In real life, the kids I taught agreed, it isn’t always that easy. Sometimes your friends will make fun of you for refusing to participate, thinking of you as a baby. Sometimes you even wind up losing friends over it. There are a lot of teenagers who consider that a good reason to just go along with the crowd. They consider their popularity and friendships to be their top priority.

Christian teens know that Jesus Christ is supposed to be their priority. They also know it’s not always easy to make Him the priority, especially when it threatens their friendships or popularity. For many teens, though, the realization of what Jesus experienced is enough to give them the courage to stand up for their beliefs. They remember that when Jesus lived on earth, He was made fun of all the time. They called Him names and even beat Him. It is likely that even as a teenager, He encountered people who thought His perfect life was boring and stupid and that He faced teasing from His friends for not going along with the crowd. Jesus was, after all, a teenager once. Although He was perfect, He was perfect by choice. He could have sinned, could have gone along with the crowd….He just didn’t. He put God first.

If Jesus could endure the mocking, the beatings, and even murder rather than deny His faith, we can find it in ourselves to stand up to our peers when they want us to lower our standards. The teen years are hard, but the truth is that adults face the same pressures from friends, family, and bosses. The skills we learn as teenagers can help us get through the adult challenges to our moral standards.

And when it comes down to it….do you really want friends who have no respect for you? It may be time to find some new friends who will strengthen and support you when others are tearing you down.

Make your standards clear so those who follow you don’t get lost.

In this month’s New Era magazine (a monthly magazine for Mormon teens and other teens who want inspiration) there are several stories about teens who had to have courage in an everyday sort of situation. A lot of times we think of courage as involving physical danger, such as running into a burning building to save someone. Most of the time, though, the courage we are asked to show comes from ordinary, everyday experiences.

Deborah Moore wrote about the experience of losing a best friend. When she was in eighth grade, her best friend decided to start getting drunk and doing other things Deborah knew were wrong. Deborah didn’t know what to do but she was worried for her friend’s safety so she finally got the courage to ask her friend not to drink. Her friend chose not to follow her advice or to continue the friendship.

That took a huge amount of courage for Deborah. She knew she might lose a friend by doing this, but she had to try to help her friend if it was at all possible, so she took the risk. A lot of times when we read stories like this one in religious settings, the story ends with the friend deciding to change her life, grateful someone cared about her. That didn’t happen this time, but it doesn’t change the importance of the story.

It’s really an act of love to try to save someone you know is doing something dangerous. You’d want to jump into a swimming pool to save a drowning friend and a friend who wants to start getting drunk often is in more danger than just physical death—she faces terrible danger to her spiritual life, which is more important in the eternal scheme of things.

Every person has agency—the God-given right to make choices—but they face the consequences of those choices. When we care about someone, we can offer them support for making a different kind of choice, which is what Deborah offered. Even though the friend didn’t appreciate the help or accept it, Deborah had done the right thing. She eventually made new friends who supported her wiser choices and helped her to live the way she knew she should live.

Read the original story about this Mormon Teen.

Another story had a happier ending. Shannon moved to her dad’s house part way through her junior year of high school. She was shy and had a hard time making friends. She was in choir and hoped she’d find friends there, but it was still pretty hard. However, one girl caught her attention, a girl who was outgoing and popular. This girl had one bad habit though—she took Jesus’ name in vain. That means she used his name as a swear word. This really bothered Shannon, but she was too shy to say anything.

One day, though, Shannon decided she was denying Jesus Christ every time she let the swearing go by without saying anything. She surprised herself by asking the girl not to say His name that way because He was her Savior. The class was startled and became silent but several students agreed with Shannon. The girl who had said the words apologized, admitting she hadn’t really thought about what she was saying and that Jesus was her Savior, too.

So sometimes having everyday courage works out the way you hope it will and sometimes it doesn’t. Having courage, though, means you don’t stop to wonder if you’ll come out ahead. It means doing the right thing for the right reason even if it’s possible the story might have some sad parts to it. In the eternal scheme of things, though, both girls had happy endings because they knew they were doing what Jesus wanted them to do, and that matters more than any temporary setbacks.

Read the original story in the New Era about this Mormon Teen.

What have you done to show everyday courage?

Just because everyone’s doing it doesn’t mean they’re right.

Great stories, but of course, that’s not how it worked in real life. When I was a freshman in high school, I found myself unexpectedly getting attention from a group of popular kids. I don’t know how I came to their attention since popular had never been part of my life. Actually, I’d never really had any desire to be popular. I’d always been happy with the friends I had, but somehow, when they started paying attention to me and to my friend, we both were so flattered we forgot popularity had never been very important to us.

At first, everything seemed great. However, my friend David pulled me aside and warned me the kids in that group were dangerous. He said they didn’t have values and they liked to pull good kids into their group and try to corrupt them. I shrugged off his warning, figuring he was jealous of the time I spent with the new friends I had.

Then one day at a party for my drama class, they invited me to go for a walk with them, saying it was too hot inside. I guess I was pretty inexperienced, because I actually thought they were going for a walk. I loved nighttime walks. Instead, of course, they pulled out cigarettes. I had watched my grandmother suffer from emphysema for several years, the result of a lifetime of smoking, so I was not even tempted to smoke. I refused their offer and instead of accepting it, as always happens in stories, they started making fun of me. Even worse, my friend took one, looking a little embarrassed as she did so. I wanted to yank it out of her mouth, knowing what she was doing to herself, but I didn’t. I didn’t really know what to do. I was hurt that my “friends” would make fun of me for doing what I was knew was right and I was angry that they’d gotten my friend to give in so she could fit in, but I also lacked the courage to just go into the house alone. I wouldn’t give in, knowing what I knew, but I stayed with them. Finally one of the girls told the others to leave me alone.

The worst was yet to come, though. When we went back inside, a boy I really admired walked over to me and said, “I know they do all kinds of things they aren’t supposed to, but I thought you were different.” I realized, as he walked away,  he thought I had smoked because I was with them. I realized everyone knew why they’d gone outside and by going with them—and by returning with them—I sent a false message that I was just like them.

That weekend, I paid more attention to David’s warning. I learned they did a lot of things I hadn’t known they did. I was shy, though, and not very brave, so I didn’t know what to do. On Monday, not wanting to see them in drama class or at lunch, I came to school early and went to talk to my guidance counselor. She suggested we rearrange my schedule so I had no classes with them and so my lunch would be at a different time. That took away any temptation to continue to bask in the prestige of their popularity and made it easier for me to break off the ties—we just never really saw each other any more.

When I walked into the cafeteria that day, I saw David. He motioned me over and I joined the friends I had abandoned. I was lucky they wanted me back. Popularity didn’t seem so appealing anymore as I found myself thinking about the trouble I could have gotten myself into and the damage I’d done to my reputation just by hanging out with the wrong crowd. I didn’t do anything wrong, but no one else knew that.

That story had a happy ending for me, but it didn’t for my friend, who stayed with the group and adopted their values. She had a hard life ahead once she abandoned her standards and her dreams for life to focus on being accepted and popular. I tried to help, but there was nothing I could do. A person has to take the first step alone before others can step in to help.

As an adult now, I can’t remember why it seemed so important to be in that group. I had nothing in common with those people and they didn’t care about me. If they’d cared about me as a person, they would have respected my standards. I was so much happier with friends who shared my values and who respected me if I chose a higher value once in a while. More importantly, their high standards encouraged me to live a better life. We had fun, but we always had an eye on a bright and glorious future. We knew high school wasn’t all there was to life.