Cultivating Christian Courage

Transcript

Before we get started tonight, I kind of want to do a quick survey: How many in here have seen The Lord of the Rings movies? Okay, good group. How many have read the books? Okay, less of the group. How many have read The Silmarillion? Haha, we got one, nice. Okay, good. That gives me a gauge of how much I need to explain as we go forward. So like it's been mentioned several times, I'd like to talk about courage this evening. And to do that, I want to start by reading one of my favorite passages from The Lord of the Rings. This is the scene where Gandalf stands against the Balrog on the bridge. If you guys remember, we enter the story here after the fellowship has journeyed from Rivendell through the long dark of Moria, and now they are fleeing before a host of orcs and Durin's Bane.

So here's Tolkien,

Over the bridge, cried Gandalf, recalling his strength, Fly! This is a foe beyond any of you. I must hold the narrow way. Fly! Aragorn and Boromir did not heed the command, but still held their ground side by side behind Gandalf at the far end of the bridge. The others halted just within the doorway at the hall's end and turned, unable to leave their leader to face the enemy alone.

The Balrog reached the bridge. Gandalf stood in the middle of the span, leaning on the staff in his left hand, but in his other hand, Glamdring gleamed cold and white. His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings. It raised the whip, and the throngs whined and cracked. Fire came from its nostrils, but Gandalf stood firm. You cannot pass, he said. The orcs stood still and a dead silence fell. I am a servant of the secret fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark Fire will not avail you Flame of Undun. Go back to the shadow. You cannot pass. The Balrog made no answer.

The fire in it seemed to die but the darkness grew. It stepped forward slowly on to the bridge, and suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall. But still Gandalf could be seen glimmering in the gloom. He seemed small and altogether alone, gray and bent like a wizened tree before the onset of a storm.

From out of the shadow a red sword leaped Flaming, Glamdring glittered white in answer. There was a ringing clash and a stab of white fire. The Balrog fell back, and its sword flew up in molten fragments. The wizard swayed on the bridge, stepped back a pace, and then again stood still. You cannot pass, he said. With a bound the Balrog leaped full upon the bridge, its whip worled, and hissed. He cannot stand alone! cried Aragorn suddenly, and ran back along the bridge. Elendil, he shouted, I am with you, Gandalf! Gondor! cried Boromir and stepped after him.

At that moment, Gandalf lifted his staff and crying aloud, he smote the bridge before him. The staff broke asunder and fell from his hand, a blinding sheet of white flame sprang up. The bridge cracked. Right at the Balrog’s feet it broke, and the stone upon which it stood crashed into the gulf, while the rest remained poised, quivering like a tongue of rock thrust into emptiness. With a terrible cry the Balrog fell forward and its shadow plunged down and vanished. But even as it fell, it swung its whip, and the throng slashed and curled about the wizard's knees, dragging him to the brink. He staggered and fell, grasp vainly at the stone, and slid into the abyss. Fly, you fools! he cried, and was gone.

Bravo, Tolkien! I get goosebumps every time I read that. Don't you want to be like that? Isn't that inspirational? This is one of my favorite passages in all of literature because it presents one of the most vivid pictures of courage that I think we can find.

The gray wizard stands firm against the Balrog on the bridge and in the end he lays down his life for his friends and the good of Middle-Earth. Here is fortitude worthy of celebrating and this is a Christ-like courage, worthy of imitating.

So with that scene stamped in our imaginations, I want to ask two questions. First, what is the root of Gandalf's courage? What habit of heart enables him to stand firm like a tree before a tempest? And then second, how can we cultivate that same habit of heart?

How can we become men and women of indomitable courage like Gandalf?

So first, let's delve to the root of courage. I want to get at what motivates courage — or to return to The Lord of the Rings, what separates Gandalf's fierce fortitude from Smeagol’s small souled cowardice?

Again, what is the root of courage?

One of our former pastors, Joe Rigney, answers that question in his little book on courage. There he defines courage as “a stable habit of heart that masters the passions, especially the passion of fear, through the power of a superior desire.”

So there are three aspects to that definition.

1) Courage is a habit of heart. It is something that we practice and cultivate.

2) Courage governs our passions. It reigns over our snap reactions and our instinctual responses, especially those of fear.

3) Courage governs by the power of a superior desire.

Now we'll come back to what that desire is. But what I want to highlight here is that Rigney, along with many of the great Western thinkers, identifies desire as the root of courage. The engine of courage runs on the fuel of strong desires. But not just any desire — superior desire. And superior obviously implies that desires are somehow ranked. They are rightly ordered. Elsewhere, Rigney says that courage blossoms out of a deep desire for a greater good. In other words, courage is the fruit of rightly ordered desires.

Ordered desires held Gandalf on the bridge. The deeper desire for a greater good implies that courage is rooted in a right hierarchy of desires. Or what Augustine called ordered loves. It makes sense then that the word courage derives from the Latin word for heart, which in Scripture is the center of our loves and our desires.

To take heart is to be courageous, to be strengthened by our deepest loves. So we can say that true courage reveals that our desires are rightly ordered.

Courage shows that you know how to put first things first and second things second. We see this clearly in the example of Gandalf. He valued his own personal safety. That's why he didn't throw his life away fighting the first round of orcs. He rightly desired his own self-preservation, but his desire for the safety of his friends, and more importantly, his desire for the good of all Middle-Earth went far deeper. His ability to face down the Balrog on the bridge was the fruit of those deeper desires. To borrow a description of the greatest act of courage of all time, we might say that for the joy set before him Gandalf despised death and defeated the Balrog. And that joy in a greater good was the source of his courage.

So in the example of Gandalf we see that the roots of courage are desires that go to the right depth. So courage is fruit. Desire is root. The deepest roots go to the greatest goods, like the lives of friends. And the shallower roots hold loosely to lesser goods. Now, as Christians, and especially as Christian hedonists, we know where the deepest root of our loves should be. Our Triune God is the highest good in the hierarchy of goods. He is the most beautiful and the most desirable. Thus, the taproot of Christian courage is a tenacious treasuring of Christ above all things — a treasuring that rightly orders all lesser goods in relation to our first good. So to summarize what we've said: Courage is fruit. Desire is root.

Now we turn to the second question: If Gandalf's courage comes from rightly ordered desires, how do we cultivate those same desires? What habit of heart can we develop to become men and women who can stand against the Balrog on the bridge? Now, before we answer that question, it would be helpful to ask what makes us cowardly? What makes us flee when we should fight? What makes us surrender the bridge instead of holding it?

Well, if ordinate loves and deep desires produce courage, then the opposite must be true of cowardice. Cowardice comes when the taproot, which should cling to the bedrock of the greatest good, only sinks a few feet below the ground. That tree will be blown over by the first strong breeze. That man will flee when the Balrog steps on to the bridge — shallow roots produce craven people.

C.S. Lewis is very helpful in exposing the source of these shallow roots. In a sermon he gave called “The Weight of Glory,” he reveals the habit of heart that breeds cowardice. He says,

“…if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures [and remember the word courage comes from the word for heart. So when he says half-hearted, it's an indication of cowardice] fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

That final line should haunt us — “We are far too easily pleased.” That is the habit of heart that makes us half-hearted, cowardly creatures. When our desires are too weak, when we are too easily pleased, when our longing for lesser things is disordered, we will not stand firm when we should. Instead of a tree before a tempest, weak desires leave us like tumbleweeds blown and tossed by the slightest breeze.

For example, a coworker makes an inappropriate comment and I know I shouldn't laugh, but everyone else in the circle is chuckling. Why do I join in the laughter? It's because my desires are disordered. I don't have the deep roots to be brave. I'm more satisfied by the feeling of being included in that inner circle in that moment, than standing for truth and hearing “well done” from my Lord. Far too easily pleased.

Or consider another example, you're sitting in front of your computer alone at night and the dragon of lust assaults the tower of your temperance enticing you to click on something that you shouldn't click on, to consume a beauty that is not yours. It may seem at that moment that your lustful desire is too strong. It is, after all, a dragon. So is Lewis mistaken? No. It is only your experience of that desire that feels strong. Your desires both towards the greatest good and in fact towards sex as God has designed it to be enjoyed are in reality far too weak.

Elsewhere, Lewis explains that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. The battleground before your coworker or before the screen is the testing point of self-control, or of temperance, or chastity. Will you be far too easily pleased and laugh along? Will you show yourself to be a coward and, like Adam, embrace the dragon? Or will you, like Christ, screw your courage to the sticking place. The difference between courage and cowardice is ordered desires.

With that in mind, I want to return to our second question: What habit of heart can we develop so that we are men and women like Gandalf?

And I propose that that habit of heart is this: relentlessly refuse to be far too easily pleased. Relentlessly refuse to be far too easily pleased. Or to put it another way — cultivate strong, deep, ordered desires. Just like Gandalf, to be courageous we must refuse to settle for lesser goods like mere comfort and selfish pleasure and pain avoidance at the expense of the greatest goods.

To illustrate how to practice that habit of heart let's turn to the Apostle James because he also exposes disordered desires and teaches us how to send our taproots deep.

So if you have your Bibles, turn with me to James 1:14-17.

James 1:14-17,

“But each one is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires. Then when desire conceives, it gives birth to sin. And when sin is full grown, it gives birth to death. Do not be led astray my dear brothers and sisters, all generous giving and every perfect gift is from above coming down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation or the slightest hint of change.”

Now at first glance, this passage does not directly deal with courage. However, James helps us to cultivate the soil out of which courage grows. Notice both Lewis and James reveal our disordered desires and reorient us towards the greatest good who is God. Lewis sends our roots to infinite joy and a holiday at the sea. And James draws our eyes up to the father of lights and the riches of his generosity.

Now if we want to be courageous, to refuse to be too easily pleased, to stand against the Balrog on the bridge — we ought to attend to these pictures of desire that James gives us. So let's meditate on them for a few minutes and let James shape our imaginations.

Notice first that when James wants to conjure an image of disordered desire, he reaches for the language of fishing. “Each one is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires.” Verse 14. The words lured and enticed are both hunting or fishing terms. The one means to be drawn away or allured, and the other originally meant to catch by bait, to hook. So the picture here is one of a fish who is attracted, allured by a lovely bait, and caught, and then attached to that hook, he is reeled in to sin and finally to death.

Three things strike me about this hooked fish image in relation to our talk about courage. The first is we are led by our desires. Remember, Lewis said, our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. And James also raises desire to a place of central importance. The image James uses here shows us that our desires lead us. They take us somewhere. They motivate our actions. Disordered desires lead down to death, but godly desires lead up to light.

Scripture repeatedly warns us that what we ultimately desire is of ultimate importance. Now, why is that? Well, it's because we live towards what we want. We move towards what we love. Desire is like gravity to the soul. It pulls us in a certain direction. It leads us to what we think will satisfy, what we deem as good. If God is that good for us — if he is the sun at the center of the solar system of our loves — all of our lesser desires will stay in orbit. So having desires is not the issue. And we've already seen that the engine of courage is in fact a superior desire. So then, if desire itself is not the problem, what does James identify as the issue?

This is the observation number two. Our issue is disordered desires. Think about the hooked fish image again. The fish that takes the bait demonstrates that his desires are out of whack. His vision has narrow down to one small good at the expense of all others. His good desire for the worm has been bent out of orbit. Like the person who laughs when they shouldn't or the one who clicks on what he ought not, the fish that takes the hook is far too easily pleased.

Imagine if Gandalf had fled from the Balrog to save his own skin. What if he had taken the bait of self-preservation, leaving the rest of the fellowship to fare as they may against the Flame of Undun? In that case, Gandalf would show himself to be a coward because his desire for comfort would trump his desire for greater goods. Fleeing would show that he had taken the hook, that his roots ran to shallow. This is actually the exact pattern that we see in the garden with Adam and Eve. They utterly failed to refuse to be far too easily pleased. God gave himself to them. He walked with them in the garden. He talked with them. They enjoyed the enormous bliss of Eden and yet they exchanged the greatest good for a bite of fruit sweetened by the lies of the serpent. They took the bait, hook, line and sinker.

If Adam's desires had run deep enough, if he had demonstrated Gandalf like courage in that moment, he would have slain the dragon to protect his bride. Instead, weak desires reduced him to a coward resulting in the death of himself and his bride and all of mankind to follow.

Which leads to my third observation about this passage in James: Disordered desires lead to death. When desire conceives, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full grown brings forth death. Once the hook is set, you become tethered to sin and inevitably reeled in to death.

Now Tolkien, in the character of Smeagol paints one of the best pictures of cowardice, one of the best pictures that cowardice and death result from weak, disordered desires. You remember, Smeagol became consumed with his desire for the ring. That narrow desire led him in an act of high handed cowardice to murder his best friend in cold blood. It led him down into the dark places of the earth to hide from the light. Tolkien says his eyes were always downward. Smeagol became curved in on himself, and in the end his desire for the ring became so disordered — He was so easily pleased with his precious — that he plummeted into the hellfire of Mount Doom with a smile on his face. Unlike Gandalf, Gollum was willing to trade all the good of Middle-Earth, all light, and even his best friend for a single golden ring. His roots were shallow indeed.

Friends, consider for a moment, what is your precious? What is that disordered desire that you're clinging to causing you to be a coward again and again?

Be assured that being far too easily pleased is a habit of heart that leads to cowardice and ultimately to death. But James offers us hope. This brings us back to our central question: how do we relentlessly refuse to be far too easily pleased? If a deep desire for a greater good is the root of courage, how do we rightly order our desires? How does our love for God and good reach deep enough for us to stand against the Balrog on the bridge?

James answers those questions in verses 16 and 17. First, James says,

“Do not be led astray, my dear brothers.”

Or to paraphrase with Paul's words, Be on your guard. Stand firm. Act like men. James here is calling for courage. Defend the bridge. Don't be lured away. But how, James? How do we do that?

“All generous giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights, with whom there is no variation or even the slightest hint of change.”

Notice, to combat shallow, disordered desires James draws our attention to the greatest good and then connects all other goods to the giver. He sends our roots deep. He puts the sun back at the center. He orients all our desires Godward. This is the key to cultivating ordered loves and thus the key to courage. We must constantly attend to God who is good, and see all other goods in his light.

Augustine made this point when he confessed to God,

“He loves you too little, who loves something which he does not love for your sake.”

To have a deeper desire for a greater good, we must know and love the greatest good and all lesser goods must be loved for his sake, as his fatherly gifts to us.

Like James, Tolkien saw light and fire as a perfect image of God. And so in his legendarium, the secret fire is Tolkien’s name for the Holy Spirit. So when Gandalf says, “I am a servant of the secret fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor,” he is in a sense reminding himself of the Father of Lights, and that glance put steel in Gandalf's spine.

We see a similar galvanizing of Sam's courage. You remember, Sam and Frodo were crawling across the plains of Gorgon Wraith in Mordor and at their lowest point, Sam, as if he could hear the words of James, sends his eyes heavenward. Tolkien writes,

“Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West, the night sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for awhile. The beauty of it smote his heart as he looked up out of the forsaken land and hope returned to him. For like a shaft clear and cold, the thought pierced him, that in the end the shadow was only a small and passing thing. There was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.”

Sam's vision rose higher than the danger around him, and the gravity of good and of high beauty helped him govern the fear, the passion of fear, and he found the grit to carry Frodo up Mount Doom.

When we dare to look up to the Father of Lights, the high beauty, all His good gifts will fall into their proper places and our souls will be shaped.

Our desires become ordered. Lesser goods fall in line with the greatest good. Our roots run to the right depths. We practice the habit of heart that enables us to be courageous. By giving us himself, God, our sun, empowers us to relentlessly refuse to be far too easily pleased. By His Spirit, our secret fire, He strengthens our hearts to obey the command he gave to Joshua — “Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened or dismayed.”

Now I began this talk with the example of Gandalf, but I want to conclude with two biblical examples of courage that illustrate everything that we've said so far.

First, a man who is not far too easily pleased. A man whose insatiable desire for the greatest good led him to dare terrible things and face down mighty foes. The man is Moses, a greater wizard than Gandalf. Hebrews 11 tells us,

“By faith, Moses, when he had grown up refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.”

In other words, he refused to be too easily pleased. And why?

“He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than all the treasures of Egypt. For he was looking to the reward.”

Moses had ordered loves. He looked towards the high beauty of Christ to come. And that strong desire steeled him to face down a Pharaoh, to defeat his magicians in a true wizard battle, and to endure all the scorn of Egypt. Moses is a perfect picture of Christian courage, which Rigney calls “a desire driven, glad-hearted treasuring of Jesus as the greatest good in the face of looming danger or death.”

Second, our Lord displayed this kind of courage. Unlike Adam, when Satan tempted Jesus to eat, Jesus refused the hook. When Satan offered him all the kingdoms on earth. The desires of Jesus were too strong to settle for the whole world. And Hebrews 12 tells us that when the virtues of our king came to the testing point, that he performed the greatest act of courage the world has ever known, because his desires ran deeper than death. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame.

Friends, that is true courage. And we are being formed in that image. So let us imitate Jesus, who endured the cross and defeated the dragon, because his desires were rooted in the joy set before him. Let us cultivate those same desires.

But let me warn you, the courage of Gandalf and Moses and Jesus is not made in a day or a month, or even a year. Courage to stand before Balrogs or face down Pharaohs, or to take up our crosses grows slowly out of mundane day to day decisions that refuse to settle for mud pies. Oaks of righteousness grow from countless humble, hobbit like choices. Choices not to click what you shouldn't. Choices not to laugh. Choices not to have that third drink, choices not to say peace when there is no peace. Choices not to hit the snooze button when you should get up, and a thousand other little choices.

By the power of the Spirit, the stands you take on those little bridges will enable you to stand when the Balrog comes. You will grow deep roots. As Jeremiah says,

“You will be like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream and does not fear when heat comes for its leaves remain green and is not anxious in the year of drought. For it does not cease to bear fruit.”

May the Lord make us courageous like that. Pray with me.

Father, we thank you that you have given us your spirit to cultivate our desires and to order them rightly. We thank you that you have given us the examples in fiction and in your word. We thank you, ultimately, that you have given us the example of your Son, in the ultimate act of courage that purchased our ability to also be courageous. We pray that you would make us men and women that can stand when things get hard. We pray that you would make us trees with deep roots that are forever fruitful. And I pray, Lord, that you would be magnified by this group of people as we go out into the world. We pray these things for the sake of your great name and for our delight in you. Amen.