“CAN’T WE HAVE ANY HEROES?”

Although it had been percolating for months, news of apologist Ravi Zacharias’ sexual improprieties, recently investigated and verified, has become ubiquitous. Discussing this apologist’s posthumously-revealed moral failures with a younger minister, I found myself expressing great sadness and disappointment with a rhetorical question: I asked, “Can’t we have any heroes?” I realized that’s an odd sentiment for an old preacher to express. But though I was feeling the loss, I was thinking of younger ministers everywhere. Not only had they lost another hero, but they will also have to live and minister under the stigma his failure has created. They don’t need my empathy, but I felt it nonetheless. It’s the same I feel during presidential elections when I say, “I feel sorry for new, young voters today; they don’t have a Ronald Reagan to vote for as I did when I came of voting age.” I was thinking of younger ministers because I was also remembering the time when I was a young minister and news broke of a major Pentecostal minister’s moral failure, news that shocked the classic Pentecostal world. Such letdown. Such disappointment. Such letting the air out of the ministry balloon. Such sucking of the oxygen out of the room of anticipation, vision, hopes, and dreams. But I wasn’t thinking of ministers alone. Many non-clergy Christians also held these Christian leaders in high esteem. Ravi and other fallen ministers were their heroes too. “Can’t we have any heroes?” I first answered my own question with “Maybe we aren’t supposed to have heroes.” If we don’t have heroes, we won’t be so often disappointed. But having heroes is inescapably human. We need folks to admire and emulate. We need to see the ideal embodied. We need to see excellence performed. Heroes inspire us and give us something to which to aspire. Second, I pondered, “Maybe having heroes is people worship.” Perhaps, we shouldn’t have heroes at all, not only because we are likely to be disappointed, but also because having heroes is akin to worshiping people. Since we are commanded to worship God only, maybe the really spiritual thing to do is to say “God is my Hero,” and leave it there. Yet, God doesn’t seem to think we shouldn’t have human heroes. He gave us a Bible full of choices of them. He filled the hall of one whole chapter, Hebrews 11, with portraits of heroes of faith. Admittedly, it is an error that many make; they worship their human heroes. Yet, we don’t have to worship heroes to be inspired by them. Next, I wondered: “Maybe we are not to have contemporary heroes only dead ones”—ones dead long enough that no posthumous revelations will discredit and tarnish the esteem we had for them. Maybe. But we need to see the exceptional modeled right now in our world, our times, our circumstances. Non-living heroes may excite and inspire. But so often we cannot relate to them. They’re from another time and another world. To believe we can model them, we also need heroes who live in our time and world, not just those from another time and world. My next thought seemed to be leading towards some kind of answer to our hero quandary: “Maybe we are looking in the wrong places for the wrong things in the wrong people.” Technology has brought the wider world to us. We have instant access to the stage of popularity across which parades those of exceptional talent, abilities, aptitude, and performance. We’re not even required to judge for ourselves whether these are worthy to be heroes. We are told they are by the thousands of followers of their channels, the tens of thousands that fill their venues, the millions of likes of their videocasts, and the hundreds of subscribers who share them. By acclaim of their popularity, these who become our heroes are those of extraordinary talent, charisma, and ability—their character is rarely a factor since it is unknown. In a sense, these heroes are but images of people and not real-life people. The Apostle Paul encourages believers to esteem the laborers and leaders among them. It is implied that they esteem them because they know them. (I Th 5:12-13). Though not sure-proof, personally knowing people in shared real-life experiences vets them far better than simply being impressed by their online persona. “Can’t we have any heroes?” Yes! But lest we set ourselves up for further disappointment when yet another hero fails, we must remember: Our heroes are only instruments. If they have/are doing something great in the Kingdom of God, God is the one doing that thing. Our hero is, in the end, only the channel, tool, instrument used by God when He does the thing. Our heroes, however well they perform, preach, or sing, are not the force that makes a difference in people. The force is in the message, the Gospel of Christ, that they share. Any lasting, eternal change does not come from their talent or personality but from the power of the Gospel itself. Our heroes are worthy of our following and emulating only in as much they follow and emulate Christ. He is our true Hero. He’s The Hero—I started to say “behind the hero”—ahead of the hero. Any hero we follow should be wholly following Christ. Our heroes are not best chosen from the popularity pantheon of the big names, the widely known, the exceptionally talented on the wider stage of the world, but from those faithfully consistently serving God in our own homes, churches, and communities. Don’t look for charisma. Look for faithfulness. That’s the metric God uses to judge the stature of a person. Certainly, we should judge our heroes as He does. For every well-known Christian figure who falls into moral failure, there are millions of faithful laborers in their hidden corner of the Kingdom who never morally fail, never violate the trust put in them, never shame the role they fill, never err from the truth. It may sound platitudinal, but we would be better served if our heroes were chosen from the faithful folks we know. The faithful mother of small children, the faithful elder who has never varied in his devotion to Christ, the faithful Sunday School teacher who has taught three generations, the faithful local pastor who consistently studies and preaches the Word, the faithful youth pastor, the faithful church-secretary, the faithful deacon, all serving us among us. These often unheralded, unseen, faithful servants of God, these are heroes we can and should have. Can’t we have any heroes? We do have them. We’ve just been looking for them in the wrong places.