When the thoughts gyrating in my mind ran up against the experience of watching The Avengers yesterday, I found myself with a new frame of reference. Now I don't usually watch superhero movies, partly because I dislike people doing stupid things and cities being destroyed and so on. However, the mere fact that it was a Joss Whedon script was enough to draw me in with delightful quips such as Captain's America's comment: "There's only one God, ma'am, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that."
So, as I mentioned, I can't stand people not doing the right thing and preventing destruction and that is basically the entire premise of any movie where enemies from outer space or elsewhere come with invading armies. As a melancholic evaluating the situation, it is easy to ask how they could make such critical mistakes.
It is the same in our own lives. Why do we choose to believe the lies of the enemy instead of believing in the love of God? Why do we believe we are unlovable, unworthy, that we are destined to fail, that we don't belong, that we have to be the best at everything in order to be okay with who we are, that we must prove our worth even in the sight of God, and so on? Why do we choose to believe things that make us miserable instead of accepting the glorious good news that we are children of the Most High God who has conquered death so that we can live in freedom?
Somehow the lies seem easier to believe.
Maybe we will never know exactly why that is. However, we can look at it from the analogical perspective provided by The Avengers and indeed by any other story that we love.
We can say with this particular example that they ought to have destroyed the tesseract at the very beginning. We can even say that they should have figured out a way to close the portal before so many of the bizarre alien creatures came down. But why didn't they? Dramatically speaking, it wouldn't have been as powerful. If they had destroyed the tesseract at the beginning, there would have been no movie. If they had shut the portal sooner, the potential devastation would have been much less, which means our relief when the good guys finally win would have been substantially less. Ultimately, it manipulates our emotions: the darker it gets and the more hopeless it seems, the more we appreciate the inevitable victory.
Perhaps there is a similar reason for the story of our own lives. If we had everything handed to us on the proverbial silver platter and never had to work hard for faith or virtue, having the truth wouldn't mean much to us. If we never had to struggle, how would we appreciate the victory? If we never had to be saved from our own stupidity and sinfulness and shame, why would we care that we have a Savior?
The superheroes struggled because Loki was smarter than they and continually outwitted them, laughing when they fell into his traps. The devil attacks us in much the same way. Before we know it, we are trapped in a myriad of lies that make no sense when brought into the bright light of day.
Often we never know how dark it is until we quite blaming ourselves and surrender to God's working in our hearts. We want it to be our fault, or we want to blame some person or situation for the evil in our lives, because then we know the problem and we can control it and what we can control we can change our way. Yet that is only a shade of the Pelagian lie—the lie as old as Satan—that we can save ourselves.
We can't.
Only God can save us and He will as often as we turn to Him. He promises to save us from our sins and He is faithful. He waits for the climactic moment—the moment when we can no longer do anything on our own and choose to turn to Him—and then He acts beyond our wildest dreams. And all we need is faith the size of a mustard seed.
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