In that great gallery of the Faith’s heroes, Hebrews 11, we see the same kind of person, over and over again, but different earthly outcomes. Since the city we are seeking, whose maker and builder is God, is not an earthly city, we are given a wide range of possibilities here. Those possibilities include both winning and losing.
There is a certain of servant — a worthless one, to use the words of his master — who wants to stay close to the shore, play it safe, take no great risks, and bury his talent in a napkin. This approach is taken by the cowardly who think their master is a “hard master.”
In the parable of the talents, the risk takers came back with more than they started with, but that doesn’t always happen. The fellow who was given five talents made five more, and the man given two made two more (Matt. 25:14ff). But sometimes in our experience the man with five talents comes back with only three, and a little bit wiser. Nevertheless, the Lord praised the servants who were willing to lose.
Dabney refers somewhere to a pathetic kind of conservatism that has no intention of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. But there is also a kind of conservatism that has no intention of running the risk of success. The same kind of timidity underlies both. But biblical faith always swings for the fence.
“And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise” (Heb. 11:32-39).
Some conquered kingdoms, and some were sawn in two. Some stopped the mouths of lions, and some didn’t. Some turned armies to flight, and some were marched off to camps by armies. Some quenched the violence of fire, and some were stoned. Some turned five talents into five hundred, while others had their one remaining talent emptied from their pocket before they were tied to the stake. But all of them overcame by faith.
The cowardice that is afraid of success is not biblical faith, and it will be that same lack of faith that, when it comes to the point, refuses to pay the price that a martyr would pay. Faith is willing for earthly success or failure, whatever the Lord has ordained for us. Cowardice is ultimately willing for neither, because cowardice won’t take the risk of failure that is necessary in order for real success to occur. Faint heart, fair lady, and it became a proverb because it is true.
Health and wealthers want only the possibility of success. Doom and gloomers want only the possibility of ongoing failure. But biblical faith knows what it wants, and what it ultimately wants is not in this world anyway. Because the final reward is found in the resurrection, in the city to come, and not here, we are set free to attempt great things here. To different kinds of cowardice this looks positively reckless, but reckless in different ways. Some are afraid that our psalm singing will wake up the lions, while others are afraid that the psalm singing will stop the mouths of those same lions.
In the words of one insightful business executive, we must remember that nothing was ever accomplished by a reasonable man.