thought exercise on Moral Courage

The kings Of history are rewarded with many impressive descriptors: majestic, exalted, glorious, sovereign. Men and women bow before such heights of nobility; even the eyes of wealth and status fall t...

It takes a great deal of freedom and love to be therapeutic with a group. Many years ago when Emil Brunner, the great Swiss theologian, was lecturing in this country, it was reported that when he prea...

In the second century before Christ the great rival to Roman power in the Mediterranean world was Carthage, the Phoenician city-state located on the north African coast. It had been founded in 822 B.C...

The things we say yes to and the things we say no to determine the terrain of our future. My convoluted journey is posted with invitations, and my RSVPs account for the twists and turns. Sometimes, ha...

In this short excerpt written by the Christian Ethicist Stanley Hauerwas to his godson, he pontificates on the topic of courage: Usually courage is identified with dramatic and heroic acts. Though I...

As Ellen DeGeneres put it in a 2009 commencement address, “My advice to you is to be true to yourself and everything will be fine.” Celebrity chef Mario Batali advised graduates to follow “your own tr...

Speaking on aging, the Catholic nun Joan Chittister has this to say: One thing this period is not about is diminishment, though physical diminishment is surely a natural part of it. It is, instead, ...

* This story is debated among Galileo scholars, though most would agree that the story conveys Galileo’s unique approach to learning. Galileo Galilei was a man who dared to look beyond what othe...

Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to li...

Two thousand years ago, Christians were often hunted down and killed. Amid this darkness, the church began a radical practice. When a brother or sister was martyred for faith in Jesus, the Christian c...

The success of every culture hinges not on big points of morality—there will always be issues like abortion or school prayer over which people differ—but on smaller values, like being considerate of o...

The unjust steward who, hearing he is going to be fired, doctors his master’s accounts to secure another job, is commended precisely because he acted. The point does not concern morality but apathy. H...

Many, many great things have begun with a single act of courage, throughout history and today. A person steps out and makes one courageous decision and that one domino starts many other dominoes falli...

In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson provides a wonderful analogy of what happens when we cultivate the virtues in our lives: W...

Christian civility does not commit us to a relativistic perspective. Being civil doesn’t mean that we cannot criticize what goes on around us.  …Civility is a different matter, though. I can treat ...

Compassion is expressed in gentleness. When I think of persons I know who model for me the depths of spiritual life, I am struck by their gentleness. Their eyes communicate the residue of solitary bat...

One of the real problems in modern life is that people who are good at being civil lack strong convictions and people who have strong convictions lack civility.

A truly remarkable example of sacrificial courage took place in Folsom, New Mexico, in 1908. When a flood was racing toward the valley, a resident from the hills warned a local woman, S. J. Brooks, th...

So how can we form deep Christian convictions without dividing the church? Let’s take a deeper look at convictions themselves. Convictions are like light: they come in many colors and form across a sp...

In Four Quartets , T. S. Eliot writes that “any action is a step to the block.” He means that our actions always draw us closer to death, and in that sense every action we take is a wager of our ...

When in conflict we should demonstrate that our public witness is more important than winning a political battle. This means that if our side has to do something unloving or corrupt to win, then it’s ...

Christian morality has fallen on hard times these days. No one seems to believe in it, least of all Christians. Even the word “morality” is dropping out of our vocabulary—and I do mean the vocabulary ...

The hymnwriter and theologian F. W. Faber writes with beautiful prose the challenges that each one of us faces when it comes to living a life faithfully according to the truth that is within us: M...

I remember a young man coming to see me when he had just left school and begun work in London. He had given up going to church, he said, because he could not say the creed without feeling that he was ...

There are real and very important differences between what we now call values and the virtues as they had traditionally been understood. Let me put it this way. A value is like a smoke ring. Its shape...

When we observe evil, sinful behavior from a distance, the inclination is simply to see people as acting with malicious intent. We assume they are “bad people.” But often the motivations that lead to ...

Carl Jung, one of the early pioneers of modern psychology, wrote this from his years of experience as a therapist: The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of ...

In the Middle East both the main protagonists embrace religions where forgiveness has never been seen as a duty, let alone as a virtue, but rather as a kind of moral weakness—and by “moral weakness” I...

What is our responsibility to our neighbor? This is a question many have asked, including the Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. Meditating on the topic he observed, “To patiently endure wrongs done ...

Dear Everybody, We have a serious problem: All of us think we’re good people. But Jesus says we’re not. Sincerely, Brant P. Hansen …PS. IF YOU THINK I’M WRONG—about how we think we’re good people...