Lynette and I just watched Batman Begins and while I watched the film I couldn’t help but think of the protestant reformation. Was I watching Bruce Wayne or Martin Luther and John Calvin – frankly they seem so similar.
The storyline is of course very appealing: terrible abuses of power which have evil personified in a very clear enemy. In the face of such evil, stands the reformer of marbled intent. This marbled intent seems to combine the desire for justice with a theology which places evil at the center of its system, and so we see the reformers wrestle within themselves and yet ultimately they stand against the evil – and so we cheer them on. The reformers always self-define in opposition to the evil-doers.
Centering a theology or an ethic on ridding oneself, ridding Gotham, or ridding the church of evil is a theology that will ultimately fail to offer life in its full. In this kind of system, life is consumed by the fight against evil. In this system to live to is to see evil end did not God create us for more?
While Batman Begins may be one of the better pieces of Protestant Propaganda I have seen in a while, I long for a more robust vision of life. I believe that God’s dream for humanity is greater than ending evil. Calvin and Luther (like
Wayne) used the latest and greatest technologies (reason and the printing press) in combating evil which has proven to simple escalate the development or more technologies. Every time we negatively define ourselves, as in opposition to another we engender relational erosion.
So what am I proposing? After all there can be little doubt about the existence of evil. Am I advocating the poisoning Gotham’s water supply, or the Vatican’s historic abuses of indulgences, or the abuse of children, or those dark places that lurk in me?
Fighting evil with evil leads to evil. Evil wins when we meet it on its own terms. It seems to me that the best to beat evil to is to work toward evil’s fulfillment. To fulfill of evil is to live (note the English reversal evil/live). “Full life” was Christ’s announcement of Reign of God. The Kingdom of God is life in its full; and life in its full seems best understood as living interpersonally connected with God, one another and creation. Death is swallowed up in this kind of God-life. Death is swallowed up in victory when evil meets love.
I believe that this is what Scripture means when it says that “what they meant for evil God meant for good.” If evil can not be fully redeemed then salvation is impossible, and God would be a very poor story teller, however, if the ugliest junk of our world can be redeemed than we have hope, because the story is going to get better we have dreamed possible. If God can take can take the crucifixion of Jesus the Christ and make it beautiful, than you and I can hope in the evil we experience and the evil we perpetrate.
Evil is not an enemy to defeat, rather evil is an opportunity to demonstrate Divine love. The mission of those who have tasted Divine Love is not to destroy but to share what we have tasted. By sharing what we have tasted we participate with God in the creative act of bringing beauty out of chaos as an act of love.
By God’s grace, and by an act of the will, I choose not allow evil to set the rules of engagement – as tempting as it appears for the short term victories are most rewarding – rather, I will to love into my story by faith, in the hope that God will redeem all that was meant for evil.
As best as I am able, and in concert with the Holy Spirit and the faith-community around me, given this time and this place and knowing that I/we will fall short, I choose to let my bat-cape fall to the ground. I choose to love evil into its fullness in Christ Jesus. I choose to let Divine love set the rules of engagement.
peace, dwight
BTW – its a very entertaining movie.
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perspectives
- http://ateam.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2005/6/18/951159.html
- http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/filmforum/050623.html#batman
- http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=graceshaker&static=1969697043
I enjoyed your commentary on Batman Begins. I saw the movie earlier this week with my 17 year old son. Yes it is a dark movie – grappling with how we respond to evil. Do we become bent on revenge? Or become the vigilante who stoops the level of thug. Or do we naively try and set an example of philanthropy that others will aspire to? Here we are given a vision of muscular faith that is put into practice through being as ‘cunning as snakes and innocent as doves." But the telling moment of the movie was toward the end, when Rachel Dawes tells Bruce she’s looking forward to the day when he is freed to emerge as a loving person rather than as a weapon of justice.