We live in an age where our courage matters more than ever. With social, cultural and international relationships all in terrible disarray, facing the future is not for the timid.
Courage is essential for living a life of integrity. Without it, we bend and fold whenever the pressure grows too great. Some people even go so far as to compromise their conscience.
In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis described how it is only when courage is required, that a person’s true values come into focus.
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 or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.
Samuel Johnson, an eighteenth century English writer, was highly esteemed by C.S. Lewis. His words on this subject foreshadow Lewis’ own thoughts. “Courage,” according to Johnson, “is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven’t courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.”
Two millennia earlier, an influential Greek philosopher described this same truth. Aristotle, who did not look to the Greek pantheon for inspiration, also deduced that courage is a necessary attribute for the virtuous.
You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
Examining Ourselves
As a boy, I used to imagine myself playing heroic roles. These often involved rescuing innocent people from barbarians or tyrants, often in ancient settings. As a man I shed those imaginations and pondered realities. In the military, I witnessed courage up close, and I became persuaded that Mark Twain was correct when he declared “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
True courage is not found in the cloying display of heroics, especially when arising from an ignorance of genuine danger. Neither is simple risk-taking an evidence of courage, since it may merely be the mark of an adrenaline junkie.
I haven’t personally been confronted with many situations which required physical courage, and when I have, I’ve been tempted to feel a little like I was “pretending.” But then I recall that truly courageous men and women also need to overcome their fear.
And, I honestly suspect that even those who have done the most selfless and courageous things possible, also recognized their limits. They ventured forth because they were truly courageous, not because they lacked fear. This is precisely what happened in a garden on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives called Gethsemane.
Although encounters with physical dangers have been rare, my courage has been tested numerous times in the service of maintaining my integrity. I can recall a number of academic, professional, and personal occasions where standing for truth came at a very real cost. And, who knows how many times to which we are oblivious, that enemies have wished (and worked) us ill, because we did not surrender to their coercive manipulations.
Happy are those – I am sure Lewis, Johnson, Aristotle and Twain, would agree – who do not compromise their convictions. It appears that courage is a matter of character, not of the moment.
Two uplifting insights provide a fitting end to our meditation on this subject. While the courageous sometimes feel like they stand alone, Billy Graham reminds us of an encouraging fact.
Courage is contagious. When a brave man [or woman] takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.
And, C.S. Lewis’ dear friend J.R.R. Tolkien provides us with another keen observation. In The Fellowship of the Rings, an elf named Gildor protects the hobbits at the outset of their journey, and observes, “courage is found in unlikely places.” Indeed, it is.
It may even be found in us.
Mere Inkling Press 