Moral Courage

Two little words, “moral courage,” and so hugely difficult. There isn’t a day that goes by after reading or listening to the world news I don’t marvel at the depth of some people’s moral courage. On the flip side, there isn’t a day that goes by I don’t feel sad for the lack of moral courage in other situations.

Moral courage doesn’t drop on us during an emergency situation or during an important decision like a package dropped into our arms from the sky. There has to be a fertile and nourished place prior to the need. If our life is a hallow shell of an imitation of faith or only used at church or as so much window dressing, it will not be there when real moral courage is needed.

Read history in the Bible, in history books, during military operations, in the news and you find the people who displayed moral courage are the same people with a life dedicated to building their moral character.

God forbid you should need extreme moral courage in an emergency situation. But history, even recent history, shows over and over we can never wait until we need moral courage to begin building that reserve. Emergency situations, by the very nature, are unexpected. They are the horror that lands in our lap on a peaceful Tuesday morning. Emergencies are the call in the night, the wrong place at the wrong time incident, and the failure of human kind.

Moral courage is needed in emergency situations and needed in our day to day decisions that affect the lives of our families, friends, employees, and the total stranger. It takes a measure of moral courage to follow company procedures for everyone, even the good employee. It takes moral courage to turn off the TV when the shows or commercials provide temptation. It takes moral courage to decline to participate in events that compromise your relationship with Christ. It takes moral courage to step forward to do what is right when the reality is you might not survive.

Let me share an example of lack of moral courage. There was an employee who used alcohol to the extent it was affecting her work. She didn’t obviously perform her work duties impaired. She did fail her random alcohol testing one day. She did come to work with hangovers and extremely tired. She did adapt an attitude that “partying” was cool. She was reported to her supervisor about talking with a city government employee during the work day “reeking of alcohol.” She was warned, she was disciplined, and she refused to change her behavior. She was eventually discharged from the company.

Let me share an example of moral courage: The company’s precise rules on no tolerance for working alcohol impaired. The government official’s reporting the incident to her supervisor. The supervisor documenting, disciplining, coaching and finally administering ramifications for continued poor work behavior.

In the first example, the employee did not have a storage of moral courage. In the second example, there were many people who displayed moral courage. For the second example, these things happened as a result of having stored many years of moral courage. The follow-through on this employee’s discipline was a series of tough decisions. They were made because people responsible for the decisions had the moral courage built on their own personal character. They were not decisions reached on the fly, in a vacuum, nor without Godly principals. These souls had prepared to make tough decisions.

An example for lack of preparation is going by boat to the middle of a lake without the oars, or a life preserver or being able to swim. When the boat starts to leak, it’s too late to prepare for the emergency.

Prepare today by equipping yourself for the day when you need a full store of moral courage. I pray you will never need it but reality and history suggests you will. Whether it is the hero on the battlefield, the parent at home, or the supervisor in the workplace, store up your emergency supply of moral courage starting today.

Isaiah 40:3 “The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”