The Cardinal Virtues: Courage

The scriptures referred to are Hebrews 5:5-10 and John 12:20-33.

A great movie makes you forget you are watching a movie. You become so engrossed in the characters and what is happening to them that you become oblivious to the fact that you are watching a 2 dimensional recording of a bunch of people in costumes playing make-believe with the help of makeup, sets and special effects. All of that artifice falls away when you get lost in the truth of a moment. One such scene is in Saving Private Ryan. Technician 5^th Grade Timothy Upham finds himself in a half-destroyed building being searched by German soldiers. As he watches in horror, one of the Nazis stabs to death a fellow American soldier. Frozen with fear, Upham cannot intervene. It is a very uncomfortable scene because in films we take the courage of the heroes for granted. But just as it is not natural to kill other human beings, hence boot camp, it is not natural to run into danger. When confronted with a threat, fight or flight are not the only options. People often freeze. I recently read of a soldier wounded in battle, who was rescued only to have the medic freeze up and be unable to treat him. Luckily another medic stepped in. But freezing like a deer in the headlights is a natural reaction to a scary situation. This is why we must be careful when judging what people have done during events like public shootings. No one knows what they would do when the threat of imminent death suddenly strikes in an otherwise ordinary and normally safe place. And anyone who thinks he would charge in and wrestle with or even accurately shoot the perpetrator has confused Hollywood fantasy with reality. Scriptwriters stack the deck for heroes.

Courage is one of the cardinal virtues precisely because it is not a natural reaction to danger. Fright is. And the paradox is that courage is not even the opposite of fear. Many people have done courageous things while shaking with fright. Courage is doing the scary but necessary thing. As Danish poet, artist and mathematician Piet Hein put it: “To be brave is to behave/bravely when your heart is faint./So you can be really brave/only when you really ain't.” For instance many people would rather die than do what I am doing right now—stand up in front of people and speak. But to me, public speaking is not scary, so I don't have to screw up my courage to do it. On the other hand my wife does not like the spotlight. One time a friend of ours was getting married and did not want a religious ceremony. The person who was going to do the service had to drop out at the last minute and my wife volunteered to officiate in her capacity as a notary public. I don't know who was shaking more during the ceremony, the bride or my wife. That was very brave of her.

We may admire people who do dangerous things but if it doesn't scare them, they aren't manifesting the virtue of courage. And indeed sometimes people we think are brave are really just reckless or heedless of the danger they put themselves into. There are thousands of videos on YouTube of people doing stunts out of foolhardiness more than anything else. Some are merely adrenaline junkies, people who love the thrill of cheating death. Some are just out to impress people. As the joke goes, the most common last words of fools are: “Watch this!” We even have a website called the Darwin Awards, dedicated to real news stories of people eliminating themselves from the gene pool in the stupidest ways possible. Often they were doing things that common sense should have told them were likely to kill or injure them.

Usually what prompts real bravery is valuing something else over one's own safety. Courage is often powered by a motivation that is stronger than fear. Fire fighters, police officers and soldiers will do brave things out of a sense of duty. This is what they signed up for, they tell themselves. It is part of the job to do things most folks wouldn't.

Or courage may come from loyalty to one's social group. Loyalty to a group powers a lot of fear-defying acts. For instance, a criminal gang acts as a surrogate family to troubled youths and gang members will do dangerous tasks to show their loyalty to the group. Terrorist groups are very similar to criminal gangs, which they often devolve into. Jesse James was a pro-slavery terrorist doing the Civil War. We remember him simply as the bank and train robber he became after his cause lost the war. Studies have shown that group loyalty is a larger factor in what terrorists do than ideology, though the ideology may have initially drawn them in. Even the lone wolves being radicalized by internet propaganda are usually part of an online community. Only a small number are persuaded to actually carry out attacks, for which we can be grateful. Bravery motivated by ideological purity is rare.

Bravery may be motivated by anger. This is the fight part of the fight, flight or freeze response to fear. A person's reaction to a threat might be to try to confront it. Sometimes this is just the personality of the one who's threatened. They may take it as a personal affront. He or she may be a dominant person who will not be cowed, whose hackles rise when challenged. Their anger may come out of hate for the person posing the threat or disgust for  what they do. In which case, as with terrorists or gangs, their courage is not a virtue.

The essence of evil is to subvert or corrupt or misuse something that would otherwise be good. After all, God made all things and pronounced them good. But we often take God's good gifts and use them in ways he didn't intend. We are intelligent and creative beings. But instead of using our intelligence for the good of all, we have used it to come up with ways to rob and cheat and harm one another. We have turned the ingenuity that led us to use sticks and rocks as tools to use them instead as weapons. We have gotten creative and developed more sophisticated weapons: from sling to arrow to gun, from catapult to cannon to missile launcher, from fireworks to bombs to nuclear weapons. Each step in development made them deadlier. And we have turned virtues like the courage to do right into the ability to risk oneself to do harm. Comedian Bill Maher got in trouble for saying the terrorists on 9/11 were not cowards. But he was right: just as they turned planes into weapons, they turned courage into the nerve to kill themselves while committing mass murder.

Courage is only a virtue when it helps someone do the right thing. Often such courage is motivated by love. People will do extraordinary acts of courage to save someone they love. Just 2 years ago, a man tried to abduct a 13 year old girl in a Dollar Store here in Florida. As the man dragged her daughter by her hair out of the store, the mother chased him, grabbed her daughter, lay on top of top of her and in the words of a deputy, “was kicking his butt.” The man let go, only to run into the arms of an off-duty policeman who had just pulled into the parking lot. That same year, a mom pumping gas at a Tom Thumb fought off two armed carjackers. One got into the driver's seat while the other tapped on the window with his gun. The woman pulled the man out of the car and pulled off his mask and he and his accomplice fled. Her two children were in the back seat of the car. In northern Quebec a 41 year old woman fought a polar bear to save her 7 year old son and his friends. I found these 3 stories immediately by typing “mother fights off...” into Google. I didn't even have to complete the sentence. Type in “father fights off...” and Google autocompletes with “bear,” “cougar,” “escaped prisoner with a bat,” and “alligator.” Love can make you courageous.

Of course, that's personal love. What about altruism, concern for others in general, including those we don't even know? Again lots of examples come to mind. There are the people who run into burning buildings, or jump into bodies of water, or stop fights on the street to save strangers. This is less common than parents saving their children, however. I remember a viral video of students staging fake incidents of bullying to see what would happen. Most people seeing one young man shove and hit another remained bystanders. One young woman, however, laid into the actor playing the bully so fiercely that the others involved in the video had to stop her and reveal what they were doing.

Psychologists often use actors to see what people do in response to social situations. Again it's not hard to find videos where an actor pretends to get sick or collapse on a busy city sidewalk. Most people just keep walking. In one video the actor is curled into a fetal position, groaning and saying, “Help me.” It takes 20 minutes before someone does. When a nice looking young woman takes his place it still takes more than 4 minutes before someone goes to her aid. Researchers counted 34 passersby who didn't stop for her. People are afraid to stand out from the pack. They might even be afraid of what it was that incapacitated the person in distress.

The interesting thing is that when one person does stop to check on the person on the ground, so do others. If someone starts helping a person who is sick or injured, it gives others permission to join in. In fact in their First Aid courses the Red Cross now prioritizes getting others involved. Before doing CPR, point at a person and tell him or her to call 911. Point at individuals and ask them if they know CPR and can aid you while doing it. If you are brave, it motivates others to be brave.

Again group loyalty comes into play. In the social experiment we just mentioned, an actor dressed in a good suit and tie got help very quickly. Actors dressed like homeless people had to wait a lot longer before anyone deigned to help them. It is hard to step up for someone who is not part of your group. Jesus knew that and deliberately picked a despised Samaritan as the hero of his parable.

Standing up to social pressure is a type of courage we rarely think about. It's tough to go against the crowd. We are social animals. Which is why the threat of being ostracized is usually a good deterrent on behavior. Standing up to your friends takes more courage than standing up to your enemies. When I Googled "bystander effect," YouTube suggested other related videos. Some of these were of people who left cults. Lilia Tarawa was the granddaughter of a man who founded a cult in New Zealand. But the abuse heaped on people she loved convinced her at age 18 to leave the only community she had ever known. That was followed by another TED talk by Dawn Smith, another granddaughter of another cult leader, who also left. She was shunned by family and friends. Imagine how hard it is to separate yourself from your loved ones, community and the faith you were brought up in. To do that takes courage.

There are lots of examples of courage in the Bible, both physical courage and moral courage. I want to concentrate on the latter. There is the courage of Elijah, who faced off against the prophets of Baal and against the royal family of Israel, who wanted to kill him. There is the courage of Jeremiah, preaching a message that challenged those in power, which brought him tremendous persecution and suffering. There is the courage of the apostles, most of whom died as martyrs for their faith in Christ. And of course there is Jesus, who went to the cross, rather than shut up or compromise his message. And lest you think Jesus wasn't truly brave because he didn't fear death, I refer you to what we read in today's gospel of Jesus being troubled. The Greek means “agitated” and in other contexts can be translated “terrified,” such as when the disciples see Jesus walking on water (Matthew 14:26; Mark 6:50) or after his resurrection (Luke 24:38). And then there are his prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane when he asked God to let the cup of suffering pass him by. This must be what our passage in Hebrews is referring to when it says that “Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death...” Jesus overcame his entirely natural human fear of pain and death to save us. That's courage.

Most of us will not face having to make a painful or deadly sacrifice for Jesus. What is amazing is how often we will not sacrifice our feelings of comfort to stand up for him or some moral principle he espoused in a social situation. It is easier to go along with the crowd, to not stand out, to not confront injustice or wrongdoing when we see it. We don't want to risk being a pariah. We don't want to be seen as a traitor to our group.

According to studies made of whistleblowers, their belief in the rightness of their action has to be strong enough to overcome the hazards of speaking out. A Boston College study said, “...people who valued fairness above loyalty were more likely” to expose injustice and unethical behavior in their company or in the government. They believe that airing such things will do more good than harm. They also tend to be like “Boy Scouts,” conscientious types who believe in the system and are part of the system. They are then shocked when they find out that people are breaking the rules with impunity.

They don't see themselves as betraying the group; they see the group as having betrayed its own values and letting down those who believe in it.

It is scary to go against your group. You feel alone. Yet you may find, like Elijah, that there are more people who agree with you than you thought. It may not be the majority but then change and innovation rarely originate with the majority, who like things as they are. Most real changes begin with one or two people who see the need and work on a solution and then won't shut up about it until everyone has heard. Margaret Mead, an Episcopalian by the way, said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

We wouldn't be here if a small group of people who lived with Jesus, saw him die, and met him again after his resurrection, hadn't gone against their culture and the authorities of their time. Within a century they had planted communities of believers in Jesus in every major city of the Roman empire. Within 3 centuries, the empire finally recognized Christianity. In less than another century, Christianity became the official religion of the empire. It all started with a small group of committed people.

Courage is easier to find when you are not alone. But as Christians we are never alone. As God told Joshua before he entered the promised land, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9) When Jesus commissions the disciples, he says, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20) Nor did he soft-pedal the fact that his followers would encounter danger. He said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) With him we can face anything.

C.S. Lewis pointed out that you really need courage in order to carry out the other virtues. Knowing the right thing to do but not doing it because of fear doesn't help anyone. The disciples said they would not desert Jesus but when he was arrested their courage left them and they left him to his fate. Jesus went to his death truly alone. He did it with courage, which was motivated by love. Which we will talk about next time.