Where Do Heroes Come From?
28th December 2015
Glenn Harlan Reyholds (“Instapundit”) has an answer.
In my hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., a 15-year-old became a hero the week before Christmas.
Zaevion Dobson, a football player at Fulton High School, threw himself on top of three girls as gang members released a hail of bullets in an apparently random retaliation for a shooting the day before. Zaevion traded his life for the girls’ safety; he died after being struck by a bullet.
Here’s a case where black lives really do matter — this kid gave his life to protect others. That’s what being a hero is all about.
Dobson’s heroism speaks well of his family and his community. Football encourages quick-thinking physicality, but how people react in that split second is a reflection of the values they’ve absorbed over a lifetime. Greater love hath no man, we are told by the Bible, than that he lay down his life for his friends.
We’d like to live in a world where such heroic tendencies are common, but if they were common, then they wouldn’t be heroic, would they? But surely, we’d like to live in a world where selfless heroism is more common.
We would indeed.