The Disciple's Journal Character Trait #3: Courage

Courage:

- the state of mind or spirit that enables one to face danger or fear with confidence and resolution.


Courage is one of those qualities that shines bright - whether it be in the spotlight (we always read and hear about courageous acts by people; my grandmother yearly subscribes me to Reader's Digest, and every month there are stories about acts of courage) or in secret.

One of the greatest examples of courage died this past month. Rosa Parks' act of defiance - refusing to give her seat up to someone else simply because she was black and they were white - helped blast a hole in the segregation laws of the South. What an inspiration. I wonder how many of those powerful moments simply happened because a regular person found within them a little courage to do what is right.

Another example I just recently read about over at the Real Live Preacher Blog is a man by the name of Foy Valentine. He says this about Foy:

- "He was a Christian ethicist who worked for the Southern Baptist Convention years ago. Foy's job was to speak the truth to those in power. And that he did. He received a lot of hate mail over the years from Baptists whose world was not large enough to hold truth. And he was labeled many things: A liberal, a radical, a nigger lover, a troublemaker.

But in my research I found the voice of one crying in the wilderness of the sins of my own people. It was a notation in the official record of the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting of 1968. The record indicates that a man named Foy Valentine stood up on the convention floor and pleaded for his brothers and sisters in Christ to confess the sin of our racism and embrace people of all colors. He was the same age then that I am now. He was in his 40s and employed by those very Baptists to whom he spoke on that day. He had a wife and children and a lot to lose.

Apparently, truth meant more to Foy than comfort and security.

His remarks were not well received, to say the least. It would be another twenty years before the Southern Baptist Convention would confess that particular sin."

I think of the times where I displayed courage, and the times I did not. One time where I failed still haunts me to this day. In fourth grade, there was a mentally challenged girl in my class named Mandy. She was deathly afraid of boys, and anytime she was approached by a boy, she would just start screaming. In fourth grade, at least back then, most of the boys still hung out together regardless of how cool or nerdy you were; it wasn't until fifth grade that the classification started taking place. But everyone still wanted to fit in. I was one of those who wanted to fit in, especially because I was the most popular boy in my class - I was voted "class leader" and was chosen to make a speech on George Washington in front of the whole school and everything (in my case, until tenth grade, this was the last grade for me to be known as popular or cool - in fifth grade, I was classified as a nerd and a loser. But that story is for another time). Well, we were out on the playground, and someone saw Mandy and thought it would be funny if we all went up to her and told her that one of us wanted to "go out" with her. I didn't like the idea, because I knew she would freak out. But I went along anyway, and she screamed bloody murder, and we all laughed, and I'm still ashamed of it today. In the great scheme of things, it wasn't a big deal - but if I'm still ashamed of it, doesn't it make it a big deal? I wish I had the courage to stand up for Mandy.

I saw Mandy a few years ago when I was a youth minister at my home church. She loaded my groceries into the bags. I wanted to say something to her, but I was sure that she didn't remember the incident, so why bring it back up? And if she did remember it, she wouldn't recognize me anyway, at least I don't think she would. I said thanks to her, picked up my bags and left.

When I think of a biblical example of courage, immediately Paul comes to my mind. Just the definition of courage applies to who Paul was: he had the state of mind or spirit that enables one to face danger or fear with confidence and resolution. One of my favorite stories in the Bible is about Paul and how he was at Lystra with Barnabas. The crowd was confused and thought that Barnabas and Paul were the Greek gods Zeus and Hermes. Paul tried to clear up the confusion, but it wasn't working. To make matters worse, some Jews came over from another city and won the crowd over, so Paul was stoned. Not in the marijuana way, but in the "we're going to throw a bunch of pointy rocks at you and then when you fall down, we will take a large rock and break your back with it and continue throwing stones at you until your dead" kind of way. They drag him out the city and leave him for dead.

All that is interesting, but the most interesting part is what happened next: "But after the disciples had gathered around him, he got up and went back into the city. The next day he and Barnabas left for Derbe."

Did you catch that? If I was Paul, I think I would have taken a couple of days off. "Hey Barnabas, let's find a Club Med around here and let me heal up for a week or so. A little R&R would do us some good, and we'll be ready for the next city." Paul went the next day to another city, where he could possibly face the same thing as he faced in Lystra. That is courage. May God grant us all just a little bit of the courage that Paul had!

Here are some questions from The Disciple's Journal to think about:

- Does my courage depend only on my past success?

- Do I often have to stand alone for what I believe?

- Do I look for opportunities to show courage?

- Do I choose to be "one of the gang" when I should stand alone?

- Do others look to me for strength when danger threatens?

- Am I confident that fears I now have will eventually be dealt with, or do I expect them to plague me the rest of my life?

- Do I believe God has specific answers for the struggles I face?