#103 People Are Complicated

I read a fair amount of comic books. If you read my blog regularly, you might've noticed that I'll make at least a passing reference to comics once or twice a month. A lot of comic characters are pretty clearly good or bad. There are some characters who are a mix of good and bad, and I would say on the whole characters are more complicated now than they were in, say, the 1950s and 1960s. But still, in comics there are heroes and villains, and it often isn't hard to tell the difference.

I think that we like to think the world works that way. We like to assume people are either good or bad—period. Generally that means we think we're good and people we like are good while people we don't like are bad. But flesh-and-blood human beings aren't comic characters. People are complicated, and I think we really need to remember that right now. All of us are a mixture of good and bad. If we lose sight of that, we end up in some pretty unhelpful places.

Let's take the whole Justice Brett Kavanaugh debate as an example. Here a group of us seemed to believe that if Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Ms. Christine Blasey Ford as she testified, there was no way he could be a good Supreme Court Justice. But nobody is all bad. As a Christian, I believe that the Holy Spirit graciously keeps us and our world from being as wicked as we could be. We'd like to think that the most moral people would be the most skilled and successful people, but things don't always work that way. You could be the kindest and most loving baker in history but still make dry and bland cupcakes. Or you could be the most selfish and bitter author ever to live but still write amazingly beautiful and touching poetry. Now our good qualities may not be redeeming enough to make others want to be around us, but all of us are capable of doing what is right and doing things well.

On the other hand, a group of us seemed to believe that if Kavanaugh is a respectable person as he and others argued, there was no way he could have done something like commit sexual assault. But nobody is all good. As a Christian, I believe that sin and evil infect every single part of our lives. We'd like to think that we or others we look up to could never do something horribly wrong, but that is not the truth. The evil that we hate in others is inside us, too. Every single on us does things that are wrong. What's more, every single one of us is capable of things we would consider monstrous and horrible. I doubt it would take you long to think of a respected religious or political leader who committed sexual assault or who was deeply racist or sexist. By the grace of God, very few of us will go so far as to do something like take another person's life, but every single one of us wishes someone else were dead at some point, and all of us could murder if we had a bad enough week and let go of our restraints.

So we can't just hero-worship others. The very best of us have flaws and faults that are not respectable in the least. But we can't just dismiss others, either. The very worst of us have gifts and capabilities to help others. Nobody's perfect, and nobody's worthless. We need to be honest about ourselves and others. Seeing the good in others is important if we're going to love and care for them as we should. And seeing the bad in others is important to keep us from trusting them too much or allowing them to hurt someone else. We're all complicated people, neither as good nor as bad as we could be. Those who are supposedly the best of us and those who are supposedly the worst of us are much more similar than different. That should make us humble and careful. Most of all that should make us grateful that God offers us forgiveness us in Christ Jesus, that He shows what it means to be good, and that through the Holy Spirit He helps us to be better than we could be on our own.

Grace and peace,
BMH

P.S. I've got more I'd like to say about sin and its effect on our lives, but this is getting long, so I better save that for next week. Thanks for making it this far, complicated readers.