No More Heroes?

It used to be that heroes were straightforward people who liked being heroes, always wanted to do what was right, and never wavered in their resolve. Bad guys were genuinely evil and didn't have a decent bone in their bodies. Everything was clear-cut, black-and-white, no one needed to wonder how things were going to turn out, why the good guy was good or why the bad guy was bad. You hated the guy in black and cheered for the guy in white.

Wow, were we naive. Life is never that simple, people are never that simple. Which is why I think modern culture is seeing those stereotypical 'heroes' vanish. They weren't real, so they couldn't last. We are also seeing the stereotypical 'bad guy' vanish, because no one is evil just because.

Take Megamind as an example. A computer animated movie from Dreamworks, Megamind stars out looking a lot like Superman. But the protagonist isn't the Superman character, called Metro Man, but rather his nemesis, also an alien, called
Megamind.

The reason Megamind is a 'bad guy' is clear from the beginning. He landed in a prison and grew up there, everyone always expected the worst from him, so that's what he became. Metro Man grew up in a happy family and everyone expected the best of him so that's what he became. Eventually, Metro Man just leaves Megamind to run amok (pretty villainous behavior if you ask me), Megamind becomes the hero and a seemingly harmless nerd becomes the villain. All Megamind really wanted was some attention, someone to play with, someone to care about him.

Modern superhero movies show a similar trend. In Spiderman 2, the villain is possessed by mechanical arms, but the person remains good and sacrifices himself at the end. In the TV show Smallville, Clark Kent has to explore his dark side and Lex Luthor is always fighting the good side of himself which his Father systematically works to squash.

We don't want the hero to have it easy, and we don't want him to be perfect. We don't want the bad guy to be rotten to the core, because we can all sympathize with how he feels sometimes and we need to know that redemption is possible. The new Star Wars Trilogy was all about how a good guy turns bad because of good motives. Black and white are still clear, but people are actually gray and have to fight themselves to remain on one side or the other.

Many people say they don't beleive in Christianity because Christians don't act very nice. They are people who fail, fall, stumble, and trip up. They want everyone else to be perfect, but they themselves aren't. So people see the bad example and turn away from the whole idea of Jesus. They know we can't be perfect, and since Christians claim to be, or seem to claim to be, they shut us out.

But the Disciples and early Christians were just the same. They didn't get it, they messed up, they made mistakes and got into shouting matches (Peter and Paul). Yet we still follow their example, learn from their lives, lift them up to be admired as the greatest of the faithful. Why? Because we know they are human, they are like us.

We need to look beyond Megamind's horrible schemes and see the vulnerable blue alien beneath. We need to understand what led the 'bad guys' down their destructive roads. We need to see what people need, what we are denying them in the way of love, companionship, compassion and encouragement. We need to understand that everyone is gray, and not condemn them because they can't seem to stay on the right side. I think in this instance we can learn from modern movies, which are usually so full of trash. This time, the world outside the church has caught hold of a truth that we need to learn from and apply in our own lives.

There are no heroes. There are no villains. There are only people who struggle, struggle, struggle against the forces pushing and pulling them one way or the other. I am not perfect, and neither is anyone else. That's why I need Jesus and his example, and the Disciples and their example. We need to acknowledge the darkness in all of us, and the need in all of us, before we can begin to fix things and make the world right again.