By Neil Earle
The jury seems pretty unanimous on Warner Brother’s entry into the superhero sweepstakes this summer – “Green Lantern” might not make the cut. The LA Times while praising “the professionalism of the production” claimed the movie only worked in fits and starts. Reviewer Joshua Starnes bravely offered “there’s a good movie in their trying to get out.” But he's also right that there’s too many moving parts – relationships, back stories re the Lantern fellowship, top stars in underdeveloped roles such as Tim Robbins and Angelia Bassett.
“Who is responsible for this mess?” asked the more brutal Detroit News. The Green Lanterns are a universe-wide police force run by a group of ugly heads on stems called “the Immortals.” Earth is threatened because a mysterious evil force that looks like a yellow octopus is moving to take over planets that are fearful of him – he or it feeds on fear. Maybe the News is right – there are aspects of this that seem downright “cartoony,” and even the impressive special effects appear to be trying to hide the fact that the story is weak.
I left the theatre thinking, “Thor was better” even though I enjoyed it in a former comic book addict sort of way. It was only when a personal struggle a day later took me to my prayer closet that I thought of GL in connection with Romans 7. Romans 7 is the famous struggle of St. Paul’s with the dark forces inside him, meaningful words that made me think back to Hal Jordan’s plight in the movie. Yeah, movies have a way of staying with you. Hal is the test pilot (well-played by Ryan Reynolds) who has been chosen by a Green Lantern who crash lands on earth to become the latest member of the fraternity. Oh, yes, don’t forget – green is the color of courage and fearlessness just as yellow is (inexplicably) the color of fear, which the octopus alien manipulates.
Romans 7, you say?
Yes. There’s where the great Saint Paul candidly admits his failures to bridle his own dark forces inside himself, what Jung called the Shadow Self, the evil that we somehow all know is inside us and probably picked up from what some Christians call the Fall (Romans 7:14-18). Freud called it the Id, that seething Stygian mass of drives, desires, forces that churn away inside that erupt at critical times of stress and temptation to make us less than we want to be.
Here’s how Paul put it:
“Yes, I’m full of myself – after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise…It happens so regularly that it is predictable. The moment I decide to do good things, sin is there to trip me up…Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge” (Romans 7, The Message version).
Few people know this. Many could not imagine that the great apostle Paul who wrote more of the New Testament than anyone else had these life and death struggles with what he called “the sin that dwells in me.” And Hal Jordan’s struggle in “The Green Lantern” is to master what seems to be a lack of courage at the crucial points in life. The opening scene shows test pilot Hal skillfully out-maneuvering high-tech fighter planes trying to outfox him and then…for some inexplicable reason, at the moment of success, Hal bails out of his craft. The “why” is never brought out in the movie – one of its flaws – but we infer he is not without fear, and fearlessness is essential in a Green Lantern.
And here comes the “character arc” that makes all movies work. In Hal’s case it is very much tied in with will power. As one reviewer opined, the word “will” comes up so often that apart from the Nazi seizure of the title in their 1930s propaganda film, this movie could easily have been called “Triumph of the Will.” For that’s the movie’s point. Hal has to muster up the courage from deep inside to save earth from the Yellow Octopus Guy.
Hal does of course, or there would be no movie and he would never make the roster of superheroes – which seem primed to return in another green-suited sequel, by the way.
So why talk about this on a church website? Granted that the most-watched movie in history is alleged to be “The Jesus Film” (5 billion viewers) by Campus Crusade for Christ claiming 7 million conversions in India alone, and that the earth and everything in it belongs to God (Psalm 24), then we can assume that the popular arts deserve to be critiqued, assessed and perhaps even enjoyed. This latter is the conclusion of William Romano ski at Calvin College (Pop Culture Wars: Religion and the Role of Entertainment in American Life, page 48). “We cannot run from the new media, “says Bernard Scott of Philips Graduate Seminary, “their very popularity demands explanation.”
What excites some Christians about the sci-fi/superhero format is that it operates on such a big canvas. By setting the story beyond our galaxy they sometimes make us reflect upon our own struggles here on earth. Think of Star Trek (“Not logical, Captain”) and Star Wars (“May the force be with you”). High concept, Hollywood classes it. As Christian move reviewers we could say the movies sometime touch on themes that are well worth exploring amid our exceedingly busy lives. They do that for a while and then there usually comes the Great Divergence from a Christian take on life. In “Green Lantern,” Hal finally musters up the sacrificial courage within himself to master his fear (with the help of a pep talk from his girl friend). St. Paul’s won his battle with the Shadow inside in a totally different way. Like every serious Christian plodder, he had to realize his own helplessness and throw himself upon the help of Christ, the Christian’s universe-ruling Redeemer and Ally (Colossians 1:17). This too is candidly admitted in Romans 7:
“But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it! I decide to do good but I really don’t do it; I decide not to do bad but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.”
It really annoyed the Detroit News that Hal Jordan had such a long protracted struggle (“Someone should slap him”). But that uphill effort to live better and higher is something all Christians know about. The struggle, and the repeated failures. That is why Christian teachers have taught for centuries that God must come to our aid. He has to give us the resources we lack to be unselfish, sacrificing and exhibit kindness as a daily walk (Isaiah 40:39-41). This path is not for sissies. “I’ve tried everything and nothing helps,” Paul added, “I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?”
And his answer? “The answer is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set thing right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God …but I am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.” Martin Luther, the close student of Paul, laid out an answer to all-too-human struggle with weakness in his concept of the “imputed righteousness of Christ.” Christians can only muster up to the great moral Law’s demands when they accept what God has done for them in Christ. What Hal Jordan has to muster up by his own will power, Christians have as a gift given to them freely by the overruling grace of God. Luther put it this way:
“Since the saints are always conscious of their sin, and seek righteousness from God in accordance with his mercy, they are always reckoned as righteous by God. Thus, in their own eyes, and as a matter of fact they are unrighteous. But God reckons them righteous on account of their confession of their sin. In fact, they are sinners; however, they are righteous by the reckoning of a merciful God. Without knowing it they are righteous. Sinners in fact, but righteous in hope.”
Luther’s phrase for this was “the alien righteousness of Christ.” This has to come from outside. A Christian is one who is a sinner and yet righteous, he insisted. How? By God’s grace freely imputed to him through the Holy Spirit inside him or her. As Paul said, “instead of redoubling our own efforts [we] simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us” (Romans 8).
This is too easy for some people and Christian teachers have always known human beings would gum up this simple trusting faith inherent in the Gospel with programs, schemes, assignments, crusades, policies and procedures. Good works have a major part in the Christian life but they begin after our justification by the acceptance of the imputed righteousness of Christ.
Thus Hal Jordan was channeling Luther and Paul and then took off in the human-centered direction. That’s what makes up the movies – a beginning, a muddle and an end, as a friend in the industry once told me. Problem, Defeat, Plan, Battle, and Victory summarizes script doctor John Truby. That’s what’s fascinating about the movies. They are addressing stories that need to be told. But in the end the Christian life revolves around Jesus Christ who is described as “Christ, the Righteousness of God,” not the righteousness of the law or of human will or of any human-concocted scheme. No indeed, but by what Paul described in Philippians 3 as “the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”
Hal Jordan didn’t know about that. Will he find it in the sequel?
(Glendora, CA church pastor Neil Earle holds an MA minor in popular culture studies from the University of Toronto.)