A few months ago, I was mugged in Ecuador a few blocks from my house. I was riding my bike at dawn when six armed people mounted on three motorcycles corralled me into a wall like bandidos on horseback. They demanded my phone at gunpoint and then struck me with a pistol across my forehead before leaving me bloody on the sidewalk. Later the same week I went back on my bike to the same street. I felt led to confront my fears as part of the healing process.
Courageous or reckless?
A few years prior, while I was serving in Bangladesh, Islamic extremists attacked an upscale café popular among foreigners fewer than fifteen minutes from my office. Before the night was over, more than twenty people were riddled with bullets. I happened to be out of the country at the time, but my U.S. headquarters prevented me from returning, although our local Christian staff continued working under the shadow of fear. I argued that this was not a time for international leaders to cower fearfully in safe havens while our local colleagues continued serving in a danger zone. My lobbying was effective, and I returned to Bangladesh the first week the travel ban was lifted.
Courageously good or courageously foolish?
In our zeal to be courageous, sometimes it’s hard to know the difference between wise courage and well-intended foolhardiness. Sometimes our commitment to ideals, or principles, blinds us to the nuanced response that may be required. I propose that knowing how to respond to a threat or fearful situation depends on the first half of our theme: being faithfully present.
I firmly believe that Christians should have a faithful presence where there are active threats. But I don’t think “faithful” means stubborn allegiance, even if the cause to which we are being faithful is informed by so called “biblical principles.” Rather, we are called to be faithfully present to the person of Jesus first and foremost. Even good biblical principles are no substitute for the living presence of Christ who speaks dynamically through the Spirit about each particular threat.
In his book, Ethics, Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes the case that our convictions need to respond to the voice of Jesus, not to abstract principles. “Reason,” “conscience,” “duty,” and “private virtuousness” all fail as tools for locating a true ethic. He insisted that ethical living is not a matter of developing a list of rules based on a systematic knowledge of good and evil, but of discerning the will of God in each situation and doing that will. Bonhoeffer lived this out as he secretly participated in a plot to murder Hitler despite the biblical commandment to not kill.
Such seeming inconsistency can be seen in the life of Jesus as well. He was threatened by mobs on various occasions, at which times he slipped away unnoticed (Luke 4:28–30; John 8:59). Withdrawing, hiding, or keeping a low profile is an understandable reaction to a threat, but one some people might consider void of courage. Jesus’ example, however, shows that keeping your head down is sometimes justifiable when done in response to the voice of God. Even so, at other times he bravely stood his ground in public standoffs with community leaders when the stinging truth provoked murderous, seething anger. And we all know how that ultimately ended.
How do we develop principles for responding to threats in the face of such contrary examples? We don’t.
Being faithfully present begins with being faithfully present to the person of Jesus, not to principles. It means listening for his marching orders every day and at every crucial moment. And just as he didn’t respond the same way to every threatening situation, I don’t think he will direct us to boilerplate responses either.
Discerning this in the noise of our culture wars requires stillness. It requires a listening posture unshackled from associations, denominations, organizational values statements, or even policies. Blind allegiance to such principles, as good as they may seem, is not being faithfully present to Jesus first. It deprives him of the opportunity to speak his living wisdom into a fear-inducing situation.
Courage looks different in each of our contexts. For those of us living overseas, we sometimes brave organized crime or terrorism. For those of you based in the U.S., you dodge the unpredictable bullets of political correctness or the sleeper mines of micro aggressions that could land you on the wrong side of the morning paper. While you may not fear for your physical safety, you may fear damage to your reputation that could land you in the unemployment line.
As you discern how to be courageously good in your context, I leave you with a question for consideration:
To what are you faithfully present? A person or a set of principles?
