cowardice

• Abraham exhibited c. three times

93:9.3Abra­ham be­came fear­ful and timid im­me­di­ately af­ter the dis­ap­pear­ance of Mel­chiz­e­dek. He with­held his iden­tity upon ar­rival at Gerar, so that Abim­elech ap­pro­pri­ated his wife. (Shortly af­ter his mar­riage to Sarah, Abra­ham one night had over­heard a plot to mur­der him in or­der to get his bril­liant wife. This dread be­came a ter­ror to the oth­er­wise brave and dar­ing leader; all his life he feared that some­one would kill him se­cretly in or­der to get Sarah. And this ex­plains why, on three sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions, this brave man ex­hib­ited real cow­ardice.)

• cowards › high thinking not achieved by moral cowards

101:7.2A phi­los­o­phy of re­li­gion evolves out of a ba­sic growth of ideas plus ex­per­i­men­tal liv­ing as both are mod­i­fied by the ten­dency to im­i­tate as­so­ciates. The sound­ness of philo­sophic con­clu­sions de­pends on keen, hon­est, and dis­crim­i­nat­ing think­ing in con­nec­tion with sen­si­tiv­ity to mean­ings and ac­cu­racy of eval­u­a­tion. Moral cow­ards never achieve high planes of philo­sophic think­ing; it re­quires cour­age to in­vade new lev­els of ex­pe­ri­ence and to at­tempt the ex­plo­ration of un­known realms of in­tel­lec­tual liv­ing.

• revenge is mask for

145:3.4That Sab­bath was a great day in the earth life of Je­sus, yes, in the life of a uni­verse. To all lo­cal uni­verse in­tents and pur­poses the lit­tle Jew­ish city of Ca­per­naum was the real cap­i­tal of Neb­a­don. The hand­ful of Jews in the Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue were not the only be­ings to hear that mo­men­tous clos­ing state­ment of Je­sus’ ser­mon: “Hate is the shadow of fear; re­venge the mask of cow­ardice.” Nei­ther could his hear­ers for­get his blessed words, declar­ing, “Man is the son of God, not a child of the devil.”

• discretion carried too far leads to

149:4.4And then Je­sus dis­coursed on the dan­gers of cour­age and faith, how they some­times lead un­think­ing souls on to reck­less­ness and pre­sump­tion. He also showed how pru­dence and dis­cre­tion, when car­ried too far, lead to cow­ardice and fail­ure. He ex­horted his hear­ers to strive for orig­i­nal­ity while they shunned all ten­dency to­ward ec­cen­tric­ity. He pleaded for sym­pa­thy with­out sen­ti­men­tal­ity, piety with­out sanc­ti­mo­nious­ness. He taught rev­er­ence free from fear and su­per­sti­tion.

• cowards › withhold pity from cowards

159:3.11Teach all be­liev­ers to avoid lean­ing upon the in­se­cure props of false sym­pa­thy. You can­not de­velop strong char­ac­ters out of the in­dul­gence of self-pity; hon­estly en­deavor to avoid the de­cep­tive in­flu­ence of mere fel­low­ship in mis­ery. Ex­tend sym­pa­thy to the brave and coura­geous while you with­hold over­much pity from those cow­ardly souls who only half­heart­edly stand up be­fore the tri­als of liv­ing. Of­fer not con­so­la­tion to those who lie down be­fore their trou­bles with­out a strug­gle. Sym­pa­thize not with your fel­lows merely that they may sym­pa­thize with you in re­turn.

• cowards › Judas was a coward

177:4.9Ju­das re­turned to his as­so­ciates at the camp in­tox­i­cated with thoughts of grandeur and glory such as he had not had for many a day. He had en­listed with Je­sus hop­ing some day to be­come a great man in the new king­dom. He at last re­al­ized that there was to be no new king­dom such as he had an­tic­i­pated. But he re­joiced in be­ing so saga­cious as to trade off his dis­ap­point­ment in fail­ing to achieve glory in an an­tic­i­pated new king­dom for the im­me­di­ate re­al­iza­tion of honor and re­ward in the old or­der, which he now be­lieved would sur­vive, and which he was cer­tain would de­stroy Je­sus and all that he stood for. In its last mo­tive of con­scious in­ten­tion, Ju­das’s be­trayal of Je­sus was the cow­ardly act of a self­ish de­serter whose only thought was his own safety and glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, no mat­ter what might be the re­sults of his con­duct upon his Mas­ter and upon his for­mer as­so­ciates.

177:4.10But it was ever just that way. Ju­das had long been en­gaged in this de­lib­er­ate, per­sis­tent, self­ish, and venge­ful con­scious­ness of pro­gres­sively build­ing up in his mind, and en­ter­tain­ing in his heart, these hate­ful and evil de­sires of re­venge and dis­loy­alty. Je­sus loved and trusted Ju­das even as he loved and trusted the other apos­tles, but Ju­das failed to de­velop loyal trust and to ex­pe­ri­ence whole­hearted love in re­turn. And how dan­ger­ous am­bi­tion can be­come when it is once wholly wed­ded to self-seek­ing and su­premely mo­ti­vated by sullen and long-sup­pressed vengeance! What a crush­ing thing is dis­ap­point­ment in the lives of those fool­ish per­sons who, in fas­ten­ing their gaze on the shad­owy and evanes­cent al­lure­ments of time, be­come blinded to the higher and more real achieve­ments of the ev­er­last­ing at­tain­ments of the eter­nal worlds of di­vine val­ues and true spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. Ju­das craved worldly honor in his mind and grew to love this de­sire with his whole heart; the other apos­tles like­wise craved this same worldly honor in their minds, but with their hearts they loved Je­sus and were do­ing their best to learn to love the truths which he taught them.

177:4.11Ju­das did not re­al­ize it at this time, but he had been a sub­con­scious critic of Je­sus ever since John the Bap­tist was be­headed by Herod. Deep down in his heart Ju­das al­ways re­sented the fact that Je­sus did not save John. You should not for­get that Ju­das had been a dis­ci­ple of John be­fore he be­came a fol­lower of Je­sus. And all these ac­cu­mu­la­tions of hu­man re­sent­ment and bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment which Ju­das had laid by in his soul in ha­bil­i­ments of hate were now well or­ga­nized in his sub­con­scious mind and ready to spring up to en­gulf him when he once dared to sep­a­rate him­self from the sup­port­ing in­flu­ence of his breth­ren while at the same time ex­pos­ing him­self to the clever in­sin­u­a­tions and sub­tle ridicule of the en­e­mies of Je­sus. Ev­ery time Ju­das al­lowed his hopes to soar high and Je­sus would do or say some­thing to dash them to pieces, there was al­ways left in Ju­das’s heart a scar of bit­ter re­sent­ment; and as these scars mul­ti­plied, pres­ently that heart, so of­ten wounded, lost all real af­fec­tion for the one who had in­flicted this dis­taste­ful ex­pe­ri­ence upon a well-in­ten­tioned but cow­ardly and self-cen­tered per­son­al­ity. Ju­das did not re­al­ize it, but he was a cow­ard. Ac­cord­ingly was he al­ways in­clined to as­sign to Je­sus cow­ardice as the mo­tive which led him so of­ten to refuse to grasp for power or glory when they were ap­par­ently within his easy reach. And ev­ery mor­tal man knows full well how love, even when once gen­uine, can, through dis­ap­point­ment, jeal­ousy, and long-con­tin­ued re­sent­ment, be even­tu­ally turned into ac­tual hate.

• cowards › Judas was a coward

183:2.2Ju­das was much per­turbed by this fail­ure to find Je­sus at the Mark res­i­dence and in the com­pany of eleven men, only two of whom were armed for re­sis­tance. He hap­pened to know that, in the af­ter­noon when they had left camp, only Si­mon Pe­ter and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes were girded with swords; Ju­das had hoped to take Je­sus when the city was quiet, and when there was lit­tle chance of re­sis­tance. The be­trayer feared that, if he waited for them to re­turn to their camp, more than three­score of de­voted dis­ci­ples would be en­coun­tered, and he also knew that Si­mon Ze­lo­tes had an am­ple store of arms in his pos­ses­sion. Ju­das was be­com­ing in­creas­ingly ner­vous as he med­i­tated how the eleven loyal apos­tles would de­test him, and he feared they would all seek to de­stroy him. He was not only dis­loyal, but he was a real cow­ard at heart.