Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Princess Leia, Han Solo.  Batman, Superman, Cat Woman, The Joker.  Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Bo Peep, Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head.  Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy. 

To our children, they are superheroes to emulate or gift givers extraordinaire.   Their posters adorn bedroom walls.  Their images on pajamas, slippers, pillowcases and bed comforters assure protection from nocturnal invaders.  Lunch boxes (does anyone use lunch boxes anymore?), backpacks, and underwear with their themes warn school bullies to back off.  They leave gifts unseen around trees, in baskets, and under pillows.

Movies, podcasts, and books (does anyone buy books anymore?) recount their adventures.  Sorry, I’ll stop the parenthetical comments.  What do they all have in common?  They’re NOT REAL.  They DON’T EXIST.  They were all created in the imagination of a human being.  (Sorry if one of my adult readers is crestfallen by this revelation).  Can’t stop myself; it’s a parenthesis compulsion for which I need to see a professional.

If an alien spaceship were to land in Anytown, USA, (I know, such a tired hypothetical) – there I go again; I told you I need treatment.  Anyway, would they not be insistent that residents of Anytown introduce them to these characters held in such high regard?  Would they not cajole, provoke, and persist until our children demonstrated their own alleged superpowers?  And would they not be puzzled, bewildered, and even shocked to find that these were but a cadre of frauds?

Angels, Devils, and Spirits, Oh My!

So here’s my problem.  How do you explain such facile acceptance of imaginary personages in our earthly realm alongside such resistance to and denial of beings in the spiritual realm?  Angels make nice Christmas tree ornaments, but creatures with superpowers? “The Devil made me do it” makes a funny punch line in a comedy skit, but a corrupt angel intent on corrupting humankind?  God “as you understand him” is a helpful bridge to a Higher Power in the Twelve Step program, but what if I completely misunderstand who God is?

Before you sign off prematurely, let me clarify.  My youngest son has a Star Wars comforter and a poster depicting his encounter with Chewbacca in Disney World on his bedroom wall.  Fictional heroes and heroines have long been an indispensable dimension of our human culture, often representing virtue and character of the highest nature.  What concerns me is the dispensing of the indispensable dimension of our supernatural culture.

The social climate is becoming increasingly intolerant of talk about invisible spiritual beings created by an unseen Creator, while embracing and promoting the inventions of Marvel comics.  And yes, it would be comical, if it weren’t so sad.  Maybe intolerant is too strong.  A more widely apt descriptor might be indifferent.  Intolerance involves a struggle between forces.  Indifference implies irrelevance.  This latter condition is all the more distressing.

What’s the Difference?

“It is sad for us to see in our own time that indifference in its many forms is spreading like an epidemic not only among the laity but also among religious. But God is worthy of glory beyond measure, and therefore it is of absolute and supreme importance to seek that glory with all the power of our feeble resources.  Since we are mere creatures, we can never return to him all that is his due (emphasis added).”  So wrote a priest named Maximilian Kolbe sometime prior to his martyrdom in an Auschwitz starvation bunker in 1941.  It is all the more true these eighty years later!

What do you judge to be more alarming: the spread of a global pandemic that threatens our health on this planet or the spread of global indifference towards  God that threatens our well-being for all eternity?

Television newscasts often feature “feel good” stories to close their thirty minute coverage.  Sometimes they are about young children with terminal cancer who are granted one final wish.  I’ve seen a Spiderman character next to a little boy’s hospital bed and Wonder Woman making a surprise appearance at a preteen’s house.  I’d feel a little better about our future if the next child’s dying wish was to meet Francis of Assisi.