Stupidman

Spiderman -- Peter Parker screws up because he cannot come clean with anyone about his mistakes, and he won't tell anyone who he is. This means that he is fighting his own demons that no one knows about, and his enemy is the only one who knows who he really is. His family and friends are in danger, but he doesn't think it right to tell them the truth... why? "It might put them in harm's way"... dude... THEY ALREADY ARE!

Batman -- Bruce Wayne is awesome, he is by far my favorite superhero, because he's not "super"… He's just a very driven rich guy. However, he falls into the same lie. He helps the Gotham police, but the only one who knows who he is, and therefore the only real friend he has, is his butler. Now, Alfred is awesome, but you need more than one real friend. The Dark Knight is the friend of all of Gotham, but he himself has very little support. No one can survive that, no man at least, we are relational beings and need community…

All this can extend to a ton of heros, all with the same sort of fault: Neo in the Matrix, Superman, both Chuck Norris AND Jack Bauer, Michael Westen, Neil Caffery, shoot… I'm giving away all the shows I watch…

However, this brings me to the question: What's the big beef people have with telling the truth? Does it matter if people can "handle it?" In fact, they will have to deal with the truth being true whether or not you tell it to them.

So called "Superheros" act… well… the way we all do. We don't want help, we think others will think we are weird, strange, DIFFERENT! I know what it is to have a struggle that I didn't want to share, a burden that was my fault and I made it all my own. It didn't work.


Now's the time when I turn this discussion toward the Bible, because that book and it's author mean a lot to me. Paul was guided to write in Galatians 6:2 "Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." Now, these Superheros are all great at that, but they forget to realize that others are there for them too.

In this passage the "burden" we are to bear is from a word that can also be translated "heaviness, weight, trouble." Later in the same passage (Gal 6:5) Paul also says "For each will have to bear his own load." What? Is he contradicting himself? No. The word here is different. Here "load" refers not to a "trouble" but, in the literal, to freight on a ship.
It's the word Jesus uses in Matthew 11:30 -- "For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

Friends, Superheros are great, but it's better to be a real person in this real world. I'm daily learning the wonder that God offers in discipleship, in accountability, in opening up my faults and troubles to others, and listening to them in their distress. Please, seek to be the way you were created to be: a relational being that needs friends, not just acquaintances, that needs love, not just acknowledgement.

Otherwise, I dare say (paraphrasing and taking some liberty) you may save the world and lose yourself.