Heading into the election tomorrow, I see a plethora of passionate and biased analysis. People are choosing to see or at least mention only the virtues in themselves or their candidate while mentioning only the evil in the people with whom they disagree or whom they dislike. The fact of the matter is that the picture is much more complicated than that. Back in February 2011, I posted the following to Facebook: "Other people manufacture labels to describe us quickly without having to get to know us. Each man is far too complicated in his facets to be so accurately distilled. " We are far more complicated than even I can discuss in this post, but I will make a few points.
People often talk about what we "deserve" without realizing what that means. Even some of my friends talk about the good things I deserve, so much so that I began to believe them. This made me feel bitter, like a victim, and to talk angrily of the boons experienced by others I viewed as less worthy than myself. Then a dear friend pointed out that in truth, I'm already getting better than I deserve. You need not suppose me guilty of any great transgression, but I am a human. I am often self-centered, lazy, anxious to avoid difficulty, and a whole host of minute albeit common human traits. I don't always give money to the people at the off ramp (it would eventually come to feel like a toll to go home every day since they are there almost every night at the exit to my house). I don't always help out when I can. I don't always share what I can afford. I am not always eager to give of myself. The nice thing about it is that I'm honest about that whereas other people are not. The bad thing is that in the system of justice we have imagined up to ourselves, I deserve to be punished because I am not the paragon of virtue some people believe me to be.
Secondly, people who know me have heard me say before how much I believe what CS Lewis wrote about human nature. I do not believe that if you strip away all that is good in man that you are left with a bad man. I believe that you would be left with nothing at all. Even Tolkienn agreed with Lewis on that philosophical point, or at least he allowed Aragorn to say so, talking about the great things in men when he rallied the men of Gondor to buy Frodo time to destroy the ring. Sure, there are evils in men, and those evils live after us. Sometimes they loom large even though they are not true. The honest man realizes that men have strengths and weaknesses and weighs them appropriately. The dishonest man points out the mote in his neighbor's eye to distract men from the beam in his own.
The wisest man realizes that any weakness makes him weak and turns to a higher power for help. Your Achilles Heel may not be physical. Perhaps it's psychological, financial, intellectual, spiritual, chemical, nutritional, etc., but EVERY ONE OF US HAS ONE that just like with Achilles can and will bring us down in the fight for right. We are not paragons. We are humans. Making mistakes is part of what the universe allows us that it does for no other life form of which we are cognizant. An ecclesiastical leader in my youth once said that smart men learn from their experiences and wise men learn from the experiences of others. I submit that wise men lean on Christ and allow Him to make weak things become strong in them through the Atonement.
Ignoring the weaknesses has led to the downfall of every powerful group, civilization, and man ever born. You see, your enemies seek out your weaknesses to exploit them, and if you pretend you don't have them, you are the fool twice- fool that you are dishonest with yourself, hence undermining all your other virtues, and secondly that you are foolish enough to think that you cannot be defeated. The "greatest city in the world" was humbled last week by a Category I hurricane. Imagine if it had been a Category V. Bad situations can wear down good people, and none of us are really that good. We benefit from Christ's mercy which allows us to be blessed in spite of what we actually and honestly deserve.
I'm a pretty good man, but I am just a man. You will make mistakes. Don't let your mistakes make or mark you.
1 comment:
So well said!
As always, made me happy to read this. We are all human and we will err. Thank goodness we can also fix things.
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