NECESSARY HEROES [R, 7-4-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—NECESSARY HEROES [R, 7-4-24]

 

Ernest Hemmingway said, “As you get older, it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.”

I think he’s right, on both counts.

But “hero” doesn’t mean much anymore. We call anyone who wears a uniform a hero. I understand why that’s become common, but what do you call the gal who runs into the burning building to save the baby when she’s already called a hero just because she has an asbestos uniform and a funny hat?

Super-hero is already taken, by heroes that aren’t heroes because they can’t be real. To be of any use to us, a hero has to be real, one of us, an ordinary guy or gal who answers the call when something extraordinary has to be done. I think that’s why God chose an ordinary guy to be the Christ. [1]

“Hero” has become debased because we don’t honor heroic attributes.

We need heroes, so we say that any soldier or cop or firefighter or nurse…anyone in a uniform, that’s a hero. That’s okay. I understand it.

But real heroes do heroic things. They have heroic characters. We honor only money and power, and we have produced a society where only those with money can have power.

Here we are, on the day of heroes, Independence Day, The Fourth of July, with cowards all around us, claiming to be heroes.

A hero is sort of like a wagon train scout in the old West. Out front far enough to see the dangers and possibilities first, but coming back often enough to fill us in on what can be.

The reason it is harder to have heroes as we grow older is that we become content in our own wisdom. We are competent in enough to think that we are competent in more than we are. Heroes are better than we are. They remind us not to trust ourselves too much. Without heroes, we become narcissists.

Here is a poem I wrote a long time ago. It’s called, simply, “When My Hero Died.”

 

When my hero died

And I could no longer

See his face

I lost my place

 

He was always

Out in front

Arm stretched long

To show the way

I lost my place

 

When my hero died

His name blurred

His voice unheard

I lost my place

 

When my hero died

So many doubts and questions came

Then I became my hero

But it never was the same

 

John Robert McFarland

1] Because of my vast and irrelevant theological education, I know that by using the word “chose” here I have opened a can of homousian worms. Let it go…