What's in a hero?

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

James 4:10 esv

 

What’s in a hero?

As an author my mind is always running in the direction of my manuscripts, even when I’m not thinking about them. An artist can pick out scenes or interesting faces in a crowd with an eye toward the thought of drawing it later, taking in the details to sketch onto paper at the first opportunity. I know this because I have seen my sister and two of my children do it often. Without thought they absorb the details of what they are seeing and later transfer them to paper. That is a talent I do not have. Give me a ruler and a paper and I’ll draw you a slanted line.

But I can do with words what they can do with a pencil. That gift has opened my mind to seeing the world in a way I didn’t know. No matter where I am, who I’m talking to, or what I’m doing without thought my mind is tuned to the little details of life. What does this place and time feel like? How do I describe the smell of coffee? That statement would be great in my work in progress… Basically if I encounter it in life it’s fair game to show up in one of my manuscripts.

If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time you know my heroes are cowboys. If I handed you my computer and you could open up my saved manuscripts you would discover that all but about three of them feature cowboys.

Why?

Because cowboy’s are the epitome of the American West. Think of life in the 1800’s and most people tend to think cowboys. Men in dusters wearing Stetson’s carrying a gun and riding a horse. Or maybe it’s just the people I encounter that think that way. It seems that cowboys are the lingering breed of the men that settled our land, or so says a book I recently looked at in the bookstore.

Because of that they are seen as hero material by a good number of authors. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the shelf of your local bookstore. How many books feature cowboys? Westerns, romance, history… those are all genres that lean heavy on the cowboys. And you need look no further than the calendar section to find plenty of pictures to feed your mind.

I can blame my thoughts of cowboys being heroes on my grandpa. In some ways making my heroes be cowboys is a tribute to the man that I recently lost. I never saw him ride a horse but I never knew him to look like anything but a cowboy, complete with boots and hat.

I have heard others say bad things about him, know of things he did in his life that were anything but honorable, and yet, to me, my grandpa was a great man. His faults did not detract from what he was for me and to me.

What, you might ask, does that have to do with what is in a hero?

 Nothing.

And Everything.

This man that was the first cowboy that ever influenced my life was a cowboy in dress and to an extent in the way he saw life. As an author my characters come out of my imagination, out of the gift that the Lord has given me, but every so often they also come from real people.

I have recently been on the receiving end of some good natured ribbing about my cowboys. The person doing this is just teasing me and I know it but at the same time it has made me stop and look at my fictional heroes. Are they heroes because of the way they dress? Because they’re wearing guns and Stetsons? Or are they heroes because of who they are inside?

I have a manuscript that starts out: A man’s worth was measured by the size of his guns… That one line sets the entire scene. It and the couple of sentences after it place the hero in time and place, they clearly state the kind of man he is. He is a man, strong and willing to face the toughest situation. Because he is a hero and all heroes must live up to their reputation.

But the true worth of a man, the measure of whether or not he has what it takes to be a hero, lies not in the clothes he wears or the tools of his trade. They lie in his walk with the Lord. In his willingness to not only be a hero when needed but in his ability to be humble before God.

Can a man be a hero if he can’t lower himself before God in prayer? Can he be a hero if he doesn’t understand love? Can he be a hero if he lives his life according to his own ideas and not Scripture?