Super God

“It’s a bird! It’s a plane!” No, it’s just some guy in blue tights and a cape. The other night, nothing was on television (Can you imagine, hundreds of channels and nothing to watch?), and I found myself watching the movie Hollywoodland. It is the story of the mysterious death of George Reeves, the original TV Superman, and I’ll have to say the movie took a little of the “super” out of the man. To tell you the truth, even though I grew up loving the show, I never really thought he looked all that “super.” The suit showed a little more of his body shape than it should have. It was hard to imagine him being “faster than a speeding bullet” or “more powerful than a locomotive” or able to leap much more than a foot off the ground.

My favorite part of the show was when he would demonstrate his many powers to the bad guys; bullets bouncing off of his chest, bending steel with his bare hands, using his x-ray vision to overcome a criminal and save the day. Now that was television! I hated those shows where he was weakened by kryptonite or unable to see through lead. Even though I knew he would win by the end of the show, I didn’t like it when he was vulnerable. Seeing the “man of steel” exposed as a man with a number of human frailties in Hollywoodland reminded me of how alluring the fantasy of invincibility is.

Throughout history, we have often made our gods, super gods. Huge images of the gods of Egypt, Babylon and Mesopotamia were erected to show the immense power of that god; often to instill fear and servitude. The God of the Old and New Testaments was not such a God. Yes, we proclaim our God to be omnipotent (all powerful) and believe God to be the creator of all that is, but the more we learned about the God Yahweh, the more we realized He was never an aloof God. God connected to us by making a covenant with us, became vulnerable in sending us his Son and the only image God ever wanted erected to Him is us. Too often we have tried to make God who we have wanted Him to be, rather than who God has revealed Himself to be. We would rather think of God being responsible for everything than realizing God calls us into a partnership to be responsible with Him. We want God to right the wrongs, overcome the bad and defeat evil at very turn. We want our enemies to be God’s enemies. We want God to rescue us from anything bad that might happen to us, rather than understand that God walks with us through the valleys of life. So, we have blamed God for not fixing something in our lives, blinding us from our responsibility as His partners and seeing His presence loving us through it.

We are created in the image of vulnerability rather than power. It is in giving ourselves to another person that brings the wholeness of humanity, not wielding our power over them. As I think back on it, Superman became a model for little boys. He was the epitome of masculinity. He was powerful, fearless and invincible. To be manly growing up in the 50’s meant to show your muscles, never cry or show that you were hurt and never take a chance on showing your feelings in front of someone else. Most of us took seriously those Charles Atlas ads on the back covers of comic books that said to be a man meant never to let anyone kick sand in your face and get away with it. I am afraid not much has changed.

The Bible calls us to remember that we, not some enormous idol, are the images of God in the world today. God expects us to bring the kingdom of which Jesus taught into reality. It might be fun to imagine there is a being out there fighting “the never ending battle for truth, justice and the American way”, but what makes God “super” is the love that comes out of being vulnerable.