Boe, Jefferson, Daly, Luther: imperfection, failure

Lars W. Boe, St. Olaf College President 1918-42

Yesterday we looked at Lars W. Boe's 1934 commencement address delivered at Augsburg College.  There is so much to admire about the man, including his support of woman's suffrage and his efforts to raise the academic standards of the college.  But, in this talk and elsewhere we find that he was not too astute about the dangers of fascism in Italy and Germany in the early 1930s.  He seems to sympathize with the notion that in times of crisis rule by the law can be exchanged for rule by a person.  Just what he knew about what was going on in Germany and Italy, we don't know.  He had traveled there not long before and he had professional contacts through his involvement in international, cooperative Lutheran circles.   If he didn't notice or didn't understand what was happening or endorsed what we prefer that he had not, he was not alone and yet, with hindsight, we are inclined to judge his errors in judgment.  Once again, as in the case of Thomas Jefferson and slavery (as well as his attitudes about Native Americans), and feminist theologian Mary Daly and racism, and reformer Martin Luther and the Jews, we are confronted with the imperfection of those we admire, with their failure to see everything the way we d0.

This takes me back to Bill Holm, specifically to his plea that all of us look honestly as our own mistakes and take responsibility for them.  I wonder if one reason we are disturbed by the flaws and failures of those we admire is that those imperfections remind us of our own?  Can facing these collectively help us deal honestly and kindly both with the past and with ourselves?  This is not a plea for disregarding the failure, but for repair.  Holm wants the honest recognition of failures--both to live up to our ideals that are admirable and to false standards of success which are not--to be harnessed to responsibility.

While the dead can not change what they did or did not do, we can.  Thus we build upon the foundations laid by others as well as learning from them to avoid their mistakes.