On Sinners and Saints

“All saints have a past, and all sinners have a future.”

- Anton Chekov

My wife and I have been watching the show Billions on Showtime. It’s about a power struggle between a wealthy hedge fund manager and a powerful U.S. Attorney in New York City. Aside from the fact that the writing, casting and acting are top notch, the show does a very good job of humanizing its characters and showing both their strengths and their (often huge) failings. The most obvious lesson in the show is clear: the same ego that can lead to ultra “success”, can also lead to a painful downfall. Or, as the author Ryan Holiday likes to say , “Ego is the Enemy.”

As lawyers, we’re trained to try and see both sides of an argument, to anticipate the strengths and weaknesses of our own position, as well as that of our opponent. And because of this we tend to view things as less black and white, and people as both sinners and saints. (*Of course, one of the big criticisms of lawyers is that they can never commit to an answer, and I’m often accused of this by my friends).

Yet if you watch the news, read the paper or, God forbid, read the comments to any article online, you’d think we lived in a world dominated by good or evil.

My guess is that most of the people you see lampooned in the news are probably both (there are, of course, some exceptions, but we’ll leave them out of this). The “bad guys” have likely done (or will do) some good things in their lives, and the “good guys” have most certainly done some not so great things in their pasts.

I’ve been thinking about this lately while watching Mark Zuckerberg testify before Congress. In some circles Zuckerberg is hailed as a pioneer; as a visionary for the future. In others he viewed as one of the main people responsible for the downfall of civil discourse and a democratic society (that might keep you awake at night…).

Personally, when I see him, I see both a sinner and a saint. I see a (young) guy, who is very smart, somewhat awkward, supremely ambitious and was painfully naïve; who wanted to start an online company and had the skills to do so. Except that company (quickly) grew in ways that he never imagined possible. Can we look back and say, “You should’ve seen this all coming, it was obvious!”? Of course we can, but that’s somewhat disingenuous and also unhelpful.

Has Zuckerberg set in things in motion that probably should not have happened? Absolutely. Has he also helped millions of people through the Chan Zuckerberg initiative? Absolutely.

In some ways it’s easier to view the world in black and white. It gives us comfort in knowing what box to put people in, and we’re all guilty of it from time to time. Except it’s probably not all that accurate. In our world we’ve worked with people on many occasions who turned out to be much different (for better or worse) than we initially thought, and that always serves as a reminder when we see or hear a story about someone. Because we’re all sinners, and many of us, at some point, are also saints…