Is Courage The Most Important Of All Virtues?

Is courage only for the few? Necessary for the soldiers, those called to greatness, or the most extraordinary leaders?  

C.S. Lewis writes in The Screwtape Letters:  

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.”  

In short, courage is the truest test of every virtue and of every person. 

If we are only kind until it becomes risky, can we lay any claim to kindness? If we extol justice until justice costs us, are we just at all? If we are only truthful when it is convenient, does our honesty mean anything?  

Courage is the expression of our self-proclaimed virtues at the extremes. The willingness to be kind when it could cost us. To be truthful when it’s inconvenient. To love when it’s dangerous. 

As Shakespeare said,  

“Love is not love  

Which alters when it alteration finds, 

Or bends with the remover to remove. 

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark 

That looks on tempests and is never shaken.” 

But as much as we laud courage with our words, courage often only looks good in retrospect, after the victory has been won. When history seems inevitable. Today, Martin Luther King Jr. is nearly universally praised. At the time, he was criticized by his fellow religious leaders, imprisoned and, ultimately, assassinated.  

Courage does not guarantee success. It’s the willingness to carry on when there is no guarantee of success, when things may look hopeless. And courage is certainly no guarantee of popularity. In response to your courage, you may be called brash. Naïve. Overly idealistic. Overly cynical. Annoying. And, truth be told, the courageous are annoying. They are like flies buzzing in our ears, spoiling our comfort with their calls to greater things when all we want is peace and quiet.  

Courage may lead to much worse than being considered a fly in the soup. Your courage may result in failure, unpopularity, loss of income, loss of freedom or even loss of life. Whether or not courage is the most important of all virtues, it can certainly be the costliest.    

Courage without the other virtues, on the other hand, abounds. It’s the pursuit of self-glory. The hubris and emptiness of bravado. Great acts for our own sake rather than for the sake of others.  

We aren’t called to great acts for own sake, to amplify our own glory. True courage is self-sacrifice. It’s choosing to give your own safety and comfort away in pursuit of good. In this way, it’s not unlike the ultimate divine act—the sacrifice of self for justice and love. 

Where are you being called to be courageous enough to do the uncomfortable in service to others? To risk in order to amplify goodness in this world?  

Courage is not only for the few or the great among us. Courage is the test of us all.   

“We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.” Madeleine L’Engle