> [!quote] > It's like the greatest painting in the modern world, which is Rembrandt's *The Return of the Prodigal Son*. The story's in place. All the conflict and tension are there, but the narrative was in place. Rembrandt can take that for granted. Mennonites, Jews, and others there in the Netherlands all connect to this particular way of understanding human dignity at its deepest level. You go beyond Christianity, beyond Judaism, just human and raw, and le lays it out right before he dies, lays it down. **Now jump to our period where, existentially, we got so much conformity, complacency, and cowardliness being rewarded that courage, they squeeze out.** Now courage is the enabling virtue of all other virtues—all of them. So, even we Christians, okay, we got faith, we got hope, and the greatest of these, love. But where's courage? > > None of them work without courage. You can't love without courage. God can't use cowards. You can't sustain your faith without courage. > > -- Cornel West, as excerpted from [Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/truth-matters-robert-p-george/1146054579?ean=9798888451700) by Robert P. George and Cornel West