Southern Baptists and American Evangelicals
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 65, No. 2 - Spring 2023
Managing Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
By Ryan Holiday. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2021, 304pp., $25.00
Say too much about courage today and you will probably be dismissed as corny or patriarchal. Suggest philosophy is useful, even important, for everyday life and you will probably be left standing alone at social gatherings. But Ryan Holiday is brave enough to take on both topics in this recent book, which is the inaugural volume in the Stoic Virtues series. Holiday has become known as a leading proponent of Stoicism via best-selling books and his podcast, The Daily Stoic. Judging by the book sales and eager reception ranging from the Silicon Valley to the NBA and NFL, he has hit a nerve and at least garnered a lot of attention.
Holiday is a wonderful storyteller and most of the book is him telling stories, from Greek myths, the Bible, and broader history, which illustrate various aspects of courage, its importance, and the results of the lack of it. Holiday primarily illustrates courage but early on he describes it this way:
“Courage is risk.
It is sacrifice…
…commitment
…perseverance
…truth
…determination.
When you do the thing others cannot or will not do. When you do the thing that people think you shouldn’t or can’t do” (p. xix).
His approach, illustrating with stories, is captured well early in the book when he urges, “Let us look to the courageous moments and learn from them rather than focus on another’s flaws as a way of excusing our own” (p. xxi).
This book is valuable simply as a collection of great stories, illustrations, and quotes about courage, but it is much more than that. Holiday mounts a full-scale argument for the importance, possibility, and necessity of courage and gives the reader specific examples to see courage at work. Holiday argues, as have others, that all the other virtues depend on courage. In many ways this book is the best of a coach’s pregame speech tailored to a broader audience calling for people to throw off passivity and apathy and to engage their world courageously. Courage is not the absence of fear but the willingness to learn from and harness fear in order to do what must be done. Holiday punctures the lure of bitterness and victimhood, calling us to rise above challenges and to find purpose amidst difficulty. We only need more of this sort of message.
Holiday is good with his words as well, and truth stated well is especially helpful. Here are a few examples.
“History is written with blood, sweat, and tears, and it is etched into eternity by the quiet endurance of courageous people” (p. xxii).
“Of cowards, though, nothing is written. Nothing is remembered. Nothing is admired. Name one good thing that did not require at least a few hard seconds of bravery” (p. 1).
“At the root of most fear is what other people will think of us” (p. 20).
“The brave don’t despair. The believe. They are not cynical, they care” (p. 47).
“Fear speaks the powerful logic of self-interest. It is also an inveterate liar” (p. 61).
“Fear votes for hesitation, it always has a reason for not doing and so it rarely does anything” (p. 65).
“It [real life] begins by choosing virtue. Not virtue signaling, but virtuous living” (p. 263).
It does not take too long in the book, though, for an important truth to dawn on the reader. Courage is, by necessity a moral virtue. I am indebted to Holiday for bringing this truth home to me with more clarity than I had had before. Some of his examples of courage I would not affirm, because I did not think what was being supported or affirmed was true or moral. Also, as much as I appreciated the call to courage, I began to wonder how he would distinguish his calls to courage from the vapid Disney mantra to believe in yourself and to “know that you can do it.” All of this is related to the need of a moral basis for courage to make sense. Without a moral basis we cannot distinguish between courage and mere stubbornness (which can be related).
I was pleased to discover that in the last about third of the book, Holiday directly addressed the issue of a moral basis for courage. He argues well that true courage is not simply about ourselves, but it is about helping and defending others. It is not surprising, though, that a Christian reading such a book as this would not be completely satisfied with its moral argument. Holiday does not work (in the book) from any explicit authoritative norm so the moral basis remains less distinct than a Christian argument would be.
My primary critique, then, is that this Stoic book is not Christian; but then, it never claimed to be. Taking it for what it is, Courage is Calling is a fine book which I hope finds a wide readership. Christians should engage it as well since, as Holiday notes, the Bible calls for courage. Engage the book and think about how you would articulate the moral basis for courage more completely. We certainly need more courage in the Western church today, “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Tim 1:7).
