Saints are heroes, but heroes are rarely saints.

When nuance was still a word in the American vocabulary, we understood that a hero came with warts. Take Robert E. Lee, for instance. Dwight Eisenhower pronounced Lee “one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation” and kept his portrait in the White House. Franklin Roosevelt described Lee as “a great leader of men” and “one of our greatest American Christians and one of our greatest American gentlemen.” Other presidents have also praised this Confederate general.

Mention Lee today, and you’ll likely be told that he was 1) a slaveholder, and 2) a traitor to the United States. In the last 10 years, we’ve seen his statues torn down in various parts of the country, and in certain publications his name is anathema.

The first charge above brings a verdict of guilty, the second a possible hung jury. My point here is that former presidents and many other historians and commentators have praised Lee to the heavens. Were they deluded? Are we to assume that they didn’t know that Lee owned slaves or joined the Confederate Army in the War of Northern Aggression?

A nuanced portrait of Lee would celebrate his deeds, including his quiet work after the War to reunite the country, while painting in his warts.

The same is true of all our historical figures. We want them to wear halos while sitting in the Oval Office or Congress, or commanding armies in battle. When they bring trouble on themselves through some picadillo or dire wrong, however, we are shocked, shocked! to find that they are made of clay like the rest of us. Our reactions vary from, “Off with their heads,” to headshaking sorrow at their moral shortcomings.

Many of us may hold family members or friends to this same heavenly measuring stick. We rush to judgment when learning of some acquaintance’s wrongdoing, knowing only half the story. A classic case of this harsh critique occurs when hearing about a marital conflict or separation narrated by an aggrieved spouse, our friend, without learning the other side of the story. We pass sentence with only a portion of the evidence at hand, playing judge and jury without qualm.

We react even more strongly when we ourselves are entangled in controversy. For good reasons and bad, lots of people these days are practicing “going no contact” with parents, relatives, or friends who have angered or hurt them. Several people I know are currently engaged in this estrangement, which is increasingly approved by therapists and extolled by some online influencers. Again, deserved or not, the warts win.

Sometimes the results of such judgments can be unintentionally humorous. Many of Donald Trump’s critics despise him for being crass, unsuited to the Oval Office because of his crude behavior. They have a case. He is crass, though some of us find him amusing. But his accusers then assault him with obscenities and personal innuendo. The irony of their own crass reaction seems lost on them.

Is there a way to arrive fairly at a verdict of these figures past and present?

Regarding men and woman from our history books, with certain exceptions we should set them in the context of the era in which they lived rather than judge them by our present standards. Despite speaking out against slavery and issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, some commentators today consider Abraham Lincoln a racist for other remarks he made. Those critics have a point, yet they are guilty of presentism, the evaluation of the past through the moral lens of the present. Again we find irony in these judgments if we pause to consider what future generations will think of a country that aborted millions of babies or spent a fortune miseducating its children.

The same holds true for those closer to us. How many of us, people of all religious and ideological persuasions, have condemned others as if we ourselves are without sin or blemish? Like the hypocrites mentioned in Matthew 7:3-5, we mock the mote in another’s eye while a beam is lodged firmly in our own.

Perhaps, too, we might attempt practicing disinterestedness, that old ideal of unbiased and objective thinking about any given subject, situation, or person. Removing the prejudices of emotion from the courtroom of popular opinion and innuendo would do wonders in our age of unbridled passions and feelings.

Few people in this world are utterly evil, few utterly good. We should celebrate the latter, oppose the former with every ounce of our strength, and evaluate everyone else, warts and all, with an attempt at understanding and cool dispassion.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

Image credit: Martin Falbisoner, CC BY-SA 3.0