Lane Pittman did it again. After going out shirtless and carrying an American flag to stand in the face of Hurricane Matthew in 2016, he crowdfunded a trip to South Carolina last week to do the same during Hurricane Florence. Such senseless bravado may attract attention, but it is not courage. Likewise for various weather reporters who risk their lives to stand on the edge of destruction as they speak to microphones and cameras.
Courage, in fact, feels like a problematic virtue these days. To many of us it carries with it an implication of willingness to engage either in foolish self-endangerment or in unjustified acts of violence against supposed enemies of our way of life. However, we still find ourselves praising the bravery of first-responders who risk themselves to rescue others from fire, flood or other hazards. Their courage, at least, seems beyond reproach.
Taking up the topic of the call to courage in the first chapter of Joshua, many of our reservations may be triggered. When God and then the people themselves tell the new leader of Israel to be “strong and courageous” in verses 6, 7, 9 and 18, it is in the context of preparation for a war of conquest. The caution to be sure to all that God commanded through Moses in verses 7 and 8, it becomes clear in the chapters that follow, means that all Israel’s enemies are to be utterly destroyed, wiped from the face of the earth, men, women and children and sometimes livestock.
That sort of physical, battle-ready courage seems a problematic quality in today’s world. Those who serve in the armed forces and receive training and encouragement in such courage often come home ill-equipped for “normal” peaceful society. So what are we to make of the call to courage for Joshua? How does it apply, if at all, to our own selves?
I would argue that we must first recognize that we live both historically and spiritually in a wholly different situation from that of Joshua and the ancient Israelites. We have absolutely no divine mandate for conquest and in the coming of Jesus Christ our understanding of the nature of God and our relationship has been hugely transformed.
Yet there is continuity. Our God revealed in Jesus is the same God who directed Joshua and Israel. And there is still a call to courage for our leaders and our own selves. The continuity in situation is that God’s people are still meant to live lives very differently from the peoples around them. They are to be utterly devoted to the one God and not divided in allegiance. That was at least one point of the Israelite conquest of Canaan, to remove the temptation to follow the gods of other nations, to split off some of one’s loyalty to God in service to other deities.
That sort of temptation to divided loyalty remains for us today. Along with our loyalty to God, we are asked for loyalty to country, to race, to political party, even to sports team or brand name. But as we read of Joshua’s courage, we must realize that we cannot genuinely have both. As Peter said in Acts 5:29, “we must obey God rather than human beings.” And that will often take courage, ask it did for Peter and the other apostles in Acts.
It takes courage to retain undivided loyalty to God because those around us too often confuse loyalty to God with those other lesser loyalties. They imagine that an apparent lack of patriotism is somehow a lack of faith in God. They suppose that only one political perspective is possible for Christians. They even imagine that one will shop certain merchants or services or cheer certain teams because they owned or managed by people of putative faith. It frequently takes courage to decline those secondary and derivative loyalties in favor of true commitment to God and His kingdom. May He make us strong and courageous for the times in which we live.