Flawed Heroes

by jgnat 37 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  jgnat

  Being the inquiring sort, I've read deeper in to the past of some of my heroes, and found....flaws. It shakes me up. I wonder; is my hero worth emulating? Does history do us any favors by glossing over the unpleasant parts?

  Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Peace prize recipient and uncompromising ethicist, traded a flourishing and popular career to emulate Jesus by serving as a medical missionary in the Congo. From him I gained the motto, "Reverence for Life". What is less advertised was that his mission was in squalid condition at the time of his death. The hospital faces new challenges today. http://www.theworld.org/2012/05/albert-schweitzer-hospital/

  Susannah Wesley is considered the mother of Methodism. She took on the education and spiritual nourishment of her many children and servants. At one point she humbly explained to her husband how her little congregation outgrew his! What is not so widely known is a separation from her husband and a mental breakdown (from which she recovered). Does it pay to follow an uncompromising life with no allowance for personal weakness?

  This quote below from Simone Wiel set me to examination for years. Living according to her principles likely killed her, though, dying young from tuberculosis. It just goes to show that the greatest idealist must not forget to eat his porridge.

  "Those who serve a cause are not those who love that cause. They are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it - except in the case of the very purest, and they are rare."
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  Cagefighter

  I know what you are feeling, however for me this JW hangover. As a JW I was taught that weakness or failure = immorality or wrong doing. This is not true. Weaknesses are the other side of the coin to our strengths.

  For example: Cagefighter might be a good leader, motivator, and such, however he can also be controlling, and dictartorial. It's the same trait. We are all imperfect and we should never let someone's weakness or failures wipe up the good they have done. We are personalizing their actions which is not fair. This is what the JW's do again. The Catholic Church for example could take a stand against communism in a country and save a million orphans, however the WT would dismiss it all because one bishop fondled a boy. Both matters are seperate and too be assessed differently.
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  jgnat

  Not a JW hangover for me. Never a JW. Lots of hero worship in the churches too. There's great missions and evangelical stories, always in a far-off land. Somehow, when we try and emulate those experiences here, they fall flat. Were they one-off miracles?
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  jgnat

  I agree with your flipped coin analogy. We are all combinations of weakness and strength. Even fundamentally flawed individuals can accomplish amazing things.

  I also agree that the whole perfection=sinless idea is damaging for the Witness. When can they ever achieve perfection? So much better is the orthodox idea that sinfulness is a state of being that can be devinely lifted. Flawed but removed from the burden, the Christian forges ahead, hopefully in love.
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  Razziel

  Don't model your life after one person. Choose several heroes in a wide variety of areas, and take the good and learn from the bad. Generally, the more exceptional someone is in one aspect, they have greater failings in another aspect. Find qualities to emulate and the qualities to avoid. People often develop a "soapbox" that they fight for with such focus that they lose sight of things they consider of less importance until those things devolve into such a state they become more of a problem than what they were fighting for.
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  jgnat

  I wonder, Razziel, if trying to take the best from the best, I end up a fractured character?
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  Razziel

  No it's not good enough to learn the best. You have to learn the worst too. I think you can actually learn more from the mistakes of others rather than the successes of others. Oscar Wilde said "Experience is merely the name men give to their mistakes".

  Success in whatever you are trying to do is open-ended. There are many ways to get there. But there are even more ways to set yourself up for failure before you get out of the gate. You have to get rid of the road blocks. You have to clear away the rubble first. And one of the ways to do that is by considering the mistakes of others.

  The hard part is taking all that you learn, and tailoring it to your own personality, strengths and weaknesses. If you try a cut-and-paste it won't work.
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  jgnat

  Thanks for the clarification, Razziel. I have become the sum of all I learned, deliberate or not. My "of course" and "aha" moments are from this combined knowlege, unique to me. In the driver's seat of my own life, the way forward seems perfectly clear. It may not appear so for my passengers, who don't live in my head. For them, it is more like a roller-coaster ride.
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  Razziel

  In a sense, we're all fractured characters. We can compensate for our weaknesses, but I don't think that we can turn them into strengths as strong as our natural strengths. I think a portion of wisdom is identifying what our weaknesses are, and then when confronted with a situation involving that weakness, to carefully solicit and consider the advice from others we consider strong in that area before making a decision, even if we decide to follow another path. That quality also makes a good Manager.

  The other thing is no matter how strongly we feel that we are correct, at least keep in the back of our mind that we could be wrong, and anticipate the need for alternative solutions (i.e. have a Plan B and a Plan C). Don't overly second guess yourself, but at the same time don't be so rigid that you stick to a tactic that has become an obviously losing one. Adaptation to changing circumstances or new information can be the difference between success and failure.

  /sigh I've read too many war books.
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  jgnat

  Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
  - Robert Louis Stevenson -

  "The Art of War" by Sunzi. It is possible that the author himself failed to achieve victory for his sponsor. Another model for my theme. And also a testament to the ultimate failure of war.