How to Have Courage Instead of Recklessness
Or: how to avoid being among the best who lack all conviction
The Internet has made it easier than ever to make bold statements about faith, politics, or sports and then to retreat into anonymity. Yet it is also a surveillance space where every word will be accounted for and you may be tracked down for some opinion you espoused ten years ago, get reported to your employer, and then fired. At the same time, there seems to be a heightened awareness that Something Important is Happening. Regardless of your political leanings, the time is portentous. Which means that people of good will feel they have a duty to speak up and take part in collective action to bring about positive change. I suppose this has been true for a while now. Maybe every generation feels this way: the problem of permanent crisis. Whether it is a permanent crisis or not, this moment presents a challenge for us: how to live courageously. Because our technology will equip us to live recklessly and to make bold statements, but not to live courageously for what is actually good.
As I write about in To Live Well, the key to courage is suffering danger for the good. Recklessness is when you suffer danger for its own sake. So courage is when you risk something (a job, social status, prestige, clout, opportunities, and so on) for the sake of something genuinely good. The ultimate good we should be aiming at is God’s glory. But a particular aspect of God’s glory might be justice, love, mercy, goodness, beauty, or truth. All those bring God glory in their proper context. When you are seeking your own glory, your own social media clout or recognition or attention, then you are not being courageous. You are being self-serving and petty. You are merely adding to the noise and heat of the contemporary world. Many times when people believe they are acting courageously, especially online, they are merely serving their own good.
One good reason why it is hard for us to pursue God’s glory when acting courageously on the Internet is that the tools of the Internet are designed for our glory. They are designed to draw attention to us, to build us followers, to get likes, subscribers, friends, retweets, shares, and so on. This is a temptation for all of us, present company not excluded. In fact, this is such a strong temptation, that people build their entire identities around being a certain kind of performatively-courageous online for their followers. The algorithm feeds it. I’ve certainly felt this temptation in the past, encouraged by the algorithm. It’s hard to resist.
Instead, true courage asks us to consider what is good, God’s glory, and suffer for it. We can ask ourselves, in our spaces of influence, how can we glorify God by speaking for justice, truth, and righteousness even at some risk to ourselves?
But at what point is “speaking courageously” just reckless? The key, as I have said, is when it is done for its own sake. And this happens more than it ought to. Instead of for the sake of the good, someone says something controversial or bold or shocking or “courageous” for the sake of being “courageous.” They are being controversial for the sake of attention. They may know this about themselves or they may not. It depends upon how self-aware they are. This is the difference between a police officer who walks into a dangerous situation to defuse it courageously and someone who dives off of cliffs. The cliff diver is a thrill-seeker. He is living recklessly, running into danger for the fun of it. You may say he’s fearless, but you can’t say he’s courageous. Fearlessness is not a virtue. Courage is. In fact, fear is healthy. It’s a reminder of the proper risks involved in a courageous action. It’s a counting of the costs. You just don’t want fear to prevent you from acting courageously. Be afraid and do the right thing anyway.
I think a similar recklessness occurs when we feel pressured into entering every single discourse. The Internet has this terrible moral weight to it, where if you don’t publicly make a statement on every current and trending topic you feel you are falling behind, being judged, failing your duty, or acting immorally. And sometimes you will be judged. I saw a number of people criticizing John Piper for not immediately commenting on Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The virtue of prudence, also talked about in To Live Well, is important here. We need to prudentially decide which topics are valuable for us to speak about in our sphere of influence. Some topics are outside our expertise. And it’s okay to let those topics go!
And we need to balance that “need to speak” with other needs, like the need to care for those around us, the need to care for ourselves, the need to do our jobs well, the need to consider the reputations of our employers, the need to serve our churches and communities, the need to get the shopping done, and so on. In other words, true courage does not demand that you speak out on every issue. It certainly does not demand that you speak out online on every issue.
You might ask yourself: is it profitable, is it helpful, is it loving, is it good if I add my voice to this issue? Or am I just adding more noise, more heat? Am I retweeting or sharing this because I want to be seen sharing this, or because it will glorify God? Am I helping someone come to see some error in their thinking by saying or doing this, or am I just doing this to stand out? “Virtue signaling” is a non-partisan action wherein we want people to see us as virtuous by signalling our position on an issue. It doesn’t actually mean we are virtuous, in this case, courageous. It just means that we want people to think we are. It is another way of bringing glory to ourselves rather than God.
Especially if you are young, I recommend being prudent about what you post online about controversial issues. Which doesn’t mean not posting anything. It just means that you take some time to weigh the matter carefully, consider how it will affect future job prospects, assume it will be on the Internet forever, and then decide whether to post it. Allow prudence to temper courage.
Everyone wants to be courageous. But most often courage, real courage, manifests in the choices we make to boldly reach out to those around us and love them. Yes, there is a place for speaking through digital technology and sharing messages and making pronouncements. But the keyboard and the smartphone are easy tools for pseudo-courage, for recklessness and ego-building. I’m convicted that more work needs to be done in community, in person. Taking risks where you meet someone face-to-face. There would be a whole lot less heat and a whole lot more light, I think.
If you want more on courage and prudence as virtues, please preorder my next book, To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times.
Looking forward to your new book.
Another very much needed article we all should heed.