A war criminal & humanitarian

Tiger Woods is one of the greatest golfers ever, but the last decade has revealed a series of affairs, transgressions, and DUI’s. He’ll play in the Masters this weekend. Is Tiger back? I’m not much of a golf fan, but I’ll keep tabs on him as he makes his way through Augusta National.

Mother Teresa is a saint and a Nobel Peace Prize Winner. She’s also criticized for not giving patients in her clinic adequate medical attention despite pulling in huge sums of money. She had dubious political connections and held dogmatic views on abortion, divorce, and contraception.

Can we accept the good works of people while acknowledging their mistakes and flaws?

While researching WHERE AM I GIVING? I came across an extreme example of this in the life of Anne Spoerry.

Famed paleoanthropologist and conservationist Richard Leakey, said Anne “probably saved more lives than any other individual in east Africa—if not the whole continent.“

Anne, a physician, learned to fly at the age of 45, so she could reach Kenyans who didn’t have access to medical care. She worked with Flying Doctors for 30 years until she died in 1999.

There was a dark reason Anne left France. She was exiled. Anne was a member of the French resistance and was captured by the Nazis during World War II. She was placed in Germany’s only concentration camp for women. When the Nazis asked her to lethally inject some of her fellow patients, she complied. One inmate said that Anne “did not hesitate” and as a doctor herself wondered “how anyone who is a medical doctor or wants to become one could deliberately execute a patient . . . I can only explain it by her fear of reprisals.”

None of this was known until after Anne died and her nephew found a document titled “Central Registry of War Criminals Consolidated Wanted List” in which he found his aunt’s name. [1]

Many of the mobile clinics she supported closed with her passing.

Anne was a convicted war criminal and a humanitarian.

When I was in Kenya, I spent a few days with former gang members who now promote peace. They called themselves The Legend of Kenya. They had committed acts in their former lives that still brought tears to their eyes.

“I’m a victim of crime and I’m a criminal,” Stephen, one of the groups members told me.  “I used to do bad things. My mind was corrupt. I was totally evil.”

He feared mob justice, where, once the community has had enough, they beat you, lay you across a tire, and then light you on fire.

“Now I’m proud to be an agent of peace and a good person,” he said.

“The darkest and best parts of him are in this community,” Rozy the leader of the group said. “People remember him as he was and as he is.”

Now Stephen volunteers at a local hospital.

Giving Rules: If we only accept the good from those who’ve never done bad, we’ll have very little good to celebrate.