“We ought to obey God rather than men.”

(Acts 5:29)

Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts are great ones to wear badges. If you didn’t know this, just look around you this morning and see for yourselves. Some of these uniforms fairly blaze with decorations. But these badges are important. They are signs of progress in scouting, tokens of personal accomplishment.

But did you know that not any of these badges are worth much to a Scout — including even the Eagle badge — unless he wears also the Red Badge of Courage? You didn’t know that? And that goes not only for scouts who have as one of their laws: A Scout is brave — but it goes for the rest of us, too: without the Red Badge of Courage our other accomplishments and qualities of personality don’t amount to much.

This badge of courage is not pinned on your shirtfront. It’s not sewn on your sleeve. And if you have it, no one can snatch it away, nor are you likely to lose it. But if you haven’t earned it, no one can pin it on you. And though invisible, it’s plain for all to see.

Courage, of course, is of many kinds. There is the courage to face danger when the danger involves risking life, safety, and personal well being. This is the sort of heroism our soldiers in Korea are displaying now: like that American company whose advance last week was halted by a group of Chinese Communists dug in on a hill top. The enemy lobbed hand grenades down on the roadway that ran by the foot of the hill. The American’s forward march was effectively blocked. What to do? The American captain gave the command to fix bayonets, charge up the hill, attacking an unseen hidden enemy. And up they went and with cold steel routed out their foe. Courage to face danger without counting the cost or hurt to self — that’s one kind of bravery — Do we have it?

And then there is the courage to take defeat and yet not be defeated by it. John James Audubon spent two years in the forests of North America making drawings of birds. Then he nailed them up securely in a wooden box and went on a vacation. When he came back and pried open the lid, he found only gnawed bits of paper. A pair of rats had eaten their way into the box and ruined nearly a thousand sketches. It was a stunning blow for Audubon, but defeat did not down him. Soon he rallied his courage and started for the woods. “I’ll do it over again,” he said. “I can make better drawings than the rats spoiled.” It took him three long years, but his second pictures were better than the first. (Walter Dudley Cavert)

Are we brave enough to try again after our plans are spoiled? Do we have the grit to rise after we fall and keep on going, no matter how rough the road? Do we possess that kind of courage?

Then there’s a third kind of courage — the courage to overcome handicaps and not be whipped or embittered by them. James E. West, who was for many years the chief scout executive of the Boy Scouts, was brought up in an orphan’s home in Washington. For two years he was strapped in bed because of a disease in the bones of his legs. After that he hobbled around on crutches. He studied hard at the orphanage school and then was allowed to go to high school on condition that he get up early every morning and do the laundry work for the other children of the orphanage before leaving. Later he wanted to earn money for law school and applied for a position with the Victor Bicycle company. The manager looked at the crutches and said he needed someone who could ride a bicycle. That afternoon young West rented a bicycle. He tumbled off till he was black and blue, but finally he mastered it. He went back to the store and got the job. To refuse to be beaten by disease or poverty or any other handicap — that is one way to show courage.  (Walter Dudley Cavert)

Last week I heard the story of the skillful young chief-engineer for the Oldsmobile Company. He is club-footed. He grew up a poor boy in the coal fields of West Virginia. In games with the other children, he was no match for them. He would stumble and fall and they would run away from him, leaving the little fellow crying. But right then young Kupperman vowed that he would develop his mind. He would learn to use his hands skillfully because his feet were a handicap to him. Entering General Motors Fisher Body Contest he built the prize winning model car and won a 4-year scholarship to M.I.T. There he applied himself with such devotion that upon graduation he was offered a job with General Motors. Now he’s chief engineer for Olds.

Courage to overcome handicaps and not be whipped or embittered by them — that’s one kind of courage. The kind of courage to put up a stiff fight with yourself. Do we possess it? We need to, for we all have or will have our handicaps.

But the most admirable form of courage in all the world is the courage to do what you believe is right when others are doing wrong. This is the kind of courage that settles not only temporal affairs rightly, but determines our eternal destiny satisfactorily. The courage to stand alone, in the awful loneliness of conviction, with no companionship to cheer you on save only the still voice of conscience as it whispers, “Well done”, this is to qualify among the bravest of the brave.

That’s the kind of courage the early Apostles had. They were put in prison for their religious faith.  But the angel of the Lord came to release them and commanded them, “Go stand in the Temple and proclaim the words of this way of life.” Surely this was unwise advice. The Temple authorities had just locked them up for doing that very thing. But obediently the Apostles did as they were commanded. Again the Temple Guard seized them, brought them into the court room, and the Judge asked them angrily: “Did I not command you to stop teaching in this name of Jesus?” Hear the answer of these men; a handful before the organized authority of a whole nation: “We ought to obey God rather than men.” Courage to do what is right when the vast majority is lined up on the other side.

There’s old injunction in Exodus: “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.” But that takes courage — the highest form of courage — do we have it?

Everybody wants to be brave. Each one of us would like to wear the Red Badge of Courage, could we qualify in any one or all of the various departments of valor. But how — how is courage cultivated?  With what does it come?

Are some born cowards and others born heroes? Are youth’s dreams of courageous splendors already fulfilled or already damned by stern necessity even before they’re dreamed?

All that’s in us rises up in stout denial of such a thought. We firmly believe in the possibility of human development from degradation to glory through the grace of God and the disciplined efforts of persons. Our schools, our churches, our scout program, our athletic contests are all projected on such a faith. But how, how can courage be cultivated?

Well, one way to cultivate courage is by association with brave men and women. Courage is catching — like mumps or measles. There is no way to begin to estimate the power of personal influence as inspiration for courageous living. One man in the thick of battle when all about him turned to flee, held his ground. And someone seeing cried: “Look, there stands Jackson like a Stonewall.” And the wavering gray line stiffened and held. Others, drawing courage from association with a brave man turned defeat into victory.

Sir Robert Stopford was one of Nelson’s men. He was commander of one of the ships with which Nelson chased to the West Indies a fleet nearly double in number. And describing the experiences and hardships of that desperate adventure, Stopford wrote: “We are half-starved, and otherwise inconvenienced by being so long out of port. But our reward is — we are with Nelson.”

Trace in your gospels the cultivation of courage in the disciples by their association with the courageous Christ. What poor material he had to work with. There was Thomas, whom they all called the Doubter, yet when Jesus’ life was threatened in Judea, and Jesus was bent on going back into Judea because his friend Lazarus was there sick, and when the disciples’ warnings would not deter him, with a shrug of his shoulders Thomas said, “Let us go also, that we may die with him.” The valor of the courageous Christ was beginning to rub off even on doubting Thomas. He might not be able to swallow all this Carpenter taught and said, but he could not escape the contagion of the man’s courage.

Then there was blustering old Peter who boasted so loudly of his courage and yet ran away when danger struck in the darkness, and denied that he even knew his Lord. But Peter later displayed such personal valor in time of danger that people seeing him took knowledge of him that he had been with Jesus. Through association with the courageous Christ Peter’s courage had come, and even those who were not Christians recognized his particular brand of bravery.

What a thought for those of us who would be workers with youth to ponder — Forest Witcraft, meditating on this theme said these significant words:

I’m not a very important man, as importance is commonly rated. I do not have great wealth, control a big business, or occupy a position of great honor or authority.

Yet I may some day mold destiny. For it is within my power to become

The most important man in the world in the life of a boy.

A humble citizen like myself might have been the Scoutmaster of a

troop in which an unhappy and undersized Austrian lad by the name

of Adolph might have found a joyous boyhood, full of the ideals of

brotherhood, goodwill and kindness, and the world would have been different.

A humble citizen like myself might have been the organizer of a

scout troop in which a Russian boy called Joe might have learned the

lessons of democratic cooperation.

These men would never have known that they had averted world

tragedy, yet actually they would have been the most important men who ever lived.

All about me are boys. They are the makers of history, the builders of tomorrow.

If I can have some part in guiding them up the trail of Scouting, on the

high road of noble character and constructive citizenship, I may prove

to be the most important man in their lives, the most important man in my community.

A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was,

the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove. But the world may

be different because I was important in the life of a boy.

Yes, courage may be cultivated by association with brave, good people, for personal influence is powerful.

But courage is not only a matter of association, it also involves participation. The hero is not suddenly born in an emergency, but slowly developed by faithfully performing small acts of daily heroism. Putting self last in the baseball game or the basketball game, Saturday after Saturday, may seem mighty unimportant; and giving the little fellow a chance when the bully wanted to run him off might appear inconsequential — but the daily accumulation of such small acts of personal valor through the years grows into a sizeable sum of operating spiritual capital, compounded at an amazingly high rate of interest by the Almighty. And when the big opportunity comes for courage or cowardice on a grand scale, the issue has already been decided by the habitual daily round. (Illus. Lord Jim.)

But the best method for cultivating courage is to begin to live by the divine imperatives. The arrested Apostles said: “We ought, we must, obey God rather than men.”

Whom do you obey? Who gives the orders that control your life? The person who just follows the crowd is taking orders from the crowd. The person who follows his or her appetites — who does what he or she feels like doing — who goes after and gets what he or she desires is taking orders from ones own selfish desires. But folks, who like the Apostles, in all things say, “We must obey God rather than men,” are living by the divine imperatives. There’s an uncommon glory about such lives. “They are lifted out of little merry-go-rounds, out of bondage to fear and desire, out of the paralysis of indecision.” (H. Luccock) And about such lives there is always generated a halo of courage that is cultivated as a by-product of such a God-committed life.

See Jesus, going through the agony of Gethsemane, carrying a cross up Calvary. What magnificent courage? But it comes not of Jesus saying, “I must be brave, I must be brave.” Rather, his is a courage that comes automatically of saying, “Father, not my will but thine be done.” Yes, here is an unselfconscious bravery that carries lightly all its decorations and wears the bright red badge of courage without swagger or ostentation.

“Are ye able,” said the Master,

“To be crucified with me?”

“Yea,” the sturdy dreamers answered,

“To the death we follow thee.”

 

“Are ye able,” said the Master

Whispers down eternity;

And heroic spirits answer

Now, as then in Galilee.

 

“Lord, we are able.”