I thought Courageouswas about a few cops and their families.  What did I know?  These men are not just cops; these men claim to know and practice God’s will. 

In due course these cops assume positions of Authority as teachers, trainers, role models, protectors, and providers to their wives and children by adopting a resolution to commit to divinely inspired responsibility.  These men assume this authority in order to teach a code of honor based not in ethics or civil law but in God’s law. 

To these ends these men urge one another to overcome fear of feeling and expressing feelings, and of commiting to responsibility, becoming, in other words, morally courageous.  Okay, all would be well, but it appears that these men’s responses to feelings of insecurity catapult them beyond facing feelings of insecurity in all matters, including that of religious faith, to an extreme position of assuming moral authority.

The movie’s main character loses a young daughter in a car crash, and in grieving, questions his faith and God’s will, in turn and briefly. He wants to become a better father to his remaining child, a son.  He wants to do the right thing, to be the man and father God would have him be.  This is a crucial point, for in this moment he dispenses with questions, determines he knows God’s will, and lays claim to an authority to model it to and require it of his wife and son. He drafts a resolution, a creed of commitment to fatherhood, as it were, and soon his fellows follow him in adopting it themselves.

It is apparent some men need to impose order on the chaos of uncertainty and to that end they need to also require those in their midst to accept their beliefs and their laws for living.  Unless men would violate others’ rights to religious freedom they themselves enjoy, however, they must not inextricably bind their own assumption of authority to determine and practice God’s will with honest, ethical, compassionate, and responsible living.  Dear me, familial and civic responsibility will certainly do.  Whatever happened to separation of church and state?

In Courageous the cast of characters is played largely by various clergy from a Baptist church (must be a very large church, indeed).  They’re a charismatic lot, to be sure, and they’ve got a polished movie here that slowly and steadily purveys by way of story a religious doctrine and code of conduct.  What concerns me is the perilously close parallel tracks they have laid for the law of the land and the law of God—and the way they would that these tracks converge.