I'm willing to guess that many of you, like myself, spent hours of childhood play with a towel precariously tied around your neck and the derring-do of your favorite superhero buzzing in your brain. Batman, Superman, the X-men, these were always my childhood favorites. Their adventures were fodder for my imagination, pushing back the forces of evil and making way for truth, justice, and nap time. Perhaps you were Spider-man web slinging through city streets, Wonder Woman seeking the truth with magical lasso, or Captain America keeping the world safe for democracy.
The point is we have an obsession with superheroes. In June 1938, Superman smashed his way onto newsstands in Action Comics #1, and superheroes have been donning masks and capes in our collective psyche ever since. Just last year, total comic book sales in North America alone neared the half a billion dollar mark according to The Comic Chronicle. Add in the merchandising of toys, cereal, underwear, and of course, the movies and the superhero business hops over $1 Billion in a single bound.
These caped crusaders aren't merely resigned to the lonely halls of geekdom either. A brief look at any major multiplex's marquee will show... superheroes have gone mainstream. Earlier this summer, Marvel's The Avengers assembled on silver screens around the world to positive critical reception and fanboy acclaim. The Hulk and company smashed through the box office on their way to earning over $600 Million domestically as reported by Box Office Mojo. Later this week, Batman hopes to wrest the superhero box office crown away as Christopher Nolan's trilogy closes with The Dark Knight Rises. The film hits theaters this Friday amidst lofty expectations and a media frenzy.
All of this adds up to a lot of money, time, and attention paid to men and women who jump in front of bullets in costumes of long underwear. It begs the question: Why?
I would argue that the answer is as old as time itself.
The current trend of super heroics is hardly the first time that people have been enamored with flamboyant characters wielding otherworldly powers. Various cultures' mythic pantheons of gods and demigods share a thematic thread with our modern superheroes. Thor, Apollo, Mercury, Vishnu and the like are all ways that our ancestors have tried to understand the imperfections in the world around them and hope for renewal. In their collective imaginations, these gods bore the lightning, the sun, and the wind. In various ways the gods of old pushed back evil, were responsible for the cycles of the earth, and would one day destroy foundations of chaotic systems so the world could be reborn in glory and order.
Of course, the story of an anointed individual with world-changing power to wipeout evil, and usher in a new world is hardly a new one to people familiar with the Gospel. Since the Fall of Man, the very beginning of human culture, we have lived in the shadow of the serpent and have looked for that one who would "crush (his) head..."
The story of Jesus Christ didn't begin some 2000 years ago in a humble manger or on a lonely executioner's hill. He has been part of this world since before "in the beginning."
Colossians 1:16-17
"For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and in earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together."
But as a species, we are impatient; we try to understand the world around us by the things we can observe. So we invent gods. Personalities that are selfish and imperfect, yet otherworldly and bearing awesome power. Zeus, Superman, Odin, Iron Man; new and old gods; we invent them in our collected psyche to avoid the unbearable weight of Truth. That we were made in the image of an Almighty God, made to bear His image, but free to choose otherwise. When we fell short of the calling, God responded in ways we don't fully understand, patiently with a focus on the eternal rather than the temporal world we live in and observe. We do know this: at last He came into the world in the form of a man, but not as a ruler or demigod, but a carpenter and teacher. He came and bore the full burden of our sin across all the eons of history on one cross outside Jerusalem. He loved with His very life.
This is difficult to fully grasp. That the primary motivation of the Universe's most powerful entity is life-forfeiting love. Even various church movements throughout the past have had trouble understanding God's fullness and have built various boxes in which to contain Him. We prefer our deities to be stubborn, selfish, fallible. Relatable.
When those old myths ultimately fail us, we turn to ourselves. We deny the spiritual, unobserved world, in favor of cold facts and reason. We seek to capture the sun for ourselves and wield its power on the earth, in the form of atom splitting bombs. We strive for the power to conquer space and time, to make all the world available to us in an instant, so the internet and smartphones make us ubiquitously present. The super myths exist only to spur our imaginations onward, a reflection in individuals of what we as a collective culture of humanity are capable of doing. Secular humanist culture sells the myth that we are heir to their powers and their responsibility. That we have it in ourselves to push back the night and rebuild the world.
And still the world falls into chaos. The story of Christ is unique in that it invites us along side our deity. He redeems and empowers us to take part in renewal
Colossians 1:19-22
"For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation."
Jupiter, Superman, Rama, or Batman could never promise to invite you into the story. The Holy Spirit takes residence within us. God breathes new life into our souls giving us strength and knowledge to do His will. Paul finishes the great invocation of Christ's supremacy from chapter 1 of Colossians with these words:
Colossians 1:28-29
"We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me."
Take up Christ's call to action through His power we can engage in the world around us and present the Gospel to a world shrouded in darkness. Acclaimed comics writer, Grant Morrison, wrote, "We live in the stories we tell ourselves." Tell yourself and those you love the story of God come to earth to redeem the world. That He loved each of us enough to lay down His life, then took it up again to be the firstborn of a new race of humanity, indwelt with God's own Spirit. See how that affects the world we live in...
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