Hunting for Heroes

My grandfather died last week, and I’m sorting out what kind of man he was. It feels particularly complicated right now. The most recent stories are from my mom and her siblings as they talked about how belligerent he had become with the nursing home staff and how rudely he had treated his own children, even cussing at them. Losing control of his schedule, his freedom, and even his body made him miserable and mean. My mom had to set boundaries and stop seeing him, for the sake of her own mental health.

But it’s not all bad. Grandpa was also hardworking. He invested generously in missions and Christian education. He modeled commitment to my grandmother. And I know that, in their retirement years, they prayed for me daily. After years of estrangement, we enjoyed a decade or more of mutual encouragement.

Like all people, Grandpa was complex—a mix of virtues and vices. He was sometimes a hero and sometimes a disappointment. If we open the Bible looking for heroes, we’ll be disappointed too. The Bible doesn’t paint people in one dimension. We usually see them, warts and all. After all, they’re human. Sometimes they do the right thing. Sometimes they don’t.

Genesis offers dozens of examples. Here are a few:

• God provided Eve as the solution to Adam’s loneliness and ally in caring for creation. But she let herself be deceived and encouraged Adam to rebel (Genesis 2:15–3:21).
• Noah accomplished a remarkable engineering feat by obeying God but then got drunk and cursed his grandson (Genesis 6:9-22; 9:18-28).
• Abraham trusted God by following him to an unknown land (12:1-3), but then he lied about his wife and let another man take her . . . twice! (Genesis 12:10-20; 20:1-18)
• Sarah experienced a miracle pregnancy in her nineties but abused her servant repeatedly (Genesis 16:1-15; 21:1-5).
• Joseph acted arrogantly as a young man but, with God’s help, saved his family and the entire land of Egypt (Genesis 37:1-10; 45:1-25).
• Judah sold his brother into slavery but later put his own life on the line to save his brother (Genesis 37:26-28; 44:1-34).

Rather than discouraging me, the Bible’s honest portrayal of human foibles gives me hope. God created us with tremendous potential and remarkable dignity. Who we are and what we do matters. At the same time, our failures cannot undermine God’s purposes.

My grandfather wasn’t perfect. He hurt me deeply. But in Genesis, I learn that God works in and through flawed people.

Just so, the world we inherited sometimes looks like God’s intentions. Usually, it doesn’t. Genesis casts a vision for God’s plan to restore all things so that we will experience the world as he intended—as a place to commune with God and each other as we care for the world he made.