Plato taught that in order to have that sudden, tragic downtown or reversal of fortune, a good tragedy had to involve what he called hamartia. The most common definition of hamartia is "a tragic flaw." Odysseus spent twenty years lost at sea because he had the tragic flaw of pride and couldn't resist adding insult to injury to Polyphemus. But believing that hamartia represents some intrinsic character defect, some innate and irredeemable moral corruption, is all based on either a mistranslation or a misunderstanding of the word hamartia as it was used and understood in the original Greek. What hamartia really means is an error in judgment. If we take a moment to think about why tragedies are so effective, this is the only definition that would make sense. If a hero like Odysseus really were an irredeemable scumbag with moral defects and character flaws, then we would see all of the suffering he went through as him getting his just deserts. But we are sad when we read the Odyssey. And why are we sad? Because Odysseus is basically a good guy, a hero even, and all of his suffering comes not because he is rotten to the core, but because he has an error in judgment and makes a bad call. He is tragic because we know that if he had known better, he would have chosen differently, and he would have been able to return home so much sooner. We need to stop believing of ourselves that we have tragic flaws and character defects. We may all experience tragedies in our lives, even tragedies that seem to be completely our fault, but this is not because we are at our core bad or evil or broken beyond repair. All of us are operating with an incomplete understanding of the world around us and the effects that our choices may cause. So often in life, when we make a judgment call, we're going to make the wrong one. We are going to misread the room and we are going to fall flat on our faces and hurt ourselves and others. Why would our Heavenly Father put us in this position? Why would he give us the freedom to choose our own path, but fail to give us enough understanding and light and wisdom to see which path is the correct one? It's because we are not supposed to do this on our own. We are not supposed to lean on our own understanding or trust our own judgment. When Jesus said, "Judge not", He wasn't just talking about not looking down or gossipping about others who are experiencing their own hamartia and tragedies. Our Heavenly Father doesn't want us judging for ourselves because we don't have all of the facts. We don't know the whole story. He doesn't want us running full tilt in pitch black because that is how you run into a brick wall and crack your skull. We should not judge because we are inevitably going to make errors in judgment and learn first hand the tragedy that comes from hamartia. God did not create us to be heroes in a tragedy. He intends for all of us to live happily ever after, with Him. I know that it is tempting in the heat of the moment to judge that we know best, we have all of the facts and our decision feels so right. But the only way to minimize the tragedy in our lives is to trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding, but in all our ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct our paths and help us to navigate through the minefield of tragic errors in judgment.
