Counter-Cultural Courage
By: Jason Park
Tags: Culture, Reading, Books, Christianity, Religion And Spirituality

Counter-Cultural Courage

A review of Russell Moore’s raw, powerful new book, *The Courage to Stand*

Think of a time you took a risk to stand for something important. What did you stand for? What was the result?

When I think of standing for God against a culture that runs from His love and authority (whether that culture is among His people or in the broader world), my mind has always gone to prophets. Elijah’s stand for God against the prophets of Baal is a particularly vivid narrative that comes to mind. And if you were to ask me who I think of as a modern prophet, my mind would immediately go to Russell Moore. It is fitting, then, that Russell Moore’s new book, The Courage to Stand, speaks on how to stand on God’s Word and His promises, even in fear, and he uses Elijah as the engine of the narrative. I cannot think of a more perfect combination of message, messenger, audience, and exemplar for the church for this crazy year in which we are all currently living.

When talking about “courage” or “standing for truth”, our culture often dictates what that means without us even realizing it. Our modern notion of those terms has taken a masculine turn that equates worldly strength or power with the ability to “stand”. Dr. Moore writes to disabuse us of that unhelpful notion. His primary message is clear in an early passage:

What it means to “stand” for Christ is not, it turns out, to evacuate our internal lives of all fear, or to humiliate our enemies with incontrovertible “winning,” but instead to live out in our very lives the drama of the cross. That means that courage does not come from matching the world’s power and wisdom with more of our own, but instead by being led, like Elijah, where we do not want to go (John 21:18). The courage to stand is the courage to be crucified.

This shifts the paradigm of courage for many of us. It becomes not the alpha-male prototype that we see in the world, but instead a type of servant leadership that is rarely seen outside of the church. But what makes this so much different is when it comes into practice. Moore writes:

The problem is that much of what is actually defined as courage in Scripture — the bridling of the passions, kindness, humility — is seen as timidity, while many who feel themselves “courageous” because they “tell it like it is” are really just seeking to be part of their protective tribes, even when those tribes are boisterous and angry.

So the courage to stand requires knowledge of Scripture (as much as possible, not just handpicked verses), knowledge of Jesus, and a relationship with God where you are guided by him at every turn. That is why you know it when you see it. It’s noticeable because it is overwhelmingly strange. But why is it so important to stand for what God says? Can’t God handle things all on His own? Why do we need to be vocal and go where we don’t want to go? And why is it so important that we’re standing for the right things? These may sound like silly questions to ask out loud, but if we don’t internalize them and ask ourselves where we fail in standing for God’s truth, it can have disastrous consequences. In a shocking and raw moment, Moore shares that he has maps in his home that act as a reminder for what he almost was:

And what I almost was is a teenage suicide.

How is this related to having the courage to stand? In two ways. First, Moore was able to find that courage and survive. But second, he spiraled into this place because he felt that, outside of his local church, Jesus was being used as a prop and nothing more. It was being used to legitimize racism, cover up abuse, and enrich hucksters. And for Moore, that meant his life had no meaning. He lays it bare:

If Christianity were just a means to an end, if Jesus were just a hood ornament on top of southern honor culture, then that means that what held everything in the cosmos together was not the Sermon on the Mount but the survival of the fittest. All that would be left is a universe red in tooth and claw, a universe that at its heart is not about love but about power. If that were so, then, however well-intentioned the people were who taught me to sing it, Jesus didn’t love me, no matter how the Bible told us so. I wanted to die — and I realize only now that my life as a writer started not with my writing short stories or essays but suicide notes, trying to explain why I didn’t want to hurt anyone but that I couldn’t bear to live.

You’re reading this, so listen up. How we act matters. How we represent the gospel matters. How we treat others, especially those who are less powerful, matters. Because there are kids and adults looking at our behavior, looking at what the Bible teaches, and deciding if those two match or not. And if they, because of our behavior, decide that Christianity cannot be the truth because the people who follow it are, at their core, just like everyone else, they will die without knowing our Lord and Savior who can sweep in and make dead, rotting hearts alive again. We have to let God change us to our very core. Be transformed heart, soul, and mind. People’s lives, temporally and eternally, are at stake. We cannot be Christians and be of the world. We must have the courage to stand and be crucified.

But if courage looks like radical sacrificial servanthood to God, what does cowardice look like? Moore helps us understand that as well. He unearths exemplars of cowardice from the story of Elijah, Ahab, and Jezebel:

The very reason the Baals (the false gods) existed in Israel was due to fear. Ahab and Jezebel were from two opposing nations, not because they were Romeo and Juliet star-crossed lovers, but as an act of pragmatic statecraft. The marriage was no doubt part of a geopolitical alliance meant to stave off hostilities, from one another and from other potentially hostile powers. Moreover, the people participating no doubt did so because they feared the royal house. They did not want what would happen to Elijah to happen to them — exile and presumed death. And, of course, there were (there always are) the court prophets, those who would tell the king precisely what he wanted to hear, for fear of losing their access, their influence, or their heads. That’s cowardice.

The pursuit of worldly power is cowardice. I’m going to keep my tongue in check here because I don’t want to put words in Dr. Moore’s mouth, but I can imagine what modern “court prophets” he has in mind. And he would be right.

But before we think, “Well yeah, I always stand for God’s Word when the whole world is going against it”, we must make sure that what we are standing for is God’s Word and not the word of our political tribes or ideologies. That’s what is most dangerous, Moore warns:

Those who “fight” but who don’t fight the right enemy in the right way are the equivalent of the person who, in order to vent his anger, slams his fist into a wall while his family is being murdered in the next room. Such venting of emotion may help the man to feel better about himself, but is of no help at all to the real danger afoot.

And before we think that being counter-cultural means castigating the culture of the world for everything they are doing wrong and propping up professed Christians (whether actually Christian or not) at all costs, Moore points us to Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians:

“For what have I to do with judging outsiders?” the apostle Paul wrote. “Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?” (1 Cor. 5:12). Why is this the case? “God judges those outside” (1 Cor. 5:13). The church is freed from acting as rulers over the outside world, ripping the weeds up from among the crops or separating out the goats away from the sheep, precisely because we know there is a future Day of Judgment to come, and that we will not be the ones on the throne there. …Clearly, the Scriptures call us to judge those on the inside, who bear the name of brother, and not those on the outside. Doing the reverse can make for a much easier ministry, as a hack.

So cool it off with the pitchforks pointed toward the outside world, put them down, and look to Jesus. We should be defensive of God’s people, not American culture. God has a bright, eternal future for us, and we must stay focused on that. We bring as many people with us as we possibly can, and let God deal with the rest. That means evangelism, discipleship, and accountability, in that order.

I could write for days about Russell Moore’s The Courage to Stand, but it comes out tomorrow (October 6th), so I must stop and simply recommend it to literally every Christian who can read and every non-Christian who doubts the authenticity of Christians. Dr. Moore is the most authentic, prophetic writer I have ever read. Readers of my year-end favorite books list know that Moore features prominently when I read one of his works (2017 and 2018), and this year will be no exception. The Courage to Stand is essential reading.

I received a review copy of The Courage to Stand courtesy of B&H Publishing and NetGalley, but my opinions are my own.