{"id":3927,"date":"2012-08-06T11:11:14","date_gmt":"2012-08-06T15:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=3927"},"modified":"2012-08-06T11:11:14","modified_gmt":"2012-08-06T15:11:14","slug":"on-value-neutral-bravery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/08\/on-value-neutral-bravery.html","title":{"rendered":"On Value-Neutral Bravery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Back before I went off to awesome, wacky summer camp<\/a>\u00a0(a few more things to come on that, by the way), I was writing a series of posts on\u00a0martyrdom, pacifism, drone strikes and other problems of offering resistance<\/a>. \u00a0 And it turns out, looking over some of the posts I missed, I wasn\u2019t the only Patheos blogger wondering\u00a0whether you can praise courage regardless of what exactly the person you\u2019re admiring is steeling herself to do<\/em>. I was talking about drone strikes and David French is talking about homosexuality<\/a>. \u00a0He decides:<\/p>\n

C.S. Lewis<\/a> said that courage was not just one of the virtues, \u201cbut the form of every virtue at its testing point.\u201d In other words, courage depends on and enables virtue. By that measure, I can\u2019t call coming out (even though it is difficult for many) \u201ccourageous\u201d because it is in almost every case a declaration of sinfulness and willful sinful activity. Not everything that\u2019s difficult or challenging to do is \u201ccourageous\u201d \u2014 especially when that difficult or challenging thing also happens to contradict God\u2019s commands. If a husband breaks his marriage vows, alienates his friends, and runs off with the secretary, do we call that \u201ccourageous?\u201d Why not? It\u2019s hard to do, but he\u2019s following his heart (like the culture tells us we must), and his action will cause an extreme counter-reaction from those closest to him. We might call that \u201caudacious,\u201d but not \u201ccourageous.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be clear, sin in one area of our lives of course does not preclude courage or bravery in other areas. Many gay men and women have courageously served our country, giving their lives for our freedom. Resisting a bully can require courage \u2014 regardless of the reason for the bullying. We\u2019re all sinful, but we\u2019re all \u2014 by God\u2019s grace \u2014 capable of courage. But it doesn\u2019t take \u201ccourage\u201d to engage in extramarital sex.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m pretty confident that at least part of the comment thread is going to be a fight about the moral character of homosexual relationships, but that\u2019s not where my disagreement with French is rooted. \u00a0Regardless of whether you think that queer desires are disordered, it\u2019s bizarre to deny they\u2019re rooted in love.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of loves we can\u2019t indulge (the married man\u2019s love for the secretary, no matter how moving, could fall in this category), but the act of recognizing and cherishing the other person\u2019s virtues is a good one, even if romantic love is not always the right way to express it. \u00a0It\u2019s hard to imagine in any framework that the introduction of\u00a0eros<\/em>\u00a0is enough to taint and erase virtues of charity that you would laud if the relationship were entirely platonic.<\/p>\n

Let me bring the discussion back to the battlefield and courage.<\/p>\n

I can see virtues in a suicide bomber or a terrorist. There\u2019s bravery, obviously, but there\u2019s also a love of clan or county or just family. I think that, ideally, that love needs to be nourished and expanded until it\u2019s grown strong enough to include the enemy. But there\u2019s a good germ there. The passions may be wrongly directed, but you\u2019ve got a lot more to work with than if the fighter were apathetic or nihilistic.<\/p>\n

You can have a discussion about whether certain ways of fighting are beyond the pale or whether certain kinds of love are ultimately harmful, but any desire to sacrifice for another person seems like a first step up Diotima\u2019s ladder in Plato\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>Symposium<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0You may be trying to offer the wrong kind of sacrifice, and you\u2019ll need to catch on to that, but the reverence is not misplaced. \u00a0If it\u2019s blinding you to the needs of people besides the beloved (person or family or country), you need to expand the scope of your love, not just tone down your infatuation.<\/p>\n

But French won\u2019t accord queer people the recognition that I\u2019d gladly afford to people who want my death. He is sundering them entirely from the virtues. \u00a0It seems like to me that the only fault that can cut you off that completely is indifference.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back before I went off to awesome, wacky summer camp\u00a0(a few more things to come on that, by the way), I was writing a series of posts on\u00a0martyrdom, pacifism, drone strikes and other problems of offering resistance. \u00a0 And it turns out, looking over some of the posts I missed, I wasn\u2019t the only Patheos […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1],"tags":[86,11],"class_list":["post-3927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-morality-in-practice","category-uncategorized","tag-inculcating-morality","tag-lgbt"],"yoast_head":"\nOn Value-Neutral Bravery<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Back before I went off to awesome, wacky summer camp\u00a0(a few more things to come on that, by the way), I was writing a series of posts on\u00a0martyrdom,\" \/>\n<meta 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