Choose Your Hero: A Good Man is Hard to Find

Nearly every movie, book, or TV show has shifted from good vs. evil to bad vs. worse. The heroes from the past no longer exist. Heroes in the past used to represent admirable role models. But as Flannery O’Connor wrote, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.”

Stories used to portray discernible character differences tied to moral absolutes. White hats vs. black hats has morphed into 50 shades of gray, and black holes in space where character distinction no longer matters. The outlines have blurred. Dark hearts conceal themselves under public image management. Every character does as he sees fit.

Numerous factors and myriad inputs affect the moral compass each of us carries inside our own heads and hearts. Invisible to others, the needle spins, but where does the needle point? What needle? Contemporary culture hands us a compass without markings. We are all lost.

As observers of other people’s stories, who can you and I root for? When the choice comes down to two evils, do you and I calculate and then evaluate the ”lesser evil?” Relative judgment is just that. Relative. And without a moral standard, how can anyone claim injustice?

Flannery O’Connor Stories

Not long ago, I visited Flannery’s home in Milledgeville, Georgia. I’d visited her childhood home in Savanah years ago when I attended my nephew’s wedding. Considered one of the great literary writers of the twentieth century, Flannery O’Connor’s stories are dark.

“A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a short story about a family of six taking a vacation trip from Georgia to Florida. Grandma wants to go to Tennessee instead, so she warns her son Bailey that escaped convicts are in Florida. On their way, Grandma prattles about how good things were in the past, finally persuading her son to turn off the highway to a plantation she remembered visiting when she was young. Wrong road. Wrong turn. When Grandma’s cat causes Bailey to land the car in a ditch on the isolated backroad, the family encounters the three escaped convicts. Grandmother believes she is a good person and can talk the criminal called “the Misfit” into letting them go. She says to him, “Well then, why don’t you pray?” she asked trembling with delight suddenly. (No spoilers here.)

O’Connor was a devout Catholic. In a convoluted way, her stories have moral lessons.

Flannery’s title for her story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” makes me think of Jesus’ encounter with the rich ruler. Matthew’s gospel records the incident when a man called Jesus “Good Master,” and then asked Jesus “what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16). Jesus replied, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only One who is good.” The KJV specifies that Jesus said, “that is God.”

Using the word “Good”

Jesus’ encounter with a person who believed himself good gives me pause about the ways I use the word good.

My husband and I watched the movie NYAD last week. It’s a story about an Olympic swimmer who at age 60 trained to swim from Cuba to the Florida Keys, something she had attempted at age 28 and failed.

After the movie ended, I said, “It was a good movie. But not a good story.” No “good” characters.

Why? Because the characters were not admirable. A narcissistic egotist (“exaggerated sense of self-importance”) who manipulates people to get what she wants regardless of the effects on the people she involves in her quest is not a character to root for. However, other people’s motivations vary widely for what they do, and it’s their story to live.

What I realized as I thought about the word good, you and I use it to describe all sorts of things. It was a good day. It was a good meal. It was a good game. I feel good.

The dictionary defines the noun good:  something conforming to the moral order of the universe

Out of hard circumstances can come deep insight.

Flannery had Lupus and died at age 39. Her father also had died from Lupus. The last years of Flannery’s life were spent on the farm where she and her mother raised peacocks and maintained a dairy.

The guide at Andalusia told my husband and me how Flannery’s mother prodded her to practice playing the piano. Flannery did not want to play piano. Flannery wanted to write stories.

Flannery discovered that when she did play, the peacocks would screech and scream, irritating her mother. Who won that argument?

I hadn’t even heard of Flannery O’Connor until I went to seminary. Looking back, I realize how many doors opened to me during those four years. For a creative project, I wrote essays about doors, and I created a DOORS calendar with this picture on a page from that calendar and a Flannery O’Connor quote.

My husband and I had visited Dachau concentration camp during that time, a mute reminder of man’s inhumanity to man. What struck me then was how close the concentration camp, the barracks, the crematorium were to the town. Dachau served as a prototype for the subsequent and numerous concentration camps built for “the removal of enemies of the Reich.”

What’s that quote about when “good men” do nothing?

Wrenching indictment.

And from that not so distant time in world history and from writers like Flannery O’Connor, readers have access to stories where we can imagine ourselves caught unawares, unprepared to respond to evil.

Stories in the Bible tell the truth about people to help us learn about ourselves and others.

Belief in God, in what the Bible tells people about God’s character, describing his holiness, his wrath, and ultimately his judgment, reminds readers and hearers of this timeless message filled with warning. There is no place and no time to hide and watch. Everyone among us falls short of the glory of God and miscalculates the timing of God’s perfect justice.

Flannery O’Connor was right. The best stories help us to see ourselves and imagine God’s hand of judgment descending upon us, because apart from Jesus Christ no one is good enough.

What I realized about how I use the word good, while it’s okay to describe things I like, stating my preferences, opinions, and referring to experiences, I ought to avoid using the word good to describe people.

When a journalist asked G.K. Chesterton what’s wrong with the world, the British wit and theologian answered, “I am.”