The Quality of Courage…

“Whatever you do,” said Emerson, “you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires …courage…”

There is significant decision of life that doesn’t require some sort of courage, and no typical day of life that doesn’t require some sort of courage; and certainly there is no great venture in life that doesn’t require courage. “Courage is the greatest of all the virtues. Because if you haven’t courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.” It takes courage to be different. It takes courage to side with someone who is being unfairly abused. It takes courage to befriend someone who is in popular disfavor, to advocate an unpolitic or unprofitable opinion. It takes courage to speak out in favor of an unpopular proposal, or an inconvenient or unpopular principle. It takes courage to turn down a dare. It takes courage to ignore ridicule, even when it is right. Sometimes it takes courage even to run away from an evil proposal, for evil, like misery, loves company, and doesn’t make it easy for anyone to run out on it.

Often it takes courage to find the peace that comes with repenting. Pursuing anything that isn’t easy, isn’t popular, anything that isn’t considered to be quickly successful, requires courage. The critics are often cruel, sometimes honestly cruel and sometimes cruel for reasons that are other than honest. Sometimes they are right; sometimes they are wrong. But anyone who stands for anything, who says anything, who does anything that amounts to much, must face the critics—and that requires courage.

“Whatever you do, you need courage”—especially the courage that comes with conviction of being right—and the equal, or even almost greater, courage to repent from wrong. Life itself, with every significant decision, requires courage.