to develop important character traits in us. Contrary to popular American culture, not all suffering is bad. In fact, denying people some suffering harms them because it is denying them the refinement that comes through that suffering. (I have no idea why God designed things this way. I hope I can be enlightened to the why someday.) This is why ‘helicopter parenting’ is really bad for kids. It denies them the work that God wants to do in them through (age-appropriate) suffering.
The rabbit hole goes much, much deeper here and has many branches that blogs do not allow exploring. The thing I want you the reader to take away is that God wants to develop godly character in you, based on the fruit of the Spirit, and that is going to take some suffering. Learn to suffer well, keeping in mind what it is God working in you. We may sing beautiful melodies about ‘Refiners Fire, my hearts one desire..” but I think those lyrics should be put with some genre of music that involves screaming, lamenting, and really discordant instruments because that is how suffering can be sometimes. Being melted is not remotely pleasant, but showing Godly character in the melting can lead people to Jesus.
If you want to go down the rabbit hole, a few books on character that I highly recommend:
Live No Lies – John Mark Comer (My favorite book of 2021)
Integrity – Henry Cloud
*A Non-Anxious Presence – Mark Sayers
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