Who are my heroes?

It came as a bit of a shock (and quandary) when I belatedly noticed that my fictional heroes were not quite the shining heroes I thought they were. I was reading the series, The Belgariad, to my eldest (twelve) when we both realized that certain tenets of the heroes did not sit well with us. One hero is a thief, for example, while another has no trouble lauding how well the main hero, a young boy, could lie. I think it was the same hero who states at some point that a little sin was fine.
  But I continue to read the series to Justin, because I realized that such blatantly false, or imprudent ideas are best handled by clarifying them, rather than pretending that they were never uttered.
  It also elicited some reflection on my own experience, that they did not quite corrupt me to the core in spite of the unfortunate exposure -- in spite of my own inadequacies, of course. There were other exposures in my past that could have led me down diverse disasters of varying gravity. I would be a fool to think that I had steered clear of them by my own lights. :-)