In his novel Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful, Alan Paton tells the story of Robert Mansfield, the headmaster of a school in South Africa during the days of apartheid, a cruel system of racial segregation. When Mansfield's school was barred from competing against a black school, he finally took a stand against apartheid and resigned his post. A friend said to him, "You know you will be wounded. Do you know that?"

Mansfield replied, pointing to heaven, "When I go up there … the Big Judge will say to me, 'Where are your wounds?' If I say I haven't any, he will say, 'Was there nothing to fight for?' I couldn't face that question."