Character Assessment, part I: Vulcans.

Prompt (feel free to respond for yourself):

What qualities do I admire in literary characters, and to what extent, considering my core beliefs, should I aspire to emulate them?

To some extent, I admire the Vulcan devotion to logic. Everything must be evaluated, and that leads to more informed decisions. Once you are duly informed, you can anticipate future events. Emotions can cloud proper judgment and eclipse even the values you hold most dear, as in the case of revenge and killing. Logic can be a voice of restraint, keeping you from rash actions and well-deserved consequences; and it can be a voice of action, propelling you to do what must be done. I admire Vulcans because I adhere to intuition with only a cursory glance at logic, and I recognize that intuition is not a reliable adviser when compared to logic and fairly complete intelligence on the situation. But should I emulate them?

Vulcan adherence to logic in the absence of emotion lends them an inhumanity that undermines the compassionate, loving nature of Christianity. How can you show love to others without feeling love yourself? How can you love your neighbor at inconvenient times without abandoning logic's assessment of the cost? At base, the love of Christianity--agape--defies traditional, human logic, as does, at times, any conversation of the Holy Spirit. To adopt any adherence to logic, even Spirit-based logic, one would have to allow it to yield to agape.