Reading Matthew 14:22-33: On Courage

Reading Matthew 14:22-33, where Jesus walks on the water.  Two words stuck out to me here:  first, in verse 27, Jesus tells the disciples not to be afraid when they see him walking on the water, but rather to ‘be of good cheer’.  The Greek word, tharseite, is also translated as ‘be of good courage’, and so the word really is connected with a kind of cheerfulness based in courage. 

I’ve been thinking about a lot lately about the importance of courage. I’ve been feeling God calling me to be more courageous, and, funnily enough, I saw a t-shirt recently which said ‘Fear Is Not A Virtue’. Being fearful is very discouraging, and does lead, in a way, to sadness – that is, not cheerfulness.  Courage, on the other hand, is connected to a kind of happy confidence, which I’ve noticed comes from understanding truth.  When you know that something is true, there comes a real kind of courage to speak that truth and live that truth.  And the kind of courage which Jesus is commanding his disciples to have is the kind of courage that comes from believing in God, believing in God’s words and in God’s power.

Sadly, we seem to live in ‘post-truth’ world where people live in alternate realities from one another, believing what is presented to them as long as it fits with the overall narrative they have chosen to believe.  This state of affairs blurs the good-faith search for truth by politicizing it, and therefore skews our attention outward toward judging other people who we think are ‘deceived’.  Perhaps in this post-truth world we can find a kind of courage, but it is a courage that is rooted in political polarization, and is therefore only a ‘shadow’ courage.  It is not the kind of courage that comes from knowing through the Holy Spirit that Jesus has all power in heaven and earth, and that through exercising faith in Him, we will be protected, strengthened, and empowered to bring to pass much righteousness.

So, Jesus encourages us to ‘be of good courage’.  This must mean that there is such a thing as a search for truth, and there such a thing as understanding truth, and also there is such a thing as acting in accordance with truth, to bring about good things.  We can be happy and courageous in that pursuit, knowing that Jesus is calling to us to join Him as He tries to lead us into all truth.

Second, Jesus gently chastises Peter for being ‘of little faith’, after Peter starts walking toward Jesus but then sees the stormy sea and starts to sink.  The Greek word for ‘little faith’ is oligopiste, which actually means something more like ‘limited faith’.  The prefix ‘oligo’ means ‘few’, and, being a political philosopher, the way I think of it is in relation to ‘oligarchy’, which means the rule of the few.  It has the connotation, therefore, of being limited in the sense of being closed off, not open to expansion.  So, back to oligopiste, it means little faith, yes, but it is the kind of faith that has fixed limits and therefore does not grow.  In this case, Peter’s faith failed him, because he wasn’t willing to nurture it past a certain point.

However, I think it is important to note that Peter’s faith was limited regarding his relationship with Jesus.  There is no indication that Peter doubted Jesus’s ability to walk on the water.  It is more that Peter doubted that he could walk on the water to Jesus – that is, he doubted that he could accomplish  what Jesus was encouraging him to do.  And this, I think, makes it all the more applicable to us.  We do not doubt Christ, but perhaps we doubt what we can do, even with Christ’s help.  Perhaps we doubt that Christ’s saving power can save us.  So, one lesson seems to be here that when we truly find faith in Christ, it is a faith which also empowers us, and gives us a humble, yet healthy self-confidence. 

And maybe we are back to where we started:  through faith, we can be of good courage, knowing that ‘we can accomplish all things through Him that strengthens us’.