The other day, I got into a conversation with someone
about Superman. This person stated that
she didn’t particularly like Superman; he is her least favorite superhero. I told her that I understood and I think I
do. Superman is the ultimate, clean cut,
pristine good guy. He is, as I’ve said
in this blog before, the gold standard of superheroes. Superman is ethical, moral, and altruistic. Christopher Reeve’s Superman once told Lois
Lane that he didn’t tell lies. How much
more virtuous can you get than that?
It is for this reason that some cannot relate to Superman
(and perhaps why some classify him as their least favorite superhero). But it doesn’t matter; if you try and make
Superman less just, decent, and righteous, you deviate from the fundamental
essence of the Superman character.
Superman really is a boy scout, as he has often been labeled, and that’s
not a bad thing. In such a dark,
cynical, self-seeking world, we need a character like Superman.
Furthermore, some have submitted that Superman is a type,
and picture of Jesus Christ; a fictional character who resembles Christ. For instance, Stephen Skelton devoted an
entire book to this subject in his work “the gospel according to the world’s
greatest superhero”. With that in mind,
check out this apt summation of Superman that Alfred Gough and Miles Millar
gave in a commentary from an episode of the TV show “Smallville”:
“He makes the
right choice. He makes the choice we
wish we would make. He’s a selfless
hero. We’d like to believe, in the right
time, in the right situation, we would do the right thing. Which is why, I think, Superman has been so
endearing over the years.” I
wholeheartedly agree. And this has
obvious Christ-like overtones. In Isaiah
7:15, it states that the Messiah will “reject the wrong and choose the
right.” Does this sound like Jesus to you? Does it sound like Superman? It sure does to me.
Kevin
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