I Need a Hero

One of my earliest memories as a child was watching my father face death.

When I was about five years old, we lived across the street from an apartment building that was somewhat disreputable. One day, we heard a loud confrontation going on out in the street. The landlord who owned the building was arguing with a tenant who owed back rent. While we watched, the tenant reached in the back of his pickup truck and pulled out a wooden tomato stake and hit the landlord in the head, knocking him to the ground where he lay crumpled. My father (who was a former ambulance attendant) instructed my mom to call the police and then he went out front.

While we watched fearfully from the upstairs window, my father walked up to the angry tenant who was still yelling and waiving the stick at the unconscious and possibly dead landlord on the ground. As my father approached, the man turned the stick towards him and demanded to know if he, “wants some too.” Dad told the angry man that he was just there to check on the injured man and then he turned his back to the tenant and began checking on the landlord.
With that, sirens began in the distant and the tenant jumped in his truck and roared off down the street out of sight. We found out later that he was captured at gunpoint a few blocks away as he drove right into the oncoming police.

A few years ago, there was a woman brutally beaten and then raped in South Mountain park, while bystanders watched, unwilling to get involved. Since then, I have seen this story repeated dozens of times in different localities by different people, always the same outcome. Someone is attacked and other people stand by doing nothing, out of fear or apathy.

Where are the superheroes? Where are the warriors? Where are the knights in armor charging in on white steeds with swords slashing? Where is the cowboy in the white hat with guns ablazing?

Moral responsibility doesn’t require superheroes, knights, cowboys, or other fictional heroes. It requires ordinary people who have had moral upbringing to stand up through fear and do the right thing.

And moral upbringing, my friends, is where we are falling down.

As a nation, we have begun raising generation after generation of morally crippled individuals.

The Shema of Judaism (found in Deuteronomy 6 for Christians) says, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one, Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up…”

Did you catch that? “Impress them on your children.” That’s an imperative. It doesn’t say, “if your children ask,” it instructs us to do something about it. Then, it goes further. The instruction isn’t just once. It isn’t just in school. It is not just at church. It says, “Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up…”

As a youth minister, I am often surprised and appalled at the lack of moral education in the home. Parents bring their kids to church occasionally (not even regularly) and expect them to get their ‘dose of morality’ that way.

On more than one occasion, I have had parents who don’t regularly attend church call me up to ask me to deal with some issue that their child is facing. “My child is cheating in school…”, “My child is lying to me…”, “My child is hanging around with the wrong crowd”, “My child is_________.” They then say something along the lines of, “I told them that the Bible says…” this is generally followed by some misquoted passage or even something that isn’t in the Bible at all.

My question to them is, “How can you expect your child to respect to follow God’s law if you don’t even do so?”

I recently asked my Junior High and High School kids how often their parents talked to them about biblical issues at home. The resulting quiet was deafening.

It is simply impossible for a child to learn right and wrong unless they are exposed to it.

The symptoms are everywhere – steroid use in sports, Enron, Bernie Madoff, cheating scandals at Ivy League schools, the rise in violent youth crimes, and so on.

These things will continue to happen and continue getting worse until the adults of the world begin the simple and vital task of teaching moral values to our children.

My father’s actions so long ago have had a lifelong impact on me. I cannot stand aside watching evil triumph. I do what I do because of this. It may sound cliché, but, All that is required for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.

Let's change the world. You and I. We can do it. We'll teach our children and the kids that we meet about truth and justice, about right and wrong, about love and hate. Let's dare them to stand up for the good and then, let's show them that we live it in our own lives too.

Where have all good men gone

And where are all the gods?

Where’s the street-wise Hercules

To fight the rising odds?

Isn’t there a white knight upon a fiery steed?

Late at night I toss and turn and dream of what I need

I need a hero

I’m holding out for a hero ‘til the end of the night

He’s gotta be strong

And he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight

Lyrics from ‘I Need a Hero’ by Bonnie Tyler