Alain de Botton has turned his microscope on the moral mass of the land Down Under. Alain de Botton: The younger thinking person’s friend, a master of moral conscience whispering altruism in our ear. Just remove the iPod buds first!

De Botton is in a position of privilege. The media adores his sound grabs, his earnest and endless quest to decontaminate our lives from their materialistic pollution. The goodness, the kindness – the reminder that the heavy burden of the mighty dollar on our lives is escapable.

…if only we knew how.

During his recent visit to Australia De Botton detailed his List For Life, dubbed the Ten Commandments For Atheists. The qualities are exemplary – resilience, empathy, patience, sacrifice, politeness, humour, self-awareness, forgiveness, hope, and confidence.

But where’s honesty? Where’s morality? According to de Botton’s creed, you may indeed commit adultery but please be polite about it. And if politeness is the highest moral order we seek to attain, methinks we’re aiming a little low.

In de Botton’s utopian society, everyone agrees.

Regardless of faith, each of us yearns to live our lives in this fashion. Not so surprising considering many of these qualities are based on the Ten Commandments. These ancient texts are based on a list of “thou shalt nots” but the modern translation creates a more palatable 21st century List For Life.

It is a fascinating when an atheist seeks to turn their hand towards values-based statements. Atheists and humanists actually don’t believe in any source of values above and beyond our life experience. The Ten Commandments however have been a guiding light for humanity for three and a half thousand years, and have shaped all of Western Society, its laws and institutions.

De Botton’s List For Life highlights some excellent virtues. But as I read through them, I can’t help but feel a little deja vu.  I’ve read it somewhere before– maybe in the Bible?

Where do these ideas originate? Can a so-called ‘free thinker’ just repackage ideas in a postmodern box and call them ‘his‘ without acknowledging their philosophical and theological heritage?

Allow me to translate de Botton’s list a little

1. Resilience: Keeping going even when things are looking dark. 

Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane faced the awesome reality of his self-sacrificing love which came to full realisation with his death on the cross – thus redeeming humanity.

2. Empathy: The capacity to connect imaginatively with the sufferings and unique experiences of another person. 

The Bible affirms that Jesus empathised with our weaknesses because he was tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.

3. Patience: We should grow calmer and more forgiving by being more realistic about how things actually happen.

If you’re into Jesus, you’re promoting the following virtues, known as the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The first record of humility as a virtue in ancient literature is found in the Bible. Prior to that, it was scorned as weakness.

4. Sacrifice: We won’t ever manage to raise a family, love someone else or save the planet if we don’t keep up with the art of sacrifice. 

C’mon now… is there a greater example of sacrifice than Jesus?

5. Politeness: Politeness is closely linked to tolerance, the capacity to live alongside people whom one will never agree with but at the same time, cannot avoid. 

Politeness is more than being able to live alongside those we disagree with. It’s about being kindly predisposed to others because we see intrinsic value in them even though we might disagree. From a Christian perspective, Jesus described loving your neighbour as yourself as the second greatest command.

6. Humour: Like anger, humour springs from disappointment, but it is disappointment optimally channelled. 

Gee and I thought it was about having fun and being free to laugh and look on the bright side of life.

7. Self-awareness: To know oneself is to try not to blame others for one’s troubles and moods; to have a sense of what’s going on inside oneself, and what actually belongs to the world. 

Another really weird definition. I thought that it was about being having an innate sense of identity and perception of how one’s thoughts and actions interact with our surrounds.

8. Forgiveness: It’s recognising that living with others is not possible without excusing errors.

Hello! Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Forgiveness is about our willingness to abandon our right to resentment, negative judgment, and indifferent behavior toward the person who unjustly hurt us, while fostering undeserved qualities of compassion, generosity, and even love toward them.

9. Hope: Pessimism is not necessarily deep, nor optimism shallow.

Hope is actually a confident expectation about the future. The great ‘three’ the Bible teaches that will last forever are faith, hope and love. The greatest of all is love. Jesus breeds hope in people.

10. Confidence: Confidence is not arrogance – rather, it is based on a constant awareness of how short life is and how little we will ultimately lose from risking everything.

Confidence actually requires an object, much like love. Confidence is only as valid as the object into which it is placed. If de Botton is referring to self-confidence then it bids well for the self-made person. For those who might be a little shaky on the self-confidence front, he might as well have set the high-jump bar at 12 feet. The Bible actually encourages us to develop a boldness and confidence in God rather than our own capacities. It notes that every good and perfect gift comes from above. Every skill and capacity that we have has been gifted to us and at best been stewarded and developed by us.

Pop-culture gurus change with the season. In the 90s it was Anthony Robbins telling us to unleash ‘the power within’… until we got burnt and people realised we weren’t made to walk on hot coals. Or Dale Carnegie before him, teaching us to master the art of winning friends and influencing people. Now it is de Botton’s turn to analyse our status anxiety, how our houses makes us happy, how to enjoy our Sundays and take back all the good practices and ideas from religion – without giving up our ‘right of independence’ from our Creator.

We cling to such ideologies to avoid what our lives have become. It’s worth returning to the original. You’re probably already reading it under another name.