The Virtue of Friendliness
In Defending the Faith : Engaging the Culture - Essays Honoring L. Russ Bush
When I enrolled at SWBTS in the fall of 1981, Russ Bush was a philosophy of religion professor. I didn't have to take that course since the seminary gave me credit for teaching the subject at Wheaton College after receiving a degree in philosophy from Vanderbilt. But I got to make his acquaintance, and I much appreciated his stand for the Bible in the early years of the "conservative resurgence," whose vital importance I was beginning to realize. (Its first fruits came with election of Adrian Rogers to the SBC presidency in 1979.) He later became academic dean at SEBTS, and I enjoyed a number of contacts with him through the years, whether at workshops, at the Convention meeting itself, or on campus visits in North Carolina. And I got to serve with his dad on the SBC Resolutions Committee in 1990. Russ's passing meant such a loss, but his grace in those final days was an inspiring testimony to the confidence we can have in Christ. I was honored to be tapped for an essay in this book. I recall there was some pushback over my topic, since friendliness didn't make the classic list of virtues, such a prudence and temperance, or the traditional Christian list, including faith and hope. But the lists run longer, depending upon who's doing the listing. (I've seen as many as fifty.) And as a Southern boy living in the north (seventeen years in Chicago), I'd become particularly alert to the difference in greetings (warm or absent) and such, so I thought I'd take a closer look, to see if I might just be parochial in my tastes or on to something deeper.