If you judged the value of our content and product based on our character, it’s all garbage. True and good thoughts are true and good independent of who managed to grasp or speak them. So what you had to say was either true and valuable, or not, and doesn’t really have anything to do with you personally. In fact your own ability to express it may have been dependent on your own ability to recognize that you have problems yourself in this area. No one knows the perils of drinking like a drunk who’s seen the fallout ans lost their denial. It doesn’t mean it isn’t a real problem for them.

People are complex. So is value. Kobe was an amazing player. That exists independent of his overall character. And his success (as well as his failure) reflects some strengths as well as some weaknesses of his. I’m not sure we would have the passionate, honest poetry of David if he weren’t also the sort of person to wish death to his enemies and betray his whole kingship for Bathsheba. That isn’t an argument to deny either, it’s an argument that recognizes that both come from who he is, and that in some cases you see it working for good and in others you see it working for bad. And the best stuff often comes when someone becomes aware that who they were was working for bad and tries to speak back against that part of themselves. I think what you wrote is emotionally tangled for you because its in part your own way of confronting something you see in yourself. And that’s a wonderful, brave thing to do.

We need to separate our concepts of the value of content (art, intellectual, political, personal, athletic) from being too closely tied to the person who created it. If we don’t, we’ll naively believe that whatever someone we like says or does must be good, or that whatever someone we don’t like says or does must be terrible, and so give no credit to any independent value that exists outside us. That’s the worst kind of relativism, pure prejudice. It makes the world small and full of injustice and opposition and judgment. We’re all. Just in our own private spheres of value with nothing outside them. We need that independence to prevent us from both mistakes. We need to be able to separate the value of truths and actions from the person, lest we condemn or deify them unjustly (and since we’re all worthy of both, both are always going to seem justified, depending on your personal perspective on that person).

It is good to know the faults of a person who produced something we like, not to destroy the value of what they said, but to keep the divide in our mind clear, that the goodness of their thought or act isn’t some unitary proof of their value and goodness. That’s separate. That’s a complex, interconnected story. Meaning and value exist on many levels, not only a single, reductive one. And we’re all a mixed bag. That’s why righteousness can’t be inherited. It has to come from a dual recognition of your own infinite value as a child of God, as well as your own infinite failure as a person to live up to what you could be, what you know to be true and good.

The Bible isn’t so great or different because the Jews were so awesome. It was different because the Jews were awful, but they knew it and were constantly dealing with it and gaining insights from the realization (and had the courage to face those insights because they also knew they were the loved and chosen people of God). They were the people of God, which tends to produce a unitary positive personal valuation. And they were the most rebellious, most godless people ever, and had it pointed out to them often, which tends to produce a unitary negative personal valuation. And often they flop back and forth between extremes, committing the same mistakes but at different ends of the spectrum.

The reality is much more complex, and that’s where real people and real truth and goodness can actually be got at. The whole point of having both grace and justice, love and the law, in there, is to force you out of the back and forth seesaw between dueling errors. To force you out of the whole system of shallowly assigning value by keeping it tied to just ourselves. If you do that, whether you go for all good or all bad, you’re going to be wrong. You’re going to make a God or devil out of something that isn’t quite either and miss seeing the real truths and goods that transcend us.

I meant this to be short. But my point is, take your own advice. Don’t tie your value to what you claim as truth. And don’t tie the value of what you claim as truth to yourself. It’s either true and helpful or not. Knowing it might help you become a better person, but knowing it doesn’t make you a good person, nor does you being a good person make it true, or you being bad make it false. Just let it be what it is, and take from it what you can, and if you want to share it because you think it helped you, good. Maybe others will find what you found in it, if they’re also like you (or able to understand even if they aren’t). You might even be wrong or, not wrong, but incomplete or unbalanced, about some of it (always likely with us limited humans, who have to speak from our own perspective and experience and. But that’s all for the process of discovery and learning to work out. You’re just your own thing in the process of discovery and learning. Your value is not settled or defined by this or that thing you did or said. Or at least it shouldn’t be. And that’s exactly what you were saying.

I understand, I’m a writer and creative person too. Our thoughts come from our deep selves, they’re a bit of ourselves we try to share with the world. And we hope to find acceptance and appreciation. But we need to guard ourselves from getting too invested in that personalization of value. We need to keep a safe distance to keep our perspective. Or we’ll end up angry at ourselves or angry at others or too pleased with ourselves and too welcoming of others (depending on which reaction we get).

Because writing is so personal, it will always be close to our egos and value judgements. We can’t change that. But knowing it, we can work constantly to correct ourselves against it. So I get why your triggered feelings of personal vulnerability in you and even pre-judgement of yourself. And some of that is useful. And some of it isn’t. Figuring out which is which is hard, and often very inconsistent (sometimes we need a little criticism, sometimes a little assurance). Just don’t let yourself become too reflexively easy at slipping into one or the other.

You’re complex. You will make mistakes with things you say and do, especially the more people are reached or affected by them. And you’ll say and do great things and true thing (even if you aren’t always great or true yourself). Just be proud that you’re staying in the process, living in the complexity. That’s where you can truly be found, and your value, and humanity, and truth and goodness. Stay in that complexity. That’s where life is. That’s where you are and where you should be. The people of God aren’t those who have inherited salvation or damnation, perfect beauty or perfect horridness, much as people in both sacred and secular spheres try to tell us it is. Those people don’t really exist!

The people of God are those who are seeking him. Because only those people even recognize that there’s something bigger than them to seek. That’s why faith, recognition of something greater than what’s right before you (and a desire to seek it), has always been enough.

I did in a dream, last night, wonder if maybe delaying that particular post by a day or so might be a good idea. Not because it’s any more or less true at any time, but only because it’s harder for people to listen and integrate complexity when they’re dealing immediately with pain and shock and tragedy. Sometimes a little pause to let that sink in and cool down a bit allows more room for further reflection. I’m sorry it didn’t occur to me to say so at the time.