Is It Boldness or Bullying?

We are living in the midst of a global courage deficit.

Surely you’ve noticed this, but just in case you haven’t, I’ll give you an example. Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Ketanji Brown Jackson is a singularly impressive woman—national debate champion, magna cum laude Harvard grad, editor of the Harvard Law Review. We are talking about a highly intelligent, competent human being, one who could probably dwarf most of us in any kind of academic discussion. She’s the cream of the intellectual crop.

Sadly, it’s unlikely that’s how history will remember her.

To date, what is arguably the most memorable moment in Brown Jackson’s distinguished career is her choice to be a coward. On the second day of her Supreme Court Confirmation hearing, Senator Marsha Blackburn asked Ketanji a very basic question: “Can you define the word ‘woman?’”

Surely an esteemed Harvard prodigy with an entire career spent advocating for the vulnerable would be able to define the group of people whose rights she purported to champion.

Nope. Brown Jackson wiggled out of the honest answer like a worm off a hook. “I can’t,” she responded. “Not in this context. I’m not a biologist.”

That answer will ring through history (and meme wars for ages to come) as the moment much of the wide world gained awareness of the emperor’s nakedness—that the gender cult’s corruption ran so deep and had acquired so much power that it would be calling the shots at the very highest levels of our legal system.

She knew she was lying. We knew she was lying. Everyone knew she was lying. But the personal cost for her to tell the truth was a price she was unwilling to pay, so she chickened out. She knew that if she had responded with the correct answer, that a woman is an adult human female, it would have likely cost her the seat on the Supreme Court. And I’m not without empathy. It seems unfair to place all this pressure on one person’s shoulders. We didn’t arrive here in a vacuum. A million and one other people had to be cowardly in their respective spheres of influence for us ever to have arrived at this watershed moment.

But with great power, as they say, comes great responsibility, and Brown Jackson failed the test. Imagine where we might be if she had publicly modeled courage and taken the risk and communicated, without apology, that no job is worth compromising our integrity, that justice must be tethered to truth, that women matter enough to be protected in the legal sense. I have to imagine that, immediate consequences aside, history would eventually remember her as a hero.

But no. She’s no biologist. And so she joins the lengthy list of people who are willing to participate in society’s unmooring from material reality in exchange for a little personal power.

So yeah, we have a courage deficit problem, and the obvious antidote is boldness. Boldness to tell the truth that can save, regardless of the cost. Boldness to defy injustice and stand up and be counted. Boldness to be the one who risks conflict on behalf of the greater good. Godly boldness is the answer to a lot of our problems.

But I also want to zero in on how even something good like boldness can be distorted and warped into a weapon for further harm. I’m seeing a degree of this cropping up on the right. There’s a marked difference between godly and worldly boldness, and I think it’s really important not to conflate the two. One is righteous. The other is poison. It’s the difference between offering prayer outside an abortion clinic vs showing up with a picket sign reading, “Murderer!” And when we blur the defining lines between them, we not only end up with egg on our face, but we’re actually making the problems so much worse and the solutions so much further from our reach.

I think what I find most concerning is the pervasive belief that boldness requires antagonism. It does not. I’ll give you an example from my time as an activist in the gender wars:

Often enough, we would host rallies to embolden parents to resist the indoctrination efforts that were rendering children permanently sterile. We would congregate on the steps of the Capitol and give speeches to try to inspire courage in one another. These rallies were hotly contested and often opposed by throngs of scary, aggressive men in dresses holding megaphones in our faces as we tried to speak and shouting us down and threatening our physical safety. It was downright scary to speak at these events. We didn’t enjoy the conflict, but we were willing to risk it because we thought it was necessary. Not to toot my own horn (I’ve done a lot of things wrong, too), but this is one thing I think we got right. I would categorize this as righteous boldness.

On the other hand, we had some prominent grifters in our movement—guys who were using the cause as a stepping stone to their own notoriety. They were trying to leverage our cause to build their brands and become famous. These guys did not host their own rallies or write their own op-eds or share our same compassion for the victims of this ideology. They just enjoyed antagonizing people and causing conflict and screaming in peoples’ faces. They would show up at trans rallies and start badgering people just to capture video they could leverage for their own brand building. They took sadistic pleasure in provoking fights and insulting opponents. Their goal wasn’t peace; it was domination and war. The conflict made them feel alive. They didn’t dread it; they actively pursued it. And they were willing to be actual bullies to get the adrenaline rush associated with the fight. Their tactics were effective; they gained a lot of attention and got invited to big ticket interviews with major media outlets, and some people think their contributions to the effort have been a net positive, but I don’t. What they demonstrated wasn’t boldness. It was self-serving aggression. And there’s a major difference.

Righteous boldness always prioritizes the well-being of others, often at the expense of your own comfort. When people say, “Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes,” the inference is that your voice should be shaking because boldness means you’re doing something that scares you, not something that thrills you.

I think of Esther in the Bible. She knew that confronting the king without an invitation could likely result in her death. She also knew that if she didn’t take the risk, all the Jewish people would be slaughtered. So she dug deep, found courage, and said, “If I perish, I perish.”

THAT’S godly boldness. It’s born of duty, not ego.

But in recent history, I’ve seen a ton of wanna be social media influencer types trying to leverage the courage deficit into an opportunity to assert themselves as the solutions to the masculinity crisis: “Follow me, and I will teach you how to be a man.” And inevitably the snake oil they’re selling is some formula combining a weight lifting regimen with an invitation to be an ungovernable a**hole who thumps his chest and dominates his enemies. And oils his beard. Don’t neglect the facial hair. I think of Joel Webbon’s recent video circulating the Twitterverse, wherein he salivates over the prospect of crushing the people who defy him.

Godly boldness is a sign that the Holy Spirit is at work in your life. The believers in the early church were hiding in fear for their lives, believing that Roman and Jewish leaders might persecute them for speaking openly about Jesus. In John 20:19-23, the resurrected Jesus finds the disciples huddled together behind a locked door, barely leaving the house and congregating in groups for physical safety. Then Pentecost came, they were filled with the Spirit, and they boldly went out and shared the Gospel regardless of the risk. The Holy Spirit inspires this kind of courage in the service of others. The Spirit does not inspire egomaniacal world domination crusades accompanied by terms like “libtard” and “snowflake” and “Demoncrat,” words used to disparage and provoke, not to invite genuine repentance or healing. The goal in our truth telling should ALWAYS be hope of restoration, not glee at the prospect of condemnation.

To be fair, you can do boldness completely right and still be accused of being a bully. That just comes with the territory. But when it happens, it should be because they’re rejecting the Jesus in you, not the jerk in you. It should be because, as salt and light, your salt stings their wounds and your light is offensive to the darkness they prefer. It shouldn’t be because you’re actually being a bully.

The world absolutely needs boldness. One of my very favorite verses in Proverbs 28:1, which says that “the righteous are bold as a lion.” We just need to make sure our brand of boldness looks more like Jesus than it does the Westboro Baptist Church.

I'm working to treat my writing like a job, so if you appreciate my writing, I would be so grateful if you would consider investing in a paid subscription. I try to keep my costs low, but my family thanks you for every dollar you invest in my writing. Thanks so much for your support!