Skip to main content

Jack Bauer Isn't Real?

I read on someone's blog this week that Jack Bauer isn't real (http://bradclemons.blogspot.com) You can imagine my horror at such a suggestion! Without Jack, America as we know it, would have been destroyed seven times over (and counting).

I love super heroes like Jack: Superman, Spiderman, Batman, Ironman, John McClane, Frodo. The list goes on and on. Why? Why do I come away from super-hero movies sighing in contentment? Why does everything in my world align when a super -hero saves the day? I know the plot is unreal. I know the feats are ridiculous, but I can't help it. These are "feel-good" movies, and I love them. I suppose I could blame it on my brother, Ed, who was an avid Batman fan in the 60's. With only one TV (gasp!), and Ed being my older brother, I either watched Batman or started on homework. Which of those would you choose? So I became an addict in my formative years. Thanks Ed. I'm truly grateful.

Super heros give hope. Sure, the actuality of a super hero is absurd, but nevertheless, their message is clear: in the end, good conquers evil. Super heros take a beating as they fight for truth and justice, but they persevere; they prevail; they win. There comes a time in every hero v villian movie when the villian has the upper hand. The hero is trapped in a madman's diabolical clutches with no apparent means of escape. There he is, he dangles above a vat of boiling oil. The rope that holds him is slowly lowering him into the vat, so he can die a slow painful death one inch at a time. His feet are a milimeter from the surface of the oil. All is surely lost! But wait! Just in the nick of time, he frees his hands! He pulls himself up the rope that had been lowering him to his death. Ah! Sweet safety! But the story isn't over yet. There's still a villian to be caught, and our hero will catch him. Rest assured, he will definitely catch him.

Maybe I love super hero stories because I love metaphors; and super hero movies are metaphors. Metaphors for life itself - life beneath the surface of our smiles. Very few of us will ever literally, physically fight evil, but each one of us fights it within ourselves every day. We see the fallout of lost battles in our relationships and in our attitudes. We see the fallout from others' lost battles in the newspapers and on TV. We see fallout in the eyes of children living on the streets, babies addicted to crack before they're even born. Yeah. We definitely need the hope that super heros give, and amazingly that hope isn't in vain. It rarely looks like God is going to win. As a matter of fact, it often looks like Evil has God tied up and hanging over a vat of boiling oil, but God is the ultimate super hero; and in the end, He wins.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

As A Child

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 18:3 Become like little children? Really? Children are definitely cute and innocent, but that pretty much covers the positive qualities. On the negative side, however, the list is quite a bit lengthier: demanding, dependent, self-centered, messy, often smelly, expensive, and embarrassingly honest. So why? WHY in the world would Jesus tell us to become like little children? WHY in the world would He want that? What was He thinking?! Well, He was a thirty-something year-old bachelor. Maybe He didn't really know what He was talking about when He said that. I mean, if we come to Him like little children, it's pretty much guaranteed to be messy. We're likely to be crabby, cranky. We might be downright angry. Prayer-ADD is hard to control on a good day. If we're not on top of it, if we don't have our list in front of us to focus our thoughts, we...
4 comments
Read more

Believing the Lies

My husband and I recently watched The Help - a story about a group of African American women who worked as maids in Jackson, Mississippi in the '60s. One of the protagonists works for a woman "who got no b'ness havin' babies." This woman, this family maid and nanny, tells her little two year old ward regularly, "You is pretty. You is smart. You is impor'ant." How difficult it is for us to believe that about ourselves - really, to believe anything good about ourselves. I always try to be my raw self when I write a blog post. Today is no exception. So I confess that I've been drowning in a storm of lies lately. My head knows they're lies, and I could easily tell anyone else in the same place that they're lies, but I haven't been able to get a grip. There have been so many of them coming at me at once. It seems that I just break the surface, gulp some fresh air of truth then get pulled back under. One thing I know: the enemy of our ...
7 comments
Read more

The Hug That Said It All

I witnessed a hug the other day. Big deal, right? People see other people hug all the time. Yeah, but this was a hug that melted my heart. We attended a graduation party in honor of our nephew. It was held under a pavilion. There was quite a spread of food, and each table was loaded with decorations and favors (very nicely done, Ange!). Obviously a lot of work . . . a lot of love was poured into this party. As the evening wound down, many of us hung around to help clean up. That's the un-fun part of a party. The un-fun part of this party became even more un-fun when, in an attempt to dump a drum of trash into a plastic trash bag, wet, gooey, smelley garbage ended up on the concrete floor of the pavilion. It was rank and disgusting, but my sister-in-law (the afore mentioned "Ange.") cleaned up without complaint. When the graduate meandered by shortly thereafter, I jokingly told him, in a scolding voice, that he had better get down on his knees in gratitude for all his moth...
3 comments
Read more