Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.

I want to start off with a disclaimer: this is not based on anything going on in my life right now, it's just a reflection on the past.
The title of this posting is Hebrews 13:7, and it's a verse that I think goes very well with this subject.

There comes a time in every person's life that they realize that their mentors are only human. The person that they used to think was infalible proves to be prone to weakness and shows that they are no better than anyone else. This weakness may be something small, such as them getting sick, or something big, like an unflattering secret being told about their lives. When we are young this hero is often one of our parents, but as we grow older it changes to someone else. Possibly our favorite teacher or coach, maybe a professional in the career that we intend to take, or maybe it's someone that just shows great personal strength. Whatever the case, when that person shows a human weakness we often will discard them and look for someone better. We don't realize that we will never be perfect, and so having a mentor who isn't is not a big deal. We can learn so much from the mistakes of the people who teach us, but often we just judge them without realizing that a lot of what they taught us came from lessons they learned based off of their mistakes. There will even be times that we see things in our lives that we can do better than our mentors, and so often we think that that makes us better. It's an issue of pride that Americans deal with on a regular basis. We see one thing that we're good at and make it th basis of our lives. It's like thinking I'm better than my math teacher because I know English better than her. It's so stupid, and yet we do it with everyone, but it mainly hurts how we see our leaders. How will any of us ever learn if we cannot see past the mistakes of others? We can only fully cooperate and work as a team if we understand our own strnegths and weaknesses as well as those of the people around us. I personally have met a lot of people who have talents that I will never possess, but I know that I can do things that they can't do as well. How do you measure musical ability to scientific knowledge to see who is better? You can't, and yet we all do it every day of our lives. I don't understand why it is that we seem incapable of respecting those who struggle with something that isn't an issue for us. One of my favorite teachers in high school was homosexual, which is not something I agree with, and yet he taught me so much more than any of my other teachers when it came to life skills and how to be respectful. I want to point out that I am not talking about tolerance, respect and tolerance are different things. If I can't respect someone because of a flaw that they have it shows a flaw in me just as much as it does in them. Even though I disagree with his lifestyle I can still respect the wisdom that he has gained through the course of his life, and I can learn from it. That doesn't mean that I approve of his choice, just that I respect his wisdom. It's the same with any person and their sins, if I stopped respecting everyone who has told a lie I couldn't learn from anyone, and that would put me in a very pitiable condition.