Hero or Saint?
Hero or Saint?
Brian Zahnd
In the Western world we are deeply conditioned to choose the heroic over the saintly. We love our heroes best of all. Heroes are goal-oriented people of great capabilities who know how to make things happen. We admire their ability to get things done and shape the world according to their will. Saints on the other hand — especially to the American mind — seem quaint and marginal, occupying religious spheres on the periphery of the action. We want to be heroes, we don’t really want to be saints. The difference between the heroic vision and the saintly vision is a fundamentally different way of viewing the purpose of life.
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