Book Club: The Character Gap, 4, Improving character by way of divine assistance?

Character is a crucial component of human ethical life, as Christian Miller discusses in part I of his The Character Gap. He then goes on two demonstrate, in part II, that there is a gap between where our characters typically are and where we would want them to be. We are not, on average, really bad people. But neither are we, on average, really good ones. There is plenty of room for improvement. Which is why part III of Miller’s book is so compelling, as it explores a number of strategies that, empirically speaking, have been shown to either work or not work if our goal is to improve our characters. I had originally thought not to comment on the last chapter of the book, on how divine assistance can be helpful to become better persons, because even though it doesn’t speak to me as a secular minded individual, I do not with to engage in polemic about religion for the sake of ruffling feathers. But, in order to be intellectually honest, I did read that last chapter, and I did not like it. I’m going to discuss it here not because I wish to criticize religion, but because Miller does a pretty bad job there, and readers should be forewarned, particularly as it contrasts with the highly readable and eminently sensible rest of the book. So, here we go.

I think it was a questionable choice on MIller’s part to devote a chapter specifically to religion, given the otherwise neutral tone of the book, but I understand that, of course, many people do get moral guidance from their religion, so the choice is defensible. What is more problematic is not just that it comes at the very end of the book, making the narrative equivalent of a very jarring sharp turn, but that Miller focuses only on Christianity. His excuse for doing so is somewhat lame. He doesn’t have the space to treat other religions, and he is unfamiliar with them. Well, then either write a separate book on it or familiarize yourself with other traditions. I suspect — but do not know this for a fact — that the actual reason for the choice was far more prosaic: Miller himself is a Christian. Nothing wrong with it, but it would be as if I wrote a whole book on topic X without a mention of specific philosophical or religious approaches to X, and then tacked a whole chapter on how Stoicism, and only Stoicism, sees X.