Once there was a fearful little boy. He was very timid, and I am afraid that others around him encouraged him in this. His parents and teachers reinforced in his mind the dangers of being rash—and of course there are such dangers—but this little boy was in no danger of that particular folly. He could no more have been rash than he could have climbed to the moon on a rope of sand.
He never climbed any trees. He was afraid his own shadow. He shrank back timidly from any food that was unusual to him. He would not play with other boys on the playground because they were “too rough.”
Safety was what he loved above everything else, and unfortunately, his parents thought they were teaching him prudence and care, when they were actually nurturing a coward.
One of this boy’s uncles was a man who lived in another city, and he was the only one far enough away to see what was happening. He had tried talking to the boy’s parents several times, but they only got prickly and defensive. “We don’t want to bring up a boy who thinks he has to play football to be a man. There is more to life than running around with a ball.”
And the uncle thought to himself that “of course a boy doesn’t have to play football to be a man. But my nephew does.” The uncle was worried because he knew that the Bible does not just say that the lake of fire is reserved for liars and hypocrites, thieves and murderers. It also says that the judgment is for the cowardly and unbelieving.
So on one visit, the uncle took his nephew out for a hike on a nearby mountain, to a place where the uncle had played many times as a boy. There was a place there that felt extremely dangerous, but was actually as safe as sitting on the sofa at home. A ledge below was invisible when you were standing on a ledge above, and to jump meant that you disappeared immediately, but would land safely on a broad path that went back down the mountain. And when they got there, the uncle jumped without a word of explanation, and left the boy just standing there.
A moment later, the uncle’s voice came back up—”Come on, jump! Easy! I’ll catch you!” The boy looked back down the narrow path they had come by, and swallowed hard. His uncle’s voice came again. “It’s perfectly safe! Jump!”