Virtue

 Every virtue has a complementary virtue which stops the excesses of the first virtue turning into a vice. Mercy and justice is one obvious example. Tolerance and adherence to truth is another while humility and strength is a third pairing of virtues with one filling in the gaps of the other and curbing its tendency to fall into a deformed version of itself. You might add patience and resolve which stops patience drifting into apathy. Then there is compassion which without discernment falls into sentimentality. Each virtue naturally suggests the other and if it doesn't for any individual, that means that its motivating impulse is in some measure deficient or even defective.

It is the same with divine qualities such as love and truth. One without the other leads first to imbalance then disorder and finally to evil. When virtues are seen as emanating from the reality of Christ they will automatically include their balancing opposite because Christ is the central sun from which the virtues originate, and they are like rays. They don't exist in their own right. He exists and they come from him. When severed from the reality of Christ, the supposed virtue loses its spiritual force and becomes a caricature of itself, often ending up as a path to sin.

To be spiritually creative virtue must operate in a proper metaphysical structure which incorporates a sacred centre. The virtue must both express the quality of that centre and be a means of guiding the human soul towards union with it. This is why the virtues without Christ are sterile and then potentially destructive. I am not saying that only a professed Christian can have these virtues but it is easier for a professed Christian to do so because he knows whence they arise. This is also why virtue in the Christian world is followed because it is right whereas in Eastern religion virtue is often just part of technique and a means to an end rather than a justification in and of itself. If the goal is Nirvana the virtues are meaningless except as a way of facilitating that goal. If the goal is Christ the virtues become both means and end.

The modern world has lost Christ but kept some of the virtues associated with him, but cut a flower from its stalk and pretty soon it withers and dies. This is increasingly apparent where the virtues are concerned, and now they are often used as a way of attacking their source. This is a natural outcome of a thing being separated from its founding principle but it has also been exploited by the forces of darkness. There was no need for it to have gone this far for a humanity that was not looking for excuses to sin or a justification for hatred and resentment. Evil is using decayed good to advance its own rotten agenda, and there is no excuse for those who go along with this because in their hearts they know what they are doing. Some may be dupes but no one is innocent. That is the nature of these times when the heart is being examined.