Heroes

Heroes are those people whom God has used to play a part in shaping our character or influencing our direction. Perhaps there was a pastor or teacher whose encouragement created a desire to excel in a particular area. Seidel, "Life Story and Spiritual Formation."

I have a big dilemma when it comes to the term “heroes.” Since there is no such thing as a perfect human other than Jesus, and God commands us not to worship idols, the only human I can confidently call my hero is Jesus. I believe it is more appropriate to use the term "role model" when we talk about humans. There are certainly many people who I see as role models in my life, and many ancestors who have fought so hard to survive to make the current generation possible.

Recently the Ancestry DNA has matched me up with my second cousin once removed, and I was able to get a bit more information about the ancestral background of my paternal grandfather, who became orphaned at a young age. It turns out that my grandfather’s grandfather, Ju Wang, took the boat from Quanzhou to Taipei during late Ching dynasty (so my paternal line didn’t come to Taiwan as early as we had thought). He brought along his son Cheng Wang, but left behind an elder son in China. Cheng Wang's younger brother Ding Wang was my great grandfather. Ju Wang died young, leaving behind his young children to figure out for themselves how to survive in this strange land. Ding Wang and his wife Xiao-Hu Chen also died quite young, leaving my grandfather orphaned at a young age. Luckily, Cheng Wang adopted my grandfather. These days, despite his dementia, my grandfather still mentions that if his uncle didn’t adopt him back then, he would have been doomed. So I consider Cheng Wang to be a role model, to take on an additional child in an era where resources were very limited and people die like flies.

Ever since an young age, I felt inspired by my parents. To me, the stories of how they broke out of the poverty cycle because of their high achieving abilities sounded heroic. This in turn influenced my worldview and I had been very “performance oriented.” I had the tendency to look up to people who are high achievers. However, in the last five years or so, I gradually found out there is a trap to this type of mindset. I tend to get agitated when I see myself or others being “non-productive.” I have a tendency to see those who contribute more to society as being more valuable than those who don’t. Eventually I came to realise that no matter how dysfunctional an individual is, each human being is made in the image of God, and each human life is equally valuable in God’s eyes.

There are many other role models in my life, in the work place, in church, and some people whose stories I have read about in the Bible and in biographies, eg. George Leslie Mackay. Too many to name, and I believe this learning process will continue for the rest of my life.