I hated the movie Braveheart.

I had high expectations before watching it. I'd heard it lauded by more preachers and Christian authors than I could keep track of. Courageous and inspiring Wallace undoubtedly was, but his thirst for revenge — even to the point of killing a man in his sleep — disturbed me. In what was to me the greatest travesty of the movie, he was also willing to sleep with a married woman — the future queen of England.

The affront to history entailed by this can perhaps be forgiven, but the affront to virtue cannot. Everything about the film ensures that we are deeply on Wallace's side. We feel for the queen as well, and would like to see her loved. Without much thought, we sympathize with an act God calls evil.

Hollywood's finest trick is the propping and painting of evil, giving it an attractive face and a brilliant soundtrack, and pulling us into cahoots with it. Like God, they look upon their creation and call it Good. Unlike God, they're lying.

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I'm a reader and an aspiring novelist. I love stories. As I've grown older, my childhood love of reading has come back — but it's more serious this time, more focused. I'm seeking out heroes. Hollywood's offerings, by and large, leave me starved. I'm looking for heroes to embody truth and encourage me in godliness, but where in the world can I find them?

I've found them in literature.

One of the oldest novels in the English language, Jane Porter's The Scottish Chiefs, also tells the story of William Wallace. The contrast with Braveheart couldn't be stronger. After the martyrdom of his wife (who dies with the words "My Wallace — to God"), Wallace gives himself to the service of God and his people. Mercy marks him in battle. He is surrounded by a group of courageous warriors whose battle prowess is only eclipsed by their love for their leader. Chastity is a key part of his life. He is loved throughout the novel, sweetly and purely, by the beautiful Helen Mar, who marries him in prison the night before his death.

Hollywood has done violence to reality nowhere so villainously as it has to male-female relationships. I'm hard pressed to find anyone in the mythos of the modern world who even thinks purity is a virtue. In our rapidly deteriorating culture, this matter is no place for milksop resistance. Satan has called out the hordes against purity; it takes a battle to defend it.

Rebecca of York, the Jewish heroine of Sir Walter Scott's medieval romance Ivanhoe, is my favorite example of purity under fire. From her first scene, in which she repels the villain's advances by threatening to throw herself off a tower, Rebecca makes it clear that compromise is not an option. Her ringing charge to the man who first kidnaps her and later tries desperately to win her heart in an unexpectedly poignant dance reminds me that purity is about God more than it's about me: "I envy thee not thy faith, which is ever in thy mouth, but never in thy heart nor in thy practice."

The movies employ beautiful people, soft lighting, and emotional music to cause us to equate love with lust in bewildering ways. Rebecca of York, with her practical faith and abiding stubbornness, shines like a silver flash of light in a hazy milieu. Hollywood, I think, would see in her a fool. I see in her a hero: someone who reminds me what love is, and what it isn't.

Old books have taught me a lot about true love, and not only in a romantic sense. It was Jesus who told us what highest love is: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13, KJV). Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, epic in so many ways, is in the end a tale of epic love. Who can forget the pivotal moment when Frodo collapses under the terrible weight of the ring, only to be hoisted onto the back of his faithful Sam?

"Come, Mr. Frodo!" he cried. "I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you and it as well. So up you get! Come on, Mr. Frodo dear! Sam will give you a ride. Just tell him where you want to go, and he'll go."

Sam, in all his simplicity, is perhaps the greatest example of a servant-hero outside of the Bible. He becomes a hero not because he understands the calamity that will ensue if he doesn't, not because he seeks glory, not even because he is committed to seeing the right triumph. He is a hero because he loves.

He's not alone in literature. George MacDonald was a 19th century author who inspired both Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. His characters, in particular his male characters — as unlike the Jack Sparrows and James Bonds of the world as oil is unlike water — live by love. Pride is their greatest enemy; the will of God their greatest good. It's often said that "good" characters are sickly and unsympathetic, even boring. Not so MacDonald's men and women.

Alister MacRuadh, the young Scottish chieftain who is hero of MacDonald's The Highlander's Last Song, engages in a short discussion with the woman he loves moments after proposing marriage:

"What do you think the first duty of married people, Mercy — to each other, I mean?"

"To be always what they look," answered Mercy.

"Yes, but I mean actively. What is their first duty to do toward each other?

"I can't answer that without thinking."

"Isn't it to help the other to do the will of God?"

To which the ever-honest Mercy answers, "I would say yes if I were sure I really meant it." In time, as Alister assures her she will, she comes to mean it — and so do we, as we let MacDonald's vision of God sink in. Though I cannot agree with all of MacDonald's theology, I owe him a debt for teaching me how deeply God is to be loved.

The battle for the imagination, for the dwelling place of the mind, is waged every day. We can sit back and let the world feed us as it will, or we can seek higher things. Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, wrote,

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." (Phil. 4:8, KJV)

Even in this, I can find a heroine to encourage me. Time and time again, L.M. Montgomery's Anne Shirley has given me eyes with which to see life. A quote from the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, in the opening pages of Anne of Avonlea, sings the power of a godly imagination:

Flowers spring to blossom where she walks
The careful ways of duty,
Our hard, stiff lines of life with her
Are flowing curves of beauty.

Anne's imagination enriches everything in her life. It keeps her childlike: alive to the romance and the beauty of creation, fully awake to the image of God. She sees the poetry in cows and kitchens; the power in wonder; the treasure of bosom friends and wrinkled faces. She reminds me that God is telling a story of His own, and if I look carefully, I will see it.

In Anne of the Island, Anne visits with Ruby Gillis, a childhood friend who is dying of tuberculosis. Ruby's fear of death is painful: "I have to die," she says, "and leave everything I care for."

Anne sat in a pain that was almost intolerable. She could not tell comforting falsehoods; and all that Ruby said was so horribly true. She was leaving everything she cared for. She had laid up her treasures on earth only; she had lived solely for the little things of life — the things that pass — forgetting the great things that go onward into eternity.

Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight. The evening had changed something for her. Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been stirred. It must not be with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the shrinking terror of something wholly different — something for which accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth.

L.M. Montgomery's words remind me why this search for heroes is a journey of such importance — why even my hours of entertainment ought to be filled with things that lift me higher. As a believer in Christ, I follow the One whose heart is truly good, the great Servant-King, the warrior who will one day bring freedom to His people. For His sake I desire to pursue purity in thought and deed.

The poet Longfellow said it well: "Excelsior!"