Saying the Hard Thing to a Man Twice My Size

There is a buyer at the spring sale who is about six foot four and built accordingly, and I had to tell him in front of four other men that a lot he had sold was not what the card said.

It was not his lot. That is worth saying because it changes the whole thing. He had taken it in from somebody else and passed it on and I do not for one second think he knew, and the man who did know was two counties away and not in that alley.

But it was his card and his name and the four other men were standing there and the sale was moving on and there was going to be about eleven seconds where saying something was possible and after that there was not.

I want to describe what happens in a man in those eleven seconds, because it is nothing like what people imagine courage to be.

It is not a swelling of resolve. It is a very fast series of small calculations, all of them sensible: it is not really my business, somebody else will notice, I have to sell to this man again in October, I am fifty and he is thirty eight and about a foot taller than me and none of that should matter and all of it is in the room.

I said it. Badly, and quietly, and I have gone over the wording since and it was not good wording.

He looked at me for about two seconds. And then he turned round and said, loudly, to the whole alley, that the card was wrong and that nobody was to bid on it, and he pulled the lot, and it cost him money in front of people.

He shook my hand at the end of the day and did not mention it, and I have sold to him every year since, and he has never once brought it up and neither have I.

Toby was on the rail. He had been on the rail the whole time and I had forgotten he was there, which is the honest reason I said it, and I have never told him that.

Bucky was tied at the end of the run in a state of complete unconcern, having by that point eaten most of a paper bag belonging to a man from Ames Cross.

Two people described and nothing between them

The proverb puts two people side by side and the comparison is not about strength.

The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion. (Proverbs 28:1)

Read the first half carefully. When no man pursueth. There is nobody behind them. The fleeing is not a response to a threat, it is a condition, and it goes on in the complete absence of anybody chasing.

Which means the proverb is not comparing a brave person with a frightened one in the same situation. It is describing two people in the same empty room, and one of them is running.

You are being described in terms of what is inside rather than what is in front of you, and Proverbs 28:1 puts nobody at all behind the one who flees. It is the Holy Spirit who makes that read as diagnosis instead of as an insult.

And the second half is not about anybody being fierce. Bold as a lion is a phrase about not needing to check the room, and a lion is used in that comparison because a lion does not look around for permission, rather than because a lion is dangerous.

You have not been asked to be dangerous. The written word compares boldness to an animal that does not check, and His Spirit is what makes not needing to check the actual content of courage.

Where the not-checking comes from

There is a passage that describes exactly this and it locates the source somewhere unexpected.

Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. (1 John 3:21)

Confidence there is a word about freedom of speech, the state of being able to say what needs saying without weighing the room first. And the condition given for it is a heart that is not condemning.

So the boldness in that verse is not a personality trait. It is what is left over when a person is not carrying something of their own, and that is why a man with something in a drawer finds it hard to say a true thing in an alley.

You are able to speak freely because of something settled rather than something summoned. 1 John 3:21 puts confidence downstream of a heart that is clear, and the Spirit of God is what makes that available rather than aspirational.

And the same word is used about how anybody comes to God at all, which means it is not a special issue of equipment for difficult conversations.

You have been given the same freedom of speech for a market alley as for a prayer. Hebrews 4:16 uses it about coming boldly to the throne, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves that from a doctrine into eleven seconds in a run of pens.