Kerry Walters - Profiles in Christian Courage: Extraordinary Inspiration for Everyday Life

Profiles in
Christian Courage

Kerry Walters

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

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Printed in the United States of America

To Kim Daubman

A woman of great courage

This is a book about Christian courage and about courageous Christians. Life can be hard at times, and so can being a follower of Christ. Thats why courage, or what I call here (riffing off of an expression coined by Ernest Hemingway) Grace under pressure, is so important. To face the physical, moral, and spiritual dangers that confront us, whether they explode in extreme situations or emerge as everyday challenges, we Christians require the kind of fortitude that ultimately comes from aligning our will with Gods. For most of us, this is easier said than accomplished. In this book, I offer some guidance on how to go about it, and I profile eighteen Christians (or groups), some famous and some lesser well known, who have done so. They are inspiring role models for the rest of us to keep in mind when the going gets rough in our own lives.

While this book was still in an early stage, I was privileged to meet Erin Youngbar, a young woman from Maryland who will forever be for me an exemplar of Christian courage. Shes in her thirties, is a loving wife and mother of three young children, and has a faith whose strength astounds and humbles me. Shes also a cancer patient who has undergone months of sometimes brutal radiation and chemotherapy for a brain tumor. Throughout the entire ordeal, beginning with the news of her diagnosis, she has kept a blog in which she candidly records her sorrow and occasional moments of despair, her fear, and her bewilderment at whats befallen her. But what comes through again and again, from the first to the latest entry, is an overwhelming courage bolstered by her trust in God, her struggle to live and love deeply as God lives and loves, and her determination to remain loyal to Christ, come what may. Her online journal can be found at http://erinyoungbar.com. It is a remarkable testimony to the power of Grace under pressure, and it has taught me a good deal of what it means to be a courageous Christian. Thank you, Erin.

seeking Grace under pressure

John Bunyan, the seventeenth-century Puritan who wrote Pilgrims Progress, knew something about Christian courage, or what he called valor. Arrested numerous times and imprisoned on two separate occasions for nonconformity to the Church of England, he remained unbrokenly steadfast to his convictions. Not long before his death, he penned the only hymn he ever wrote as a tribute to the importance of courageously staying the course as a Christian wayfarer. It summed up his whole adult life.

Who would true Valor see

Let him come hither;

One here will Constant be,

Come Wind, come Weather.

Theres no Discouragement,

Shall make him once Relent,

His first avowd Intent,

To be a Pilgrim.

To the contemporary American ear, Bunyans tribute to Christian courage might come across as a bit of quaint piety from a bygone age. Christianity in the United States seems pretty secure today, troubled by neither dangerous winds nor ominous weather. Theres no social onus, much less danger, in being an American Christian. The days in which it was perilous to profess faith in Christ are gone, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. Valorous constancy mayve been called for in Bunyans day, but it just doesnt seem to be applicable to us today.

But what if were wrong? What if being a Christian always and everywhere requires valor, and that things have gone terribly wrong somewhere along the line if weve lost sight of that truth? What, in other words, if a Christianity that no longer requires courage has ceased to be the genuine article?

The nineteenth-century Danish writer Soren Kierkegaard thought so. Although an intensely religious man, he leveled a rebuke at the respectable Christianity of his own time that still stings today. Modern Christianity in the West, said Kierkegaard, costs nothing. The easiest thing in the world is to be a Christian. All one has to do is claim the label for oneself and presto!ones automatically in the club. Its not necessary to attend church, pray, read the Bible, or even take Jesuss life and teachings to heart. As Kierkegaard noted, Many people think that the Christian commandments (for example, to love ones neighbor as oneself) are purposely a little too rigoroussomething like the household alarm clock that runs a half-hour fast so one does not get up too late in the morning. If Christianity is so hassle-free and user-friendly that Jesuss words can be interpreted to suit our convenience, what possible need could there be for courage?

But Kierkegaard insisted that the feel-good and all-too-common variety of Christianity in his day (and ours) isnt the real deal. If your ultimate and highest purpose is to have life made easy and sociable, then never have anything to do with Christianity, he warned, because genuine Christianity is a hard business that calls for a great deal of courage. Without it, how many of us would be able to love those who despise us, affirm joy in times of sorrow, practice patience under trial, remain firm in the chaos of despair, or steady in the face of skepticism and hostility? Without courage, how many of us could, like Bunyans Pilgrim, stay the course? We often say that love, joy, patience, and steadfastness are the gifts of faith. But without courage, no person would dare commit to the Faith in the first place. Without courage, no one could live the Faith. And without courage, no one would be willing to suffer persecution, much less to die, for the Faith. Fidelity to the real Christ, not the comfortable idol we too frequently substitute for him and whom Kierkegaard scorned, demands valor. Its no surprise that scripture encourages us again and again, Be not afraid!

But what does it mean for a Christian to practice courage? Surely the valor it takes to follow Jesus is no different than garden variety, generic valor. Courage is courage, right? Wrong.

From as far back as recorded history stretches, courage has typically been associated with a set of qualities that can best be labeled manliness. (The Latin, Old French, and Middle English roots of valor actually denote masculine strength. By comparison, a coward in todays English is often called a sissy, derived from the obviously feminine sister.) Courage was understood as iron-willed resistance to a physical threat, a refusal to be cowed by danger or to flee from it. The physically powerful and merciless warrior who laughs at pain and hardship became the exemplar of courage. The Sumerian hero Gilgamesh and Homers Achilles are valorous because they go out of their way to confront and subdue monsters and enemies, even at the risk of their own lives. Sometimes their courage is in the service of others, but just as often they perform deeds of valor to gain glory for themselves. Their courage is a two-fisted, riotously defiant kind that one associates with a larger-than-life masculinity.