Who's Your Hero?

So I’m looking through my blogger dashboard, and no, I’m not talking about the dash of some newfangled foreign import. For those who don’t know, it’s just the “home base” at my blog’s website where I can check on all my blog info as well as look through a run down of all the other blogs I follow. So, as I was saying…

I’m looking through my blogger dashboard, checking the updates and I notice a real theme in the latest posts of several blogs I follow. Here are the pictures accompanying these entries. There is a decided "superhero" theme.

First there was the latest incarnation on the web from my friend Dr. Paul Hambrick.

Then there was this entry over at the Cripplegate blog.

And then this on the Pyromaniac site.
(OK, so Spurgeon isn’t “technically” a superhero, although he is to me and many thousands of others).

So I thought maybe I should get in on the theme and do a superhero post myself. I tried for some time to come up with something about the superhero I’d most like to be.

Around our house, we’ve seen a lot of Bibleman. If you haven’t seen it, it’s really cheesy, with some shallow theology, and the newer stuff if worse than the older in both regards (in my humble opinion). But the older ones seemed to take themselves less seriously, with one liner gags often being the best part. And to be honest, the basic idea of having so much Scripture in the mind and on the tongue to face any and all battles is not a horrible concept. Besides, he had a really cool purple and yellow suit!

Then of course, there is Duckman. Not any old Disney reference. When our youngest was born, my sister-in-law had made him a bath towel that was yellow and had a hood sown onto it with a duck bill, eyes, etc. He loves that towel, and regularly wears it around the house as a super hero costume for, of course, Duckman. He’s even drawn and written some Duckman comics, in all the glory only a six-year-old (now seven) can come up with. (He looks oddly a lot like Bibleman with a duck bill!)

As a younger child, I was a comic collector. I loved X-Men, Avengers, Thor, SpiderMan and Captain America; all those characters that are now being made into movies. I guess I happen to share a childhood with today’s money makers in Hollywood. In fact, I still have a couple of crates full of the old mags, saved to make me rich at a collectors convention some day, right?

But instead of talking about my favorite “hero” comic I thought I’d ask the simple question: what is it that draws us to superheroes in the first place. Is it the escape from reality? Is it the desire to be something more? Is it a genuine passion for justice, good triumphing over evil? Is it the love of things going “boom?” Is it the fascination with spandex?

To be honest, I’m not sure. I’m not really that much of a philosopher; I don’t have any real insight into the mindset and heart of mankind. Except for this: I think at our core we know there is something wrong with humanity, and we know there is something more “out there.” Call it a “God shaped hole”, or simply image of God which is a part of all men, I don’t know. I think we just know it’s there.

And I think we all know that the solution to our problem is something that is beyond us. We know we can’t overcome it on our own. We know we need someone greater, someone more powerful, to rescue us. Maybe I’m over analyzing, I don’t know.

I do know that I’m glad God saw fit to provide that rescue for us. I don’t want to trivialize Christ by relegating Him to the “superhero” category. In fact, I think some of the cheesy Christian attempts at art imitation with Jesus as Superman or something is just that: cheesy. Maybe even irreverent.

But the truth is, God sent His Son to come and provide us with a supernatural rescue. He overcame the greatest “villain” of all; no, not Satan, though He took care of him, too. I’m talking about our own sin. Our sin is the super villain that threatens to destroy us and wants to “take over the world.” Praise be to God, Jesus’ death and resurrection has overcome that and rescued us from the clutches of our own sinful hearts.

A hero can be defined as “a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities.” I’d say Jesus certainly qualifies, although it’s a major understatement. He is so much more than that. He is God, after all. Still, when it comes to being rescued, I can’t think of a better place to look.

So, who’s your hero?