..And Other Lies Batman Taught Me (I of III)

God Speaks

The saga with my thumb injury continues.

Over the past six months I have spent countless hours doing and receiving therapy on it. To call it time wasted twiddling my thumbs would be close to the mark. "Twiddling my thumb" would be even closer still.

This is not the life I ordered.

The other day I walked in beautiful sunshine. Laps around the office building where I normally work. Thumb therapy break. May as well do it in the sun, I guess.

As I walked, I ruminated on the time I was wasting, possibly to no use. Who knows. If all goes perfectly, I'll have half the healthy thumb I had before this fiasco began. The other outcomes go downhill from there.

"I am spending my life tending to an injured thumb."

That's not hero stuff. But then I spoke these words to myself:

"What I do is a lot less important than who I am."

The things I can no longer do? They don't define me.

How I react to this loss? Now that says a lot about who I am. It also speaks volume as to how much I trust the God who runs this place.

Who will I become in response to this loss? Will I be bitter? Or will I wait patiently to see how God will work his magic, bringing good out of this mess that is my life.

These were stern words: a silent sermon served up to myself by myself. But I was and am confident that this sermon was faithful to the testimony of the panoply of scriptures.

The Bible is nothing if not a salve for those who are suffering. Pain is the key that makes visible to us the message of hope that was there all along.

But I digress, and besides... someone else is waiting to speak.

Batman Speaks

I went home later that day and ran into my son watching Batman Begins.

Heady stuff.

But as I watched Bruce Wayne recover from a crushing blow to his body delivered via a massive falling beam of wood in a burning home, I turned to my son with a smile.

"He'll be Batman in three minutes, whole and strong. But I'm still unable to recover, after six months, from an accident that happened while I was washing a dish in the kitchen!"

But then came the coup de grâce. A few minutes later, Batman explained a deep truth to the hot chick who wanted to know who it was under the mask. Batman paused dramatically, then turned to her and answered...

"It's Not Who I Am Underneath, But What I Do That Defines Me."

Wait a minute. That sounds familiar. Except it's reversed.

And it's a lie.

Batman may be defined by what he does, and that's cute. It does make for exciting action flicks. But Batman doesn't exist. For the rest of us flesh-and-blood mortals, Batman's fiction doesn't work too well.

We mortals die when 200-Lb ceiling beams fall on us. Heck, a Pyrex casserole pan was enough to do me in!

But unlike our fictitious superheroes, we mortals are (thankfully) still useful to God when we're broken messes. Thank God, we're not required to perform our way through a Hollywood CGI extravaganza in order to prove useful to God.

[I can hear the question out there. "Don't we all know this? It's a stupid superhero movie. Don't over-analyze it, Pilgrim!" OK, I hear that thought. But we humans become what we eat, and the lies we hear from our entertainment? They don't flush out of our system so cleanly as all that. That's why I take Batman's message seriously.]

What Batman said was a lie. But I say that principally because he jumped off a tall building just after saying it.

(News flash: Jumping off tall buildings doesn't define who we are.)

But what Batman said is also quite true. Here's what I mean.

Remember the old faith-vs-works conundrum? "Show me your faith without deeds and I will show you my faith by my deeds." We could go around this merry-go-round a few times, and both parties have a point.

Who I am is revealed by what I do. True!! And how.

What I do also changes me. It affects who I become. Also true!! And how.

Both good points, but Batman's saying something else. He's saying, "I am who I am because I save the world."

Jesus could get away with those words, but Batman is out of his depth. He speaks the lie of an output-obsessed culture that no longer know how to face or embrace silence. That, my friends, is cowardice. It takes bravery of a very special sort to faithfully observe Sabbath rests.

The truth is this: I can be priceless to God. While twiddling my thumb.

So can you.

Let that be an encouragement to the both of us.

To Be Continued...