Man of Steel: For Little Boys and Theologians Only

If Michael Phillips’ review in the Chicago Tribune is any indication, it seems that critics (and perhaps moviegoers) have finally had it with absurdly over-the-top, literally earth-shattering special effects sequences in big-budget action films.  It is entirely okay, and indeed often preferable, to have a movie climax that does not involve the potential annihilation of the planet.  Perhaps moviegoers are finally realizing the boredom of sheer excess—when every movie plot threatens a major U.S. city with total destruction, it’s just about the same as if none of them did.  This is a conclusion the public has needed for quite a while (and it’s a horn I’ve been tooting for some time—see my review of last summer’s The Bourne Legacy).  In the wake of such special effects love feasts as the Transformers series—and amidst legitimately awesome blockbusters like The Avengers—America is in need of thoughtful, clever, yet simple films.  Fewer special effects, more snappy dialogue, and a focus on plot.

Yes, we have overdosed on special effects, and Man of Steel may have finally alerted folks to this grave fact.  I am relieved to see that there may be light at the end of this decade’s heretofore entirely computer-generated tunnel of explosions.  How ironic, then, that I found myself loving Man of Steel, and cannot bring myself to agree with the lukewarm or unfavorable reviews that some critics and viewers have afforded it.

There are two reasons for this.

First, the battles.  The battles in Man of Steel are completely over-the-top, exhibiting each and every symptom of dumb action movie excess, including but not limited to: extreme close-ups of hand-to-hand combat that obscure the events of the brawl and render it less exciting; unconvincing computer-generated body doubles engaging in unbelievable stunts that likewise diminish the excitement of the movie; an absurd scale that requires not just the combatants, but entire skyscrapers and city blocks to be brought down over the course of the fight; disconcerting collateral damage that calls to mind the presumably grisly fate of countless bystanders, who are totally glossed over in the movie’s narrative; and volume jacked up so high that one exits the theater both dizzy and wondering how to treat a perforated ear drum.

And yet, for all that, the battles are awesome.  They are everything I would hope for in a Superman battle.  Superman punches with marvelous strength; his enemy returns a blow of equal magnitude.  Superman grabs his foe, flies a mile into the air, and slams him back to earth—and leaving his mark in the form of a crater.  Watching the battles in Man of Steel, I was taken back to my childhood, which was filled with epic battles between Godzilla and King Kong, Spider-Man and Venom, and a host of other heroes and monsters who filled my toybox and my coolest daydreams.

I smirked as Superman flew General Zodd up into space, only to be smashed by his villainous foe into an orbiting satellite and thrown back into our atmosphere (both of them catch on fire as they hurtle back down to earth, and of course neither is affected negatively by this development).  Yet the smirk was not one of cynicism, but fraternal enjoyment; I knew that somewhere on the other end of this movie was someone who agreed with me that “it would be really cool if Superman grabbed him and flew up so high that he went into space, and started punching him while he was up there, and then he crashed into a satellite, and they both fell back down to earth and caught on fire…”  You get the picture.  And yes, that also goes for the absolutely awesome scene in which Superman tackles Zodd at lighting speed, rolls him through miles of dirt, punching him savagely all the while, and eventually launches him full speed into a truck filling up at a gas station.  This is in response to Zodd bullying Superman’s earthly Mom (while he’s punching Zodd, he yells, “YOU…THINK…YOU…CAN…THREATEN…MY…MOM!?!”).  For any boy who loves his own Mom, this is seriously fun to watch.

The battles are not perfect.  The effects sometimes look a little unrealistic.  It is unclear how exactly Superman wins the fight (because spoiler alert, he wins).  And they certainly display no sense of subtlety or restraint.  But sometimes we’re not in the mood for restraint.  And what better way to indulge such a mood than in a harmless and basically innocent couple of hours in a movie theater?  If you enjoyed making your action figures bash each other across the living room and get crushed by giant boulders (i.e. sofa cushions) when you were younger, you will definitely enjoy this movie.

On to the second reason I enjoyed Man of Steel: it got me thinking about spiritual things.  I am a Theology guy, and I always comb movies, books, and shows for religious, spiritual, and moral messages.  Whether good or bad, they’re always there.  Man of Steel continues the recent superhero movie trend of self-sacrifice and responsibility so wonderfully inaugurated in 2002’s Spider-Man and continued by later Marvel and Batman films.

However, there is something about this movie that goes much deeper than the others.  Man of Steel transcends mere virtue and, I contend, delves into specifically religious and Christian ideas.  Throughout the movie, Superman is presented as a sort of Christ-figure.  On the surface level: he’s 33 years old, he’s lived a life of relative obscurity leading up to his public career as a wonder-worker, his father is dead by the time he’s an adult and he is very close to his mother, and he is met with varying degrees of both admiration and suspicion by those who encounter him.

On a deeper level, we see Superman/Kal-El/Clark as a blend of humanity and superhumanity; we see him interact with and master forces the like of which any number of humans couldn’t dream of taking on; we see him courted by evil and tempted to abuse his power by prideful superhumans who consider humanity an inferior creation; we see the hope of an entire people resting on his shoulders; we see him engage in a struggle that literally no one else could begin to take up; we see him banish evil with an act of total self-sacrifice.

I will dwell on only one scene to illustrate this point.  When Superman attacks the terraforming machine in the Indian Ocean, he is weakened by the atmospheric changes surrounding the contraption.  After fighting off a set of serpentine metal tendrils in spite of his weakened state, he is forced underneath the full blast of the machine’s world-destroying might.  We see him engulfed in blue energy emanating from the machine, apparently being pushed to the limits of his resilience and strength.  It seems that he might not survive as he scrunches up his face in pain and yells in agony.  Yet just when it seems that he won’t pull through, he launches up against this stream of energy and slices through the machine’s innards in a stunning upward flight.

Perhaps it seems absurd, but this scene got me thinking about Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion.  What I saw in the movie—Superman withstanding a torrent of lethal otherworldly energy and emerging the victor—made me look at Jesus’ act of sacrifice in a new way.  Specifically, it focused my attention on the spiritual aspect of the Passion.  Of course we often consider, especially before Easter, the extreme physical suffering Jesus went through for our sake.  But we must remember that we also believe that, in taking the burden of the cross on his shoulders, Jesus was taking the weight of humanity’s guilt upon himself.  During those awful hours of torture and death, Jesus took up the unfathomable mass of man’s evil, carried it with him along the way to Calvary, and ultimately destroyed every ounce of it.  There was more negative energy—more evil, pain, guilt, shame, regret, horror, hatred, disgust, and misery—concentrated on Jesus Christ at that time than on any other person in history before or since, or ever.  How amazing is that, that he did that for us?  The blue energy that almost killed Superman in this movie is, to me, another way of expressing the spiritual aspect of Jesus’ suffering.
 

Now I should already know the amazing nature of Jesus’ sacrifice, and in some sense I do.  But seeing this computer-generated spectacle on screen today made me realize the magnitude of Christ’s spiritual agony as he faced off against the worst stuff that evil could throw at him.  In taking our guilt upon himself, Christ did the most amazing, heroic, and wonderful thing anyone has ever done or will do.

I may not be making myself clear.  We illustrate and meditate on depictions of the physical suffering of our Savior (and this is good and important).  But how often do we reflect on the spiritual aspect?  How could it have felt to carry the punishment incurred by an entire race of beings on a single man's shoulders?  It is a fearsome thing to consider.  And we just don't think about it when we see a picture of the crucifixion, because it's not something that comes through in a picture, or even in the physical event itself.  Onlookers could not see the burden of sin Jesus took up on his way to Golgotha.  It was and is a spiritual reality, accessed and understood only through faith.  We believe it, but we could never see it with our eyes.

Man of Steel is certainly not a straight allegory of Jesus.  If it was intended to be, it’s a train wreck.  But I don’t think that was the filmmaker’s intention.  Instead, I think the idea here was to illustrate certain Christian ideas and images in interesting ways.  In that sense, the movie is a complete success.

So there you have it: Man of Steel, a film for little boys and theologians.  Go see it.  I think you might enjoy it.

Gay Marriage and Some Facts

I am a die-hard optimist. That is why I am writing this post.

A few more facts about me:

• I love human beings. I believe that we are a human family, connected by our common humanity and our common Source, the Creator. God made each of us in His own image, and that means that we are all endowed with an inherent and infinite dignity that no one can take away. We cannot even get rid of it, ourselves. We are God’s creations, infinitely loved and worthy of infinite love. I’ll say it again: every single one of us—regardless of who we are, where we’ve been, or what we think, say, or do—has infinite worth and dignity. We all deserve respect, love, and reverence. God loves us, and He loves everyone else. This is the central tenet of morality.
• As a Christian, I believe in justice and mercy. While injustice especially gets under my skin, I try to follow the leaning of my master, Christ, who taught that mercy ultimately wins out over justice.
• I love diversity. Although it is comforting to be with your own kind, with what is familiar—and a healthy person accepts this fact—there is also something deep within me that loves what is different. We often find things and people beautiful not because they are like us, but because they are different. This song by Train says it well.  Same can be very attractive, but so can Different. Both are wonderful. Neither is better. 
• What is true of beauty is also true of culture. America draws its strength from diversity and always has. It combines the intellect of Greece and Rome with the wisdom of Jerusalem. It combines the prudence of a republic with the fairness of a democracy. It combines the modest silence of decency with freedom of speech. America takes what is highest and best from every culture it comprises, and welcomes all people of good heart into its fold. Our country is built not on the blood of a race, but the ideals of a community. Diversity is one of our core characteristics.
• I believe that there is wisdom in the past. While it is true that our predecessors sometimes endorsed and lived serious errors—the ones that come to mind are slavery, racism, sexism, and class distinctions, but the list could go on for quite some time—they also had much to commend them. There is great wisdom to be found in the words and deeds of those that came before us on this planet, and they should not be disenfranchised simply because they are dead, as G.K. Chesterton once pointed out.
•  I like to have fun. If you’ve ever spent any length of time with me in an informal setting, you know this. There are few things more wonderful and therapeutic than a good belly laugh, the kind of hilarity that penetrates to your soul and won’t let you stop laughing. Life is good.
•  I support strong gun control. I think that background checks and licenses should be required for purchasing guns from any vendor, and that anyone who opposes such legislation is being quite unreasonable. I further believe that private citizens should only be allowed to own handguns and basic rifles. Nothing fancy, nothing absurd. If shooting deer is your thing, you don't need a Tommy gun to do it. 
• Finally, I think smoking is harmful and self-destructive. It should be completely illegal. 

In short, I (like anyone else) am an individual; I did not emerge from a cookie cutter.

Now that all of that's out of the way, can we have a rational conversation about gay marriage? I am strongly opposed to it. Will you listen to me, now that you know more about me? Or will you shut me out as a bigot, or try to mock me into submission? Can we have a rational conversation about this?

I hope so. Like I said, I’m an optimist.

The Church is the Agent of Christ

Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman.

The following is a brief reflection on the role and purpose of the Church. I wrote it after digesting much material by Bl. John Henry Newman and Maurice Blondel, two Catholic thinkers whose theology was extremely influential on modern theology. Don't be scared off by the phrase "modern theology;" for anyone who doesn't feel much affinity to Karl Rahner, give these two gents a look--you will not be disappointed, I assure you. Anyway, this was written as the result of digesting the thoughts of these two intellectual giants, as well as the mentoring of one of my greatest Theology teachers at Loyola University, Fr. Peter Bernardi. I hope you enjoy it. Keep in mind that my thoughts are not authoritative representations of Church doctrine, but my own meanderings based on what I've learned. I do intend, of course, for all these writings to adhere to Catholic teaching. Enjoy...

Maurice Blondel, looking sharp.

 
One of the jobs of the Church is to preserve the Gospel (not referring only to the 4 books in the New Testament, but to the general "Good News" of Christ and his Resurrection), offering it to the present generation and handing it on to the next. However, Jesus was not a robot who acted mechanically according to divine laws, but a person who acted spontaneously according to divine Love.  Thus, the Church must view itself less as a preserver of information and more as the agent of a life-changing and earth-shaking message.  As the spirit of Christ is continually discerned and lived out by the institution of the Church and in the lives of its members, the Gospel is preserved, offered, and handed on.

St. Peter, the keeper of the keys.

 
The Apostles were profoundly affected by their experience of Christ: seeing the things he did, how he responded to daily occurrences, how he treated other people, and ultimately how he was willing to submit to the Father's will—and, of course, his Resurrection.  In being thus affected they were made able (with the Spirit's help) to gather their experience of Christ into a coherent Gospel message.  So, in every age, the present Church acts as the hands and feet of Christ, doing his work according to the needs of the present historical moment.  But always the Church must remain faithful to its Master and Founder.  Thus, the perennial motto of the Church truly must be: "What would Jesus do?"

Humbly yours,
Joezilla

God Bless You, You Idiot (GBYYI), Part III: Honest to God

This is the third part of a series in which frank confession of a fault paves the way to spiritual enrichment. Enjoy...
 
Solitude often brings about the moments of our greatest peace or our greatest trial.  Jesus knows what I'm talking about.  According to the Gospels, he liked to retreat to deserted spots and commune with the Father—a welcome opportunity to recharge the batteries before stepping back into the fray (see Mk 1:32-39).  I wonder what he prayed about?  We cannot know for sure, but we can guess that these moments gave him the strength he needed to refocus his human nature on the tasks at hand—preaching the kingdom of God and bringing it about through healing, exorcism, and teaching.

But he also knew well the dangerous side of solitude.  He spent forty days in the desert, tested by the devil.  That can't have been a very pleasant experience, though it was a sweet victory he emerged with—proof that God was saving the world through him, and that evil didn't stand a chance.  As soon as Jesus beat the devil in the wilderness, his public ministry began.  Matthew, Mark, and Luke all agree on this decisive point: it was the first critical blow in the battle for humanity.

Like Jesus, we are all "driven into the wilderness" sometimes, forced to face down whatever demons (personal or otherwise) might come to cause us trouble.  Such was my case today.  Extended solitude made me keenly aware of a problematic tendency: I often feel compelled to love certain things even when I know I should be setting my heart on what is higher.  In recent years, life has taught me that trying to answer inner longings with anything other than God inevitably results in frustration and pain.  There is a hole in each of our hearts that only God can fill; "Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in You," as St. Augustine so beautifully put it.  And yet, as much as I realize this in theory, it is still very difficult to put into practice.

Thus it happened that later in the day, I found myself praying like a person sick with a fever, but with no idea of how to cure it.  Thank God (literally), the right prayer came to my lips:

Jesus, teach me to love the right things.

Wishing to learn from the example of the Master, I tried reflecting on what Jesus loves.  Almost immediately, the image of Jesus "moved with compassion" for a leper leaped into my mind (Mk 1:40-42).  Jesus loved that man who came to him and said, "Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean."  Why?  Well, of course, he loved everyone, first and foremost.  But let's look for a deeper answer by asking, Why is that story included in the Gospel?  Perhaps it is to show Jesus' special appreciation for vulnerability.  A severely sick man is ultimately vulnerable; he has no regard for appearances or pretense.  He just wants to get well.  One need only spend a small amount of time in a hospital to discover this.  Hospitals are bastions of vulnerability.

I think Jesus liked the vulnerability of this man, because it was real.  Again, there was no pretense.  He wasn't trying to impress Jesus.  He just wanted to get better.  And Jesus was totally for it:  "'I do wish.  Be made clean.' The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean."

Jesus loves honesty.  So should we, both in other people and in ourselves.  When we identify our weaknesses and bring them to Jesus for healing and restoration, he responds.  He always responds.  I hope you, too, Dear Reader, may be willing to be vulnerable and honest with Christ, because this is the way he wants us.  He can see through our masks.  And he loves what he sees.

Sincerely,
Joezilla

God Bless You, You Idiot (GBYYI), Part II: Love as Attention

This is the second part of a series in which frank confession of a fault paves the way to spiritual enrichment. Enjoy...

I confess: I am a kindergartener when it comes to love.  Now mind you, I'm not talking about dating and romance and that sort of thing.  I make no claims about my ability to sweep a girl off her feet (and were I to make such claims, I wouldn't publish them on this Blog!).  No, I'm talking about real Love, the theological and ethical concept, the kind of love that impels us to capitalize its first letter.  In short, I'm talking about the way Christ teaches us to relate to every other person in our lives.

It's kind of amazing, isn't it?  We are told to love our neighbor as ourself, and we can easily understand this simple dictum.  But do we really live it out?  I often find myself confounded by Jesus' words that follow the Golden Rule in Luke's Gospel:

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. (Lk 6:32-33)

Whenever I read this passage, I have a sort of "Oh, yeah" moment in which I say, "Oh, yeah." I say this because I am reminded of how rarely I live this out in my daily existence.  The autopilot of my life has not been programmed to include this sort of ethic.  And that is an unfortunate fact for me, because this ethic is at the heart of all Christian ethics: God loves every person He created, and so we must love them, too.  All of our interpersonal morality stems from this foundation.

As I said, I often neglect this core teaching of Christ.  I am quite good at loving those who love me.  I respond positively to people who like me, and that makes them like me even more.  It's the exact opposite of a vicious circle.  It's quite wonderful, in fact.  And there's nothing wrong with it.  Provided we don't live for human glory, it is right for us to love those who love us.

But the problem lies in the fact that I don't nurture such love for people who don't love me, or for people who don't know me.  It is a rare and blessed mood that finds me choosing to love the random people I pass on the street.  It is an equally rare and blessed mood that finds me choosing to love my enemies.

What lies at the heart of this problem, for me at least, is a dysfunctional understanding of love.  I often unconsciously fall into the trap of dispatching love in a calculated way, "indirect egotism," in the words of Fr. Robert Barron: "I treat you well so that you will treat me well in return."  When I dispatch love like a general dispatches troops, this is not love at all.  Clearly, I need a higher understanding of love.

I think that this higher understanding can be illustrated by a simple equation:

LOVE = ATTENTION

This is the ideal to strive for: the object of my attention must be the object of my love.  If I am looking at you, talking to you, thinking about you, or anything else, I must also be loving you.

This is what Christ did: "Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said..." (Mk 10:21a).  Jesus loved perfectly.  Yes, sometimes he was stern—like when he healed a man on the Sabbath whose hand was withered, and looked at his critics "with anger," "grieved at their hardness of heart" (see Mk 3:1-6).  But even such a reaction, human as it was, was motivated by care, and charged through and through with love.  He wanted better for them.  Search the Gospels and find me a passage where Jesus acts out of pettiness or hatred.  You won't find one.  He was like us in all things except sin.

Inspirational author Phil Bosmans put it well when he said that we "shouldn't weigh out our love like a grocer."  I am called by my God to love fully, truly, wholeheartedly.  That means working toward making the object of my attention the object of my love.  This is my ideal to strive for, demonstrated so wonderfully by Love Himself.

Attentively (wink wink!),
Joezilla

God Bless You, You Idiot: Confessions of an Imperfect Catholic, Part I

The following is the first of a series of posts in which the frank confession of a fault paves the way to spiritual enrichment.  I hope that reading them proves as helpful to you as writing them does to me.

***

A gray midwinter morning in Chicago, about 11:00.  I was driving to Loyola University, where I studied Theology for two years after college.  Driving from the clean, green, comfy suburbs into the gritty city was an experience I chose to see as an adventure, but sometimes a particularly dangerous driver would threaten to shatter my optimistic view.

Today was one of those days.  A fellow driver, speeding around me on a one-lane street via the the empty parking spaces by the curb, cruised ahead and turned off at a distant intersection.

A surge of anger within was followed by a mild flow of compassion for this impatient motorist, and I felt these words flow naturally to the surface of my thoughts:

God bless you...you idiot.

Those were the exact words.

I drove on, my heart expanding to feel a measure of compassion for this hurried traveler, and laughed at the oxymoronic nature of my "prayer."  But looking back, I realize that even then, my judgment against him remained solid and intact.  Who was I to judge this person?  How could I know, for a fact, whether or not he had a compelling reason to speed around me?  For that matter, how did I know it was even a guy?  I had assumed both the gender and the guilt of this fellow human being.

I assume a lot of things.  And I judge a lot of people.  This, in fact, is the first of many confessions I will be making in this series:  I am one of the most judgmental people I know.  I'll even go so far as to say that if I've met you, I've judged you.  Good, bad, or in-between, I have most definitely judged you in some way.  And I am sorry.

Judging actions is another word for morality, and it is our duty to make such judgments every day.  If we believe in our morality, then it is also our duty to take opportunities to encourage others to follow it.  Otherwise, why do we follow it ourselves?  But judging another person is not our job, and was in fact explicitly warned against by Christ.  My most grievous fault.

Sometimes, oftentimes, my humanity gets the better of me.  "God bless you, you idiot," that very human prayer that came straight from my heart, sums up quite nicely my condition as a Christian.  I've been baptized; my sins were forgiven; my new life has begun.  But like the kingdom of God that Jesus began on earth, my new baptized life has begun in time, and exists incompletely, imperfectly.  I am a fallen creature endowed with supernatural grace; my mundane life is sprinkled with droplets of the divine.  And though I believe the heavenly pull will prove stronger than any human force, I nonetheless find myself weighed down by nature from time to time.

The first step in fixing a problem is acknowledging it.  So in future entries of this series, allow me to get some things off my chest.  In so doing, I hope that you, Dear Reader, will find something that gives you hope and inspires you in your relationships with God, others, and yourself.

Sincerely,
Joezilla

It's Your Call

Life is ultimately the individual’s journey to God. When all its secondary elements—its vain glories and tempting ambitions, even its legitimate obligations and sacred promises—are swept aside, the primal structure of life is dictated by our response to the divine Source from whence we came.

It is with this fact in mind (which has been taught to me by my faith, my earthly mentors, and my own life experience) that I offer this piece of practical advice:

Whenever you find yourself weighed down by negative emotions to the point that they may be hindering your ability to thrive, you must return to the source waters of your identity and go for a swim. Reflect on who you are at your deepest level, what fires your heart and to what and where you feel called to end up. Our vocation is the set of roles and responsibilities that bring forth our truest character, our strongest personality, and our deepest fulfillment. It is the call that, if discerned and followed, will lead us to God.

Thus, at heart, we must often remind ourselves that we are simply men and women in search of our vocation.

There is no shame in exploring this idea, following leads and taking chances to discover where the true path lies. What we might be tempted to see as failure is merely another step on the right path. In fact, the only shame would be to look back at the end of an unfulfilled life and realize the number of opportunities squandered. Instead, let us choose a life marked by the daring choice to find our vocation.

Discernibly,
Joezilla