Courage.  It is such a wonderful word.  Sadly, this word is being re-defined in our culture.  Let me explain.  Recently, there was a major sports awards ceremony.  Each year at this ceremony awards are presented to the best athletes and teams from the previous year.  They also present an award called “The Arthur Ashe Courage Award.”  In the past, there have been many worthy recipients of this award.  They have honored men and women who have not given up in spite of terminal illness.  They have honored athletes who have died while fighting for our country.

This year was different.  This year they honored a man who became a woman.  His courageous act was declaring that God had made a mistake.  So, he ‘courageously’ changed and was honored for his heroic decision.

What is Courage?

As I read about this, I asked myself, “Is that really courageous?”  Is it courageous merely to do something hard or difficult?  Not always.  Robbing a bank is hard.  But, we don’t give courage awards to bank robbers.

So today, I would like to try and define courage.  Hopefully, this will be helpful to us all.  As I see it, Courage requires three things.

• Courage requires sacrifice.  Giving your life for someone else is courageous.  It is the ultimate sacrifice.  Police officers are courageous every time they step into the line of duty.  Courage often requires one to sacrifice a life of comfort and ease for a life of hard work and pain.  Courage requires that we sacrifice our ambitions and our ego.  Some have to sacrifice their career or their fortunes.
• Courage requires humility.   We see this in our World War II veterans who liberated the Nazi concentration camps.   They are not filled with pride.  They are humble.  The courageous man does what he does because it is the right thing to do – not because he is seeking glory and recognition.
• Courage requires that we do what is right.  Here is where defining courage gets hard.  It is not courageous to rob a bank because robbing a bank is wrong.  But, how do we define what is ‘right?’  Too many people define ‘right’ as whatever they think is ‘right.’  There is nothing outside of themselves that they look to for defining right and wrong.  There is no absolute truth in their lives.  We, as Christians, are different.  I look to God’s Word, the Bible, when defining right and wrong.  The Bible is my absolute truth.

It is incredibly courageous when someone sacrifices to humbly do what is right.  When I think of courage, all of these qualities must be present.  Let’s go back to the person who won the courage award and run them through my definition of courage.

1. I have no doubt that they made considerable sacrifices in the process of becoming a woman.
2. This is hard to tell definitively.  But, to me, it looks like there is a complete absence of humility.  With all of the interviews, magazine covers, and publicity, it is difficult to find any humility.
3. I do not see any ‘right’ in what they have done.  When God created the world he created male and female very specifically.  To change gender is to change God’s plan.  It is changing God’s design for your life.  Gender is not a choice.  It is a gift from God.

Courage is Beautiful

Courage is a beautiful thing.  It should be celebrated.  It should be honored.  I want my children to be courageous.  However, we must be careful to define courage correctly.

That’s all for today.  Happy Friday.

Stephen

PS – Another thing I’ve been thinking about recently is Planned Parenthood.  I hope you have watched the videos that have been coming out.  They are disturbing, but you need to watch them.  Lord willing, I will be writing about that soon.