When Gods Get Smashed

Suggested Reading:  Romans 12:1-5

Continuing on the Avengers train of thought from yesterday, one of the funniest scenes of the movie came near the climax. The Avengers were battling the evil army from space and Hulk had been smashing everything in sight. Somehow Hulk caught sight of Loki and followed him to Stark Tower where Loki was taking refuge. As Hulk approached Loki, Loki yelled, "Enough! I am a god and I will not be bullied by--" About that time, Hulk grabbed Loki by the feet and smashed him back and forth into the ground several times, leaving Loki with a dazed expression and, seemingly, scared out of his mind. When  the scene finished, my son leaned over to me and said something to the effect of, "That's what Loki gets for saying he was God."

This one moment, however, was not Loki's only expression of superiority. Multiple times throughout the movie, Loki demonstrated how much better he believed himself to be than everyone around him. He felt he could treat other people  however he wanted, at one point comparing the people of Earth to ants and himself to a boot.

Like Loki, though, one of the great human temptations is to believe ourselves to be better than the people around us. We see character flaws in other people that we refuse to see in ourselves. We believe ourselves to be smarter or more reasonable than others. Sometimes, we try to make ourselves feel less arrogant by dismissing other people's inferiority as a product of their poor upbringings or opportunities, thus making it a fluke of circumstances that they are inferior (and it could just as easily have happened to us) but we believe them to be inferior nonetheless.

The flip side of that coin is that we can just as easily believe that we ourselves are inferior to the people around us. We look at the money and opportunities and brains that we believe we lack and we feel inferior to other people. Just as easily as we are tempted to believe in our own superiority, we can be tempted to believe in our own inferiority.

While specifically addressing the first of these two problems, the Apostle Paul addresses them both in Romans 12:3: "For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you" (NIV).  Notice, Paul doesn't say, "Take a sober look at how you compare to others." He says, "Think of yourself with sober judgment." We shouldn't compare ourselves to anyone else to see whether we are superior or inferior. We should simply take a good honest look at ourselves and be real about our own strengths and weaknesses. If God has gifted you with certain abilities then be honest with yourself about them. If there are areas of life where you simply struggle to survive then be honest, but don't start comparing yourself to other people for good or for ill.

Comparing yourself to other people is nothing more than a trap. Take a good, sober look at yourself and don't fall into it.

Losing Your Temper Hulk-Style

Suggested Reading: Ephesians 4:20-32

When The Avengers first came out, one of the characters my son was most looking forward to seeing was the Hulk. At that point in time, everything he had ever seen about the Hulk had been from cartoons or the movies where he only really hurts people who were trying to hurt him. So when Hulk made his first appearance because Bruce Banner got angry my son got scared. If you have heard anything about the movie already you know that the Hulk ends up fighting really well for the good guys but the incident reminded me of Ephesians 4:26, which simply states, "Be angry and do not sin" (HCSB).

Anger is one of those emotions we often misunderstand. We often either think of it as something entirely negative or as something we have no control over. Neither one of these concepts is true. Anger can be an extremely positive force for good if we use it correctly. Jesus used his anger to drive cheats and swindlers out of the house of God. Martin Luther King Jr used his anger to lead the fight against injustice. Anger, if used appropriately, can be the difference between saving life or destroying it, between doing justice and letting evil prevail.

Anger can cloud our judgment and make us reckless, causing us to lash out at anyone in our path like the Hulk does when he made his first appearance in The Avengers. But anger can also be used to motivate us for good when we see injustice or evil and then temper it with intentional, clear thinking. Not all anger is bad, but all anger must be directed in a positive direction or it will eventually tear us apart.

What have you been angry about recently? How did you handle it? If you are angry for a good reason, direct your anger. Don't let your anger direct you.