More teaching notes.
Courage, Part 2: Moral courage 1/3
I wanted to start our study with physical courage, because I don’t think you can cover the topic of courage without addressing it. But if you’re like me and you measure the times that you’re truly scared in spans of weeks or months, not days, then the moral aspect of courage is probably where the rubber meets the road to greater extent.
You may remember that I defined moral courage as the determination and strength to do what is right and good. But I found another definition I like. C.S. Lewis in the Screwtape Letters says, “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality…A chastity or honesty which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.”
I want to first look at a couple of passages in the Bible on moral courage. There are plenty of examples in the Bible, and as you read through the stories contained in it, think about which ones give us examples of moral courage. There’s both negative and positive examples of it, and I want to look at one of each.
A negative example is given in the parable of the ten talents, and the parable shows different ways of using what is given to us.
The parable is found In Matthew chapter 25:14-30. I’m not going to go over it at length, but I want to focus on the last man’s response. Verses 14-18 introduce the situation:
Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground, and hid his master’s money.
Now the master eventually returns, and in verse 24, we have the last man’s explanation of his actions.
Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.
This is the passive role towards moral courage—the role of non-involvement. “Just don’t do any harm. That’s good enough.” There are people who claim to have faith, but they don’t want to get too crazy about it. That’s too risky. It’s not popular, it probably won’t help you get ahead financially, it takes up too much time, and you stand out too much as different. “But,” these people can say, “I still believe! That still means a lot to me, even if you don’t always see it, and when God comes back, he’ll recognize that.”
Or maybe not. Jesus gives the instruction: “Throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Often courage isn’t really a choice between a risky and a safe course. It only looks that way through eyes of unbelief. You understand that? It only looks that way through eyes of unbelief. With eyes of faith, we will see the need for moral courage as a choice between a risky and even more risky path. The man here in this parable who sat on what he was given thought he was playing it safe. But in reality his very soul was in danger. It takes courage to achieve safety and freedom. Moral cowardice, in the long run, will prove far less safe. And that’s often true of physical courage too. The risk of not acting is greater.
A positive example is given in Luke 19, with the story of Zaccheus. Now this isn’t a triumphant story of someone who has been morally courageous a long time, and has lots of victories to look back on. It’s of someone taking the first step.
But even with that first step, we could call Zaccheus the little man who became larger than life. The things he did up to this point in his life were all too ordinary. For years he had cheated people, and grown rich at others’ expense. But his response recorded here, was extraordinary. He got a look at Jesus, and listened to what Jesus had to say, and was immediately done with all of his crooked ways. He could’ve just said he was sorry, and that would have been even a little surprising. Did you ever hear Ken DeLay of Enron say, “I’m sorry I cheated everyone”? No, he came to his trial with powerful attorneys and maintained his innocence. Not Zaccheus. And he didn’t feel that just sorry was enough. He said in Luke 19:8: “Look Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” It’s as if Zaccheus. is saying to Jesus and to those he swindled, “I can’t ever completely fix the trouble I made. I don’t know the hardship I’ve caused, and to what extent. But I can give you what I have.” He’s not hoping that he can somehow manage to pay back his debt to society. He’s just had his debt paid already, and his motives are totally different now.
Incidentally, I think that our finances are one of the first areas where we are tempted to moral cowardice. We may come to church, participate in the ministry, but you know, I just don’t think I want to be completely honest on my taxes. Or, things are too tight right now, there’s no way I can give more than a couple of dollars a week to God.
We might say that there’s nothing so great about what Zaccheus did, because of everything that had come before that moment. But we don’t look backwards and weigh everything against the past. We start right where we’re at, and we move forward, bit by bit. Some may not get as far as others, I certainly know that, but we can were still march, and we can leave a path that someone else behind us can follow.
Now I want to mention a couple of aspects of moral courage that I thought of, and then look at how we can become more courageous.
The first thing about moral courage is that I think it is superior to physical courage. I say that because really, all courage is moral. Whether the pressure on you relates to physical harm or to non-physical risks like loss of prestige, money, social acceptance and so on, the power to act comes from our values. Physical courage is really just leaves on the whole tree.
You remember that we played the Churchill excerpt. That was a wartime situation, so surely that was all just tied to what we do outwardly, with our arms and legs, carrying guns and using our physical strength to win the day right? But what did Churchill give as the motivation for stopping Hitler—“Let us therefore brace ourselves for our…test of endurance, strength, and might?” No. “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty. That we may so bear ourselves….You see there’s a moral foundation to what Churchill is saying.
And in the Joshua passage, you remember what God said? “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to”…swing your sword really hard and shoot your arrows straight? No. Now they’re about to go into battle, and Joshua and his men are going to risk their lives to fight for Israel. And what does God tell them? “Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.”
I think if I can presume to summarize God, He is saying, You get things right within. You get things right in your vertical relationship with me. Once that is in place, the sword blows and the arrows will take care of themselves.
