When Villains Embrace Biblical Strategies

Suggested Reading: John 17:20-26 (A prayer of Jesus)

One of the things I knew about the original Avengers movie going in was that getting the heroes to the point where they could work together was supposed to take a good bit of time. Not only was it difficult for so many powerful people with such legendary egos to work together, but one of the central pillars of the enemy's plan was to get the team of heroes fighting with each other so that they would be too busy to fight the bad guys. Loki understood the principle that Jesus espoused in Mark 3:25, "If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand" (HCSB).

As followers of Christ we, too, have an enemy who seeks to divide us. Our Enemy pits us against one another, encouraging our egos and trying to focus us on our differences. And we seem to help him. We fight over things like which strategies will best reach the lost while never actually employing any of them. We argue and strut over whose biblical interpretation is the most accurate instead of living out the Word of God in our lives. We fight over which sins are the most unforgivable and forget that we will only be forgiven if we forgive others (Matthew 28:21-35). In short, we spend so much time bickering and fighting with each other that we have little time left for the task of reaching the world with the Gospel.

Jesus foresaw our tendency toward infighting and shortsightedness in the Garden of Gethsemane and prayed for us:

I pray not only for these, but also for those who believe in Me through their message. May they all be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I am in You. May they also be one in Us, so the world may believe You sent Me. I have given them the glory You have given Me. May they be one as We are one. I am in them and You are in Me. May they be made completely one, so the world may know You have sent Me and have loved them as You have loved Me.
(John 17:20-23, HCSB)

We may be able to do some good on our own but, like the Avengers, we are stronger when we work together. Let's put our petty differences aside and try to live and work together like Jesus prayed we would. A house divided will never stand.

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.