“With great powers comes great responsibilities.”
-Spiderman movie
What
do you hear? Lois
Lane: Nothing. Superman: I hear everything. You wrote that the world doesn't need a savior. But every
day I hear people
crying for one.
-Superman
Returns movie
You either die a hero or you live long enough to become
the villain.[1]
-The
dark knight (Batman movie)
With the first quote, we can relate it with God’s calling in
our life and the spiritual gifts He equips us for sake of his kingdom. With the
dwelling of the Holy Spirit, we receive the power; meanwhile we have burden of
responsibilities for sake of God’s kingdom either.
With the second quote, we can see the reality of human
heart. No matter how far people pretend that everything is right, their mind is
always crying for a Savior. Whenever the situation gets worse and goes beyond
our limit, we cry for the one who can better handle it and rescue us.
With the third quote, we can even relate it more to our life
whether professional or spiritual journey. We either die being a contribution
to our peoples or we live long seeing ourselves being a real villain! Its
somehow bitter but deep! Many abuses done in Charismatic and even in Intellectual
sides in name of God’s kingdom have given birth to many villains who live long
enough to corrupt peoples to destruction either by their doctrines or misled
show-offs.
We are indeed familiar with superhero movies and we really
enjoy watching them. Children might watch them from a perspective of
entertainment. But mature peoples can find lots of philosophical quests being
answered in those movies. The movies portray realities of human societies and
mindset.
Meanwhile, superhero movies have a lot to contribute in
understanding the Biblical themes. Whether or not you have ever watched the
movies with such lens, a right and careful tuning of our mind shall reveal it.
The movies indeed act as catalyst in understanding human quest of something
beyond than the common experience of this world.
We get excited when there is demonstration of love and
sacrifices, triumph over evil, realization of responsibilities, goodness
achieved out of evil, transformations in lives of people, and so on in these
movies. Lots of things, superhero movies would have to teach us. In that
spectrum, there are rays of Gospel too. The Biblical picture of a need of
Savior and victory over evil.
Christian Apologist Frank Turek and his son has done a
wonderful job by publishing the book Hollywood Heroes. They have jointly worked
throughout showing how popular TV characters are indeed throwing the Biblical
themes, how they are dealing with hardest philosophical questions of human life
about evil’s existence, why bad things often happen to achieve certain goodness
and so on. The popular characters like Batman, Superman, Iron man, Captain
America, and so forth carry great lessons to teach us besides entertainments.
The book spends fruitful time to discuss all issues of
apologetics, evangelism, and philosophy using a framework of famous superhero
movies. For immature minds, it can lead to idolatry accidently, but for a
matured mind, it can create a tool to convey the Gospel effectively to layman.
The book has been written in such a way that we can related our spiritual
journey with those of fictional superheroes. We can evaluate and analyze
life-troubling practical questions about goodness and strength of God versus
the existence of evil and sufferings, powers and responsibilities, bad things
leading to good outcomes and so forth.
The book is more of contextualizing approach from these
movies with Biblical references to make strong connections. It is extremely
useful to those who are in evangelism services, apologetics and Christian
memers. Peoples can have benefit of learning how the Bible answers greatest
human quests in their own platforms and contexts. Just to make sure, let not
superheroes be idols for us but only a tool of contextualizing the Gospel to
hearts of people who are interested in these fields but with certain cautions
and boundaries.
Superheroes are worth watching characters but their struggle
against evil teaches us something deeper message to understand God’s war
against evil or war of evil against God (perhaps the second line is more
Biblical!). The book doesn’t just give us a tool of contextualizing the Gospel
but also shows where God is greater than all these fictional characters.
Satan literally looted everything of this world for his
glory but we are on a serious mission to retake those all things to glorify God
since God is the creator and everything is of God for his glory. Better to
watch superhero movies with this mindset than to demonize them in a forbidden
level.
Please, go through these blog articles as well:
1) X-men Apocalypse: Are human emotions really that evil?
2) An analysis of an old movie 'No Retreat, No Surrender'
3) Christmas Special: Certain lessons we should learn from Spiderman No Way Home
4) Christmas Special: The First Love
5) Don't just limit Reformation day as Special day or Celebration day!
6) An important message even for theologians and apologists!!!
7) Jesus knows our pain and sorrows
8) I feel: I am different ... 'The Context of Tihar'
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