April 30, 2017 | PASTOR ZACHARY PUDLO
A Culture Obsessed with Heroes
“Without selflessness there can be no heroism.” When I heard that phrase I couldn’t help but start thinking about heroism. I’m not the only one. We see heroes all over the place in our world. Some of the highest grossing movies over the past several years have been the Marvel movies. Walk down the children’s toys isle in your local store and the number of toys revolving around those characters will shock you. Our culture is obsessed with heroes. Why is that?
Examining Heroism
On its surface, heroism seems very appealing to us. We love people standing up for their moral convictions even in the face of great oppression. But a deeper look at heroism leads to some puzzling findings.
Heroism demands selflessness. In every story, movie or book about heroes the main character is willing to sacrifice his or her own desires for the greater good. It’s the ultimate act of selflessness to see the hero lay down their life for the sake of the people. Fighting for the greater good the hero will do whatever it takes to win the moral battle against the forces of evil. Without the hero’s sacrifice there would be no heroism. Heroism demands sacrifice.
And while so many people in our culture are obsessed with the idea of heroism, it seems almost duplicitous for our culture. Personal sacrifice is not a part of our culture. Our culture is obsessed about the individual. See my notes about the Age of Enlightenment’s effect on our culture’s obsession with the individual in this post (Previous post on “Why Lives Matter”). Our culture is obsessed with individual rights. It glorifies the individual. Heroism is about an individual giving up his or her rights for the greater good of the many. Those two ideologies are completely contradictory and yet our culture is obsessed with them both! Is there any explanation for this schizophrenic culture we live in?
A Cosmic Need
One of the characteristics about heroes that we love is their unwavering commitment to their moral convictions. Ironically, our culture has no answer as to where morals originated. In a 2016 article called Where Do Morals Come From, Yale Professor, Philip Gorski, wrote
The social sciences have an ethics problem. No, I am not referring to the recent scandals about flawed and fudged data in psychology and political science I’m talking about the failure of the social sciences to develop a satisfactory theory of ethical life. A theory that could explain why humans are constantly judging and evaluating, and why we care about other people and what they think of us.
In short, when people claim that morals are important, they cannot explain where morals came from, what their purpose is, and why they are important.
And while our culture and the social sciences haven’t discovered an answer as to where morals come from any person who is in touch with world news would say that our world has a problem with morals. When you see the wars and murder of innocent people, the ruthless greed, the savage attacks and the violence in our world, it’s easy to conclude that something is wrong. Our world is lacking a clear moral path.
A Cosmic Hero
It’s no wonder we love the idea of heroes. Men and women who come as the solution to the evil of the world. One of the most famous heroes of the Bible was David. Before he became king he was just a shepherd. But one day when his father sent him to see how his brothers were as they were off at war, he faced the test of a lifetime. Just a teenager at the time, he went against the Philistines best warrior, Goliath. Goliath stood about 9 feet tall and still David fearlessly went out to slay that Giant with nothing but a slingshot and a few stones in his pouch. David was a hero because he defended not only his people, but also his God from the nonstop mocking of Goliath. He was willing to risk his life to defend what he believed in.
Many will look at the story of David and Goliath as giving us examples to follow. It’s a story about how we must summon the faith and courage to fight the giants in our lives. But when we do that the story really becomes about us. And there are times in our lives when we will face giants too big to handle only reminding us that we are no heroes at all…we are failures.
There is a temptation to do the same with Jesus, the ultimate hero of the Bible. If you read the Bible and the message you take away is that Jesus is an example of how to be loving and accepting of all people then the Bible really becomes all about you. It’s about how you can be the hero. You can overcome evil with good, hatred with love, anger with kindness, impatience with patience etc… The problem with this is that we all have moments of evil, hatred, anger and impatience. When we read the Bible this way we are only reminded of our failures and how we contribute to this world filled with wickedness.
The very point of the story of David and Goliath is that the Israelites needed a hero, someone to rescue them. And the very point of the Bible is that we all need a cosmic hero to save us from ourselves. God uses the heroics of the substitute to save the Israelites and us.
Tim Keller puts it well in his book on Preaching,
Jesus faced the ultimate giants (sin and death) not at the risk of his life but at the cost of his life. But he triumphed through his weakness and now his triumph is ours—his victory is imputed to us. Until I see that Jesus fought the real giants for me, I will never have the courage to be able to fight ordinary giants in life (suffering, disappointment, failure, criticism, hardship). How can I ever fight the “giant” of failure, unless I have a deep security that God will not abandon me? If I see David only as my example, the story will never help me fight the failure/giant. But if I see David as pointing to Jesus as my substitute, whose victory is imputed to me, then I can stand before the failure/giant. In Jesus I am already loved and acclaimed by God. No worldly success can approximate that. I am no longer petrified by failure, because I triumph in Jesus, our true David. Unless I first believe in the one to whom David points, I’ll never become like David at all.
We’re obsessed with heroes because God has placed a cosmic longing for one in our hearts. But that longing can only be satisfied by Jesus, our ultimate hero. When the enemies of your world make you feel like you’re defeated, look to your ultimate hero. Look to Jesus and see how God will never let you be defeated. He will never let the ultimate enemy of Satan take you to his home. Look to Jesus and see your home already prepared in heaven.
