Courage?

There has been a lot of talk about Bruce Jenner lately. If you don't know anything about it because you've been living, say, under a rock for the last few months, I envy you.. Also, here's a summary: 65-year-old former athlete decides he was always really a woman named Caitlyn, and took female hormones and had surgery to change his appearance.

Naturally, the "liberal" contingent fell all over themselves congratulating him. The word I kept hearing was "courage". Jenner was said to have shown great courage in telling his story.

But did he? Did it take a lot of courage to do a photo shoot with Vanity Fair, and appear on the cover of that magazine? Was it courageous to accept near-universal acclaim for his actions? How about getting his own TV show, decades after most of us had forgotten about him? Did that require an act of courage?

In short, to paraphrase CS Lewis, what did he expect would happen other than what actually did?

Let me tell you what comes to mind when I hear the word "courage". Imagine being thrown roughly into an arena. It could be as large as the Colosseum in Rome, or one of the countless smaller ones scattered throughout the Empire. Regardless, as your crying wife and children cling to you, you lead them to the center of the arena, where you fall to the bloody sand. "Let's pray," you say, and as they kneel close to you, your tears mix with their own. You try to pray, but the words don't come because as you start you hear the gate slide open to let the beasts out. You know that you'll be dead in ten seconds, and the last thing you're likely to see is your family, ripped apart. And it will be all your fault, because you told them about Christ in the first place. Yet you trust him anyway.

That's courage, not some washed-up athlete wanting attention.