True

by Jay O'Toole

Created on: October 01, 2011

If personal health can be improved at all because "you are what you eat," then mental health and character-building can be enhanced by a similar maxim.  "You are what you read."

If you want to become a disreputable character, then read stories in which the main character is disreputable.

If you want to become a person of excellent character, then read stories in which the lead role-model is a person of excellent character.

"But we are talking about likability, not character," you say?

Given.

It is arguable that individuals with strong character are rarely liked by the masses, since Character rightly ignores popular opinion, and courageously makes the right, (and usually unpopular,) choice.

The quantity and the quality of the humans, who hold "like" in their hearts for the main character is the foundation for the original premise that a main character must always be likable.

"If you try to be liked by everybody, then you will in the end be liked by nobody."  (author unknown)

Intentional or not, the postmodern dogma, "One may not be considered fully matured and truly enlightened, until one is fully certain that one cannot be fully certain about anything," has been in the process of molding the likes and dislikes of generations, (for much of the past century,) in order to create a cohesive continuity of thought in the collective-psyche of Society, which "accepts all thoughts as equally-valid," except for the thought that "all thoughts are not equally valid."

Now, let us restate the origin premise in its tenderized and thoroughly-chewed version.

Posit:  "The main character in a story should always be likable by the audience for whom the author wrote the story."

To clarify and to underscore the premise a few examples would no doubt be appropriate.

1.  The main character of the movie, Braveheart, was not well liked by many of the strong, auxiliary, power-brokers of his day.  

Consequently, the Flower Children of the 1960s and their progeny could be expected to have ignored the movie altogether.  Yet, Braveheart was not written for believers in "peace, without war," at no personal cost.

Braveheart was written to rekindle the man in all males, who passionately hold to the belief in "Peace at great cost."

If a man is truly honest, in a venue that is safe enough for a man to offer a few shares of such a rare commodity, that man will tell you that he would "rather be respected than to be loved."

A man, who watches Braveheart, needing a strong role model to show him how to "fight like a man," even to glorious defeat, without losing his dignity, without losing his self-respect, and while saving face "against all the odds," will weep (in his heart or on his face) with great respect for Braveheart, a man whom he likes intensely.

2.  The exact same message is presented in the opposite format, when one reads the biographies of Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Justin Martyr (as well as every other person in Foxe's Book of Martyrs,) and on a lighter note, the recounting of the Jamaican bobsled team in the Disney movie, Cool Runnings."

In each case, Peace was the weapon that each of these Bravehearts brandished. The ability to endure persecution, and in some cases, death, was the store of munitions by which the enemy was felled.

The verse of hope in the Christian's heart, that includes the words, "...take the gates of hell by violence,..." is equally-applicable, whether that Christian serves his country in a just war or dies for his LORD by enduring violence directed at him or at her.

3.  The Greatest Story Ever Told is the portraying of the life of Jesus Christ, the Babe of Bethlehem, the Child of Nazareth, and Who is arguably history's best-loved and most passionately hated Individual of all time.

Jesus fought the battles of humanity, both actively and passively.

Jesus performed some most excellent "smack-down" in the temple, overthrowing the plans of religious leaders, who were demonstrating racial prejudice and caste discrimination against the less-privileged, for whom they were charged with protecting both physical and spiritual interests.

In these two recorded cases, Jesus was actively fighting for the abused of humanity, just like Braveheart.

These showdowns in the temple proved to be the "tipping point" of the religious leaders' desire to "get Jesus out of the picture."

When these same religious leaders went after Jesus to murder Him with the facade of legality, they used the same method that caused Jesus to oppose them in the temple,...they interrupted His worship in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Three days later, Jesus became the Subject of worship in the garden that surrounded Golgotha's sepulcher.

Was Jesus disliked by more people in the First Century than by those, who liked him?  Arguably so.

Has Jesus been disliked by more people from the First Century into the 21st-Century than by those, who liked him?  Undoubtedly so.

Has Jesus been liked by the people from the First Century into the 21st-Century for whom His life was lived as previously-written by the prophets?  Most excellently so.

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