A student showed me a letter this week that was anonymously taped inside her locker. It was the most horrible thing any girl could have written to another girl. This was the beginnings of bullying in one of its ugliest forms. Another staff member reading it, tried not to cry at the blatant and extreme cruelty expressed from one young girl to another. The intent to utterly destroy another person, seemingly for no reason, caught my “thumos”. I didn’t desire to cry, although I was exceedingly sad for the victim – but my protectiveness kicked in, and I have spent the last two days trying to find the culprit. I won’t stop until I discover the identity of this coward. That is, after all, what this bully is – a coward. Sadly, too, there are a lot of them sitting in our classrooms, and our children’s classrooms. That is why this is something that must be fought. Men must strike back at this cancerous, devastating disease of bullying in school.
We need to show courage to ruffle some feathers and stop this problem in its tracks or it will take over lives of the innocent. Remember the innocent ones, guys? Those are the ones we are obligated and originally wired to protect. We simply must stop turning a blind eye to what is going on around us.
A couple of years ago when I was driving to work, I saw a scruffy man and a rather dishevelled-looking woman walking down the street. They were probably about 30 or so. I could tell they were arguing about something, although not a heated argument. Suddenly, as I was driving by, he turned and struck her in the head – then they both kept walking once she had shaken it off. I was enraged as I saw it...but I did nothing. Nothing!! I felt shame as I justified myself, saying that I would be late for work, that it would just start a fight (as that is obviously what the guy was looking for), and that maybe she said something really bad to him. Strike one. Strike two. And a big strike three. My decision not to do anything has really weighed on my conscience, although it is likely that both the man and woman have forgotten about it. I will not ignore injustices like this any longer.
Here is what Paul Coughlin has to say about courage and cowardice in Unleashing Courageous Faith:
Courage is contagious, but one must be willing to be infected. Better minds than mine have gone back and forth on the essence of courage: Some say we’re born with it, others that we’re not. I think we’re born with the potential for courage, and that from there, the hard part starts: We either learn how to draw it out of ourselves or we don’t. Furthermore, I believe that the quality of our life expands or shrinks based upon this decision and guidance (or lack of guidance). As Maya Angelou has said: “Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”
We’ve seen that cowardice, born from fearful self-interest and self-preservation, is the enemy of courage. We noted how cowardice makes us feel sludge-like, eroding our integrity and our dignity, mortifying our souls with guilt and shame and actually diminishing our self-regard. Isn’t it at least intriguing, then, that we wouldn’t already be focussing on this during an age in which self-esteem is perhaps the most untouchable sacred cow?
The U.S. military defines cowardice as “misbehavior before the enemy.” It includes running away in the face of an enemy and willfully failing to do all within one’s power to fight or defend when it’s one’s duty to do so. Militarily, cowardice’s maximum punishment is death, and a part of our soul likewise goes dark when we give in to cowardice – we become vulnerable to a level of self-loathing that’s unequal to what follows any other behavior. Remember how Martin Luther King wrote that avoiding spiritual battles due to cowardice is a form of spiritual treason? We sense this truth but don’t have words to describe it, the willingness to confess it (in order to be healed), or the training to fight for it.
Incredibly, Christians need permission to be morally courageous again, as when they battled to abolish slavery, as when they’ve warred against fascism, as when they’ve struggled for equal civil rights, and when they’ve rallied to love and care for children, born and unborn. People of faith need permission to be good again – to exercise moral courage in civic life. Will the church grant it?
Well, God has granted it. In fact, he has insisted on it. I will vow to be morally courageous from now on, and do what is right by His standards, not the world’s. Who’s with me?
Stay REAL!
We need to show courage to ruffle some feathers and stop this problem in its tracks or it will take over lives of the innocent. Remember the innocent ones, guys? Those are the ones we are obligated and originally wired to protect. We simply must stop turning a blind eye to what is going on around us.
A couple of years ago when I was driving to work, I saw a scruffy man and a rather dishevelled-looking woman walking down the street. They were probably about 30 or so. I could tell they were arguing about something, although not a heated argument. Suddenly, as I was driving by, he turned and struck her in the head – then they both kept walking once she had shaken it off. I was enraged as I saw it...but I did nothing. Nothing!! I felt shame as I justified myself, saying that I would be late for work, that it would just start a fight (as that is obviously what the guy was looking for), and that maybe she said something really bad to him. Strike one. Strike two. And a big strike three. My decision not to do anything has really weighed on my conscience, although it is likely that both the man and woman have forgotten about it. I will not ignore injustices like this any longer.
Here is what Paul Coughlin has to say about courage and cowardice in Unleashing Courageous Faith:
Courage is contagious, but one must be willing to be infected. Better minds than mine have gone back and forth on the essence of courage: Some say we’re born with it, others that we’re not. I think we’re born with the potential for courage, and that from there, the hard part starts: We either learn how to draw it out of ourselves or we don’t. Furthermore, I believe that the quality of our life expands or shrinks based upon this decision and guidance (or lack of guidance). As Maya Angelou has said: “Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”
We’ve seen that cowardice, born from fearful self-interest and self-preservation, is the enemy of courage. We noted how cowardice makes us feel sludge-like, eroding our integrity and our dignity, mortifying our souls with guilt and shame and actually diminishing our self-regard. Isn’t it at least intriguing, then, that we wouldn’t already be focussing on this during an age in which self-esteem is perhaps the most untouchable sacred cow?
The U.S. military defines cowardice as “misbehavior before the enemy.” It includes running away in the face of an enemy and willfully failing to do all within one’s power to fight or defend when it’s one’s duty to do so. Militarily, cowardice’s maximum punishment is death, and a part of our soul likewise goes dark when we give in to cowardice – we become vulnerable to a level of self-loathing that’s unequal to what follows any other behavior. Remember how Martin Luther King wrote that avoiding spiritual battles due to cowardice is a form of spiritual treason? We sense this truth but don’t have words to describe it, the willingness to confess it (in order to be healed), or the training to fight for it.
Incredibly, Christians need permission to be morally courageous again, as when they battled to abolish slavery, as when they’ve warred against fascism, as when they’ve struggled for equal civil rights, and when they’ve rallied to love and care for children, born and unborn. People of faith need permission to be good again – to exercise moral courage in civic life. Will the church grant it?
Well, God has granted it. In fact, he has insisted on it. I will vow to be morally courageous from now on, and do what is right by His standards, not the world’s. Who’s with me?
Stay REAL!