Courage is not the absence of fear. It is doing the right thing while you are afraid. The Bible is full of commands not to fear, precisely because following God so often takes us into frightening places.
These six stories about courage, retold in our own words, include an ancient bishop facing the fire, a Quaker shopkeeper on the Underground Railroad, church leaders who defied the Nazis in Bulgaria, an archbishop murdered at the altar and two lessons from the animal world about what fear does to us.
Stories in this collection:
- "Eighty-Six Years I Have Served Him": The Courage of Polycarp
- Levi Coffin and the Underground Railroad
- Bulgaria's Bishops and the Trains That Never Left
- Óscar Romero: The Archbishop Who Would Not Stay Silent
- The Fairy Penguins of Phillip Island
- The Tiger's Roar: How Fear Freezes Us
"Eighty-Six Years I Have Served Him": The Courage of Polycarp
Around the year 155, an elderly man was brought before a Roman official in Smyrna, in what is now western Turkey, and ordered to renounce his atheism. By our standards he was no atheist at all. He was Polycarp, the Christian bishop of Smyrna and one of the last living links to the apostles; tradition says he had known the apostle John. But to the Romans he was an atheist, because he refused to worship the emperor and the gods of Rome.
Polycarp knew that refusing would mean a painful death, either in the arena with wild animals or by fire. The official urged him again and again to save himself. Swear by the emperor, he said, and curse Christ, and I will release you.
Polycarp's reply has echoed through the centuries. Eighty-six years I have served him, he said, and he has done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King who saved me?
The official threatened him with wild beasts, then with fire. Polycarp answered that the fire he was threatened with burned only for a short time, but that the official knew nothing of the fire of God's coming judgement. Do what you wish, he said.
Polycarp was not spared. According to the earliest account of his death, a pyre was built and he was burned alive, praying and giving thanks to God. But his words have been remembered ever since by Christians facing pressure to deny their faith.
Takeaway: Courage often grows out of long faithfulness. Polycarp could face death calmly because he had walked with Christ for a lifetime and found him trustworthy.
Source: The Martyrdom of Polycarp, trans. J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers.
Levi Coffin and the Underground Railroad
Levi Coffin is one of the unsung heroes of the American movement against slavery. In 1826 he moved to Newport (now Fountain City), Indiana, and opened a store.
His home soon became one of the busiest stations on the Underground Railroad, the secret network of routes and safe houses that helped enslaved people escape from the South to freedom in the northern states and Canada. People like Coffin took enormous personal risks to shelter and guide those fleeing slavery.
Coffin and his wife, Catharine, could hide many refugees in their house at once, and so many routes met there that the house was later nicknamed the "Grand Central Station" of the Underground Railroad. Over the years they are said to have helped more than a thousand people on their way to freedom.
Because of his work, Coffin received frequent death threats and warnings that his store and home would be burned down. Yet he refused to stop. Like many of the white Americans who worked on the Underground Railroad, he was driven by his Christian convictions. He was a Quaker, and he explained that when the Bible tells us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, it says nothing about colour.
Levi Coffin is one example of a person who decided to do what he could about an injustice in front of him. His courage, and that of his wife and many others, helped countless men, women and children find their freedom.
Takeaway: Faith that obeys Jesus' command to love our neighbour will sometimes put us at odds with unjust laws and popular opinion. Courage is choosing obedience to God over safety.
Source: Levi Coffin, Reminiscences of Levi Coffin (1876); Reader's Digest, July 2001.
Bulgaria's Bishops and the Trains That Never Left
It has often been said that all that evil needs to succeed is for good people to stay silent. The reverse is also true: when good people speak up, evil can be stopped. That truth was shown dramatically in Bulgaria during the Second World War.
In 1941 Bulgaria allied itself with Nazi Germany. In return, it was allowed to occupy territories in neighbouring Thrace and Macedonia. In 1943, Bulgarian officials agreed with the Nazis to deport the Jews from those territories, and from Bulgaria itself, to the death camps. The Jews of the occupied lands were tragically deported, and very few survived. But within Bulgaria proper, the plan met resistance.
When Dimitar Peshev, the deputy speaker of the parliament, learned in March 1943 that the deportations were about to begin, he gathered other members of parliament and confronted the minister of the interior, demanding that the order be cancelled. Under pressure, the minister agreed.
But not every town received word in time. In Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second city, Jewish families were rounded up before dawn and held in a school yard, waiting to be put on trains. The local head of the Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Kiril, acted at once. He sent a telegram of protest to the king and is reported to have said he would lie down on the railway tracks in front of any train carrying Jews. Then he went to the school. When police barred his way, he declared that he would follow his conscience as a minister of Christ, climbed over the fence and told the frightened families that wherever they went, he would go too.
Kiril's stand was remarkable for its risk. Bulgaria was allied with the most powerful military regime in Europe, and the deportations had been agreed at the highest levels. Defying them openly could have cost him his position, his freedom or even his life. Yet he chose to stand physically with the people the state had decided to send away, sharing their danger rather than watching from a safe distance.
Peshev's protest was equally costly in its own way. He was a member of the governing majority, not an opposition figure. In the days that followed, he drafted a letter of protest to the prime minister and persuaded dozens of fellow members of parliament to sign it, arguing that deporting Bulgaria's Jews would bring lasting shame on the nation.
Soon afterwards the order to halt the deportation reached Plovdiv, and the families were allowed to return home. Peshev, however, paid a price for his stand: he was removed from his post as deputy speaker and censured by the parliament.
The pressure did not stop. Later in 1943 the government ordered Jews to be expelled from the capital, Sofia, into the countryside, a move many feared was a step towards deportation. Metropolitan Stefan of Sofia, one of the most senior leaders of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, spoke out repeatedly. The church's Holy Synod condemned the anti-Jewish measures, and Stefan publicly challenged the government, urging it to resist Nazi pressure. He offered protection to Jews, sheltered some and opposed attempts to restrict the baptism of Jews who sought it.
Accounts of the period describe Stefan using public occasions, including services attended by government leaders, to condemn the persecution of the Jews, to the fury of the prime minister. Other public figures, writers, lawyers and ordinary citizens also protested.
In the end, the government backed away from deporting the Jews of Bulgaria proper. Some 48,000 Bulgarian Jews survived the war. Historians still debate how much credit belongs to the king, to politicians such as Peshev, to the church and to public opinion, and the fate of the Jews deported from the occupied territories remains a tragic part of the story. But it is clear that the courage of people who refused to stay silent helped save tens of thousands of lives.
Takeaway: Evil depends on good people staying silent. When people of conscience speak together, even powerful regimes can be forced to back down. See the full history of the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews.
Source: Christianity Today, 4 October 1999; historical accounts of the rescue of Bulgarian Jews.
Óscar Romero: The Archbishop Who Would Not Stay Silent
On 23 February 1977, Óscar Romero was installed as the Catholic Archbishop of San Salvador. His appointment dismayed many reform-minded priests and pleased El Salvador's governing elite. Romero was known as a quiet, bookish conservative, and both sides assumed he would remain silent about the human rights abuses taking place across the country.
He soon proved them wrong. Years of ministry among the campesinos, the poor rural farmers who made up much of his flock, had shaped him. He had seen how power and wealth were concentrated in the hands of a small elite, while the poor majority suffered hunger, children died because their parents could not afford medicine, and those who protested faced beatings, torture and murder.
Less than a month after his installation, Romero's friend, the Jesuit priest Rutilio Grande, was murdered. Grande had been helping campesinos organise themselves, and he was seen as a threat to the established order. Romero demanded that the government investigate the killing, but his demands were met with silence.
From then on, Romero's opposition to injustice became increasingly outspoken. He used his sermons, broadcast across the country by radio, as well as public statements and letters, to denounce the exploitation of the poor and the violence against those who stood up for them. He named victims and reported abuses that the government wanted hidden. He called for reform of the political and economic structures that kept injustice in place. He refused to appear at government events that might seem to endorse the regime.
Romero knew the danger he was in. He received death threats, and priests and catechists in his diocese were being killed. In one of his final sermons, he appealed directly to soldiers and police, reminding them that no order to kill could override God's command not to kill, and begging them in God's name to stop the repression.
On 24 March 1980, while celebrating Mass in the chapel of a hospital in San Salvador, Romero was shot dead by a gunman. Moments before, he had spoken of how every effort to improve society, especially a society so full of injustice and sin, is an effort that God blesses, wants and demands of us.
His murder shocked the world. In 2018 Pope Francis declared him a saint.
Takeaway: Courage sometimes means losing the approval of the powerful in order to stand with the powerless. Romero knew the risk and spoke anyway.
Source: Historical accounts of the life and death of Óscar Romero.
The Fairy Penguins of Phillip Island
Phillip Island, in Victoria, Australia, hosts one of the world's great wildlife experiences. Along its shores are the burrows of thousands of little penguins, often called fairy penguins. They are the smallest penguins in the world, standing only about thirty centimetres tall.
Each morning the adult penguins head out to sea to catch fish. At dusk they return to bring food to their chicks, and crowds gather to watch them come home. It is both funny and exhilarating. The penguins surf in on the waves and then gather in little groups at the water's edge. Their burrows lie some distance away, with an open stretch of sandy beach in between.
Suddenly a group of penguins sets off, waddling as fast as their little legs will carry them. But after ten or twenty metres they abruptly turn round and waddle back to the water. They wait, then try again. One group makes it across, while another performs the same strange ritual of turning back. And so it goes on as the light fades, until at last all the penguins have crossed the beach and reached their chicks.
Why the strange stop-start retreat? The answer is simple. In the water the penguins are fast swimmers and able to dive deep, and they are relatively safe from many predators. In their burrows they are safe underground. But on the open beach they are exposed and vulnerable. They can only waddle slowly, and they are easy prey for birds of prey, foxes, dogs and cats. So as they cross the beach, the moment they glimpse a shadow or a movement out of the corner of their eye, they turn and race back to the safety of the water.
We are often a lot like those penguins. Faced with a challenge, we stand at the water's edge. We know where we need to go and that we must cross the beach to get there, but it feels terrifying. Stepping out means leaving our safety zone and entering no-man's land, where things are uncertain and we feel vulnerable.
Sometimes we turn back again and again. We start the new venture, have the hard conversation or take the step of faith, and then something spooks us and we rush back to where we feel safe.
Yet to reach home, we have to leave the water and strike out across the beach. Courage does not mean we never feel afraid. It means we keep going, one step at a time, even when we do.
Takeaway: We are often like those penguins, knowing where we need to go but retreating every time we feel exposed. Courage means leaving the safe water and crossing the beach anyway, trusting God to go with us (Joshua 1:9).
Source: Scott Higgins.
The Tiger's Roar: How Fear Freezes Us
The tiger is one of the most majestic creatures on earth, and for a long time it puzzled researchers. When a tiger hunts, it seems to have a remarkable ability to make its prey freeze in fear.
As the tiger charges, it lets out a spine-chilling roar. You might expect that to make its prey run for its life. Instead, the animal often freezes on the spot, and soon becomes the tiger's dinner.
Around the year 2000, researchers at the Fauna Communications Research Institute in North Carolina reported a possible explanation. When they recorded tigers, they found that a tiger's roar contains not only the sounds we can hear, but also very low-frequency sound, below the range of human hearing, which can be felt more than heard.
The researchers suggested that as a tiger bursts out of the undergrowth, the flash of its colours, the terrifying sound of its roar and the impact of those deep, felt vibrations combine into an overwhelming assault on the senses. The result may be a moment of paralysis. Even though there might be time to escape, the prey is tricked into standing still just long enough for the tiger to pounce.
Our fears often work in a similar way. They can paralyse us, even when the real danger is not yet upon us. Part of facing life's challenges with courage is recognising how our fear of what might happen can stop us from doing what we need to do now.
Scripture's frequent command not to fear is not a denial that danger is real. It is an invitation to remember who is with us. "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid" (Joshua 1:9).
Takeaway: Fear often works the same way. It roars at us about what might happen and freezes us in place, even when we still have time to act. Naming our fears and trusting God helps break that paralysis (2 Timothy 1:7).
Source: Reported research by the Fauna Communications Research Institute, North Carolina.
Final thoughts
A bishop at the stake, a shopkeeper on the Underground Railroad, church leaders who stood in front of the trains, an archbishop at the altar, penguins on a beach and the roar of a tiger. Courage takes many forms, but it always begins with deciding that something matters more than our fear.
For further reading, Sopranu reviews Schindler's List and 12 Angry Men, two portraits of people who refused to stay silent.
Which of these stories about courage will you carry into your week?
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These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.