The Most Interesting Man in the World

There's this strange belief, that many people share, that for a character to be interesting, he must be flawed. This reasoning caused the director of the Lord of the Rings movies to rewrite Faramir as merely a crappier, less-manly Boromir, irresolute and treacherous, instead of the paragon of virtue, a reminder of the Numenorean blood that still flowed in Gondor, that we find in the books. It is also this reasoning that played a large role in utterly destroying the terrible "adaptations" of the Narnia books. Peter becomes the whiny, petty, utterly selfish would-be king, picking fights in railway stations and engaging in pointless power struggles... and then in the next movie the exact same thing happens to Edmund. All in the name of making the characters interesting by making them flawed.

As if Lucy is not infinitely more interesting than Edmund, or Faramir less interesting than Boromir. 

And we forget (or ignore) that Aslan is easily the most interesting character in the series.

And we forget that of all men, Jesus is easily the most interesting.

Jesus. The only sinless man. The only person who does not have the "fatal flaw" demanded in Greek tragedy. The man who, according to all the secular writers of the world, should be by far the least interesting. And yet he is not. This un-flawed man has not ceased to be talked about in the 2,000 years since his death. He has shaped history, shaped the world, buildings have been built and destroyed, nations have formed and collapsed, laws have been passed and repealed the world over... because of this man. Because of this one, perfectly good, un-flawed, most interesting man. 

The problem is that people view these good men as though their actions were predetermined. "When a character is always good," they say, "You always know what he is going to do." But you do not know. You view "good" as a static state of being. But it is not. It is active, ever more active than evil, which is often a mere slipping into the easier and more "natural" way. Evil is the passive state: Evil accepts the temptation to take the ring, evil accepts the temptation to be whiny and petty and demand the respect you think you deserve. But good... good is active. Good must be active, for it to be good. Good must reject the impulse to take the ring to Osgiliath. Good must actively push against the easy decision to lapse into selfish pride. You can conceive of the Dos Equis man (the 2nd most interesting man in the world) saving an orphanage full of kittens while riding on a flaming motorcycle... it is utterly inconceivable that he should do the easy thing, the "flawed, dynamic, interesting" thing, and let it perish. 

Every moment in the life of a good man is full of struggle and battle: Every battle a battle of life and death, and every victory a heroic victory. It would have been the easy, natural thing for Job to "curse God and die." And yet Job would be a far less interesting man if he had done that. It would have been the easy, natural thing for Jesus to turn stones into bread at Satan's request, or to bow down to Satan and inherit the world without the pain of the cross... and yet the story of Jesus would be far less interesting, and the world would not even have noticed his passing.