A SLICE OF PIE: Jesus -- 21st Century Superhero?

(Sorry, sorry, sorry! Mid-semester finals, family happenings and life conspired to make this late. Usually it's up before dawn! Enjoy and comment!)

When I first came up with the idea for this essay, I had just watched, HANCOCK, one of actor Will Smith’s recent movies. In it, Hancock, who appears to be a superhero is actually the last of several gods and goddesses, angels. “Immortals” as Mary Embrey calls herself and her linked husband, Hancock.

While it might not be a new idea, I’ve often wondered if Jesus might have taken the guise of a superhero had He come to Earth in the early part of the 21st Century.

I’m sure some would argue that he would have been just a normal, average, everyday person. I don’t disagree. After his birth and a few other events that fulfilled Scripture (though some argue that He didn’t fulfill any of them, others that the Scriptures were edited to contain Him, others still that He didn’t even exist (though He is recorded in the Roman records of the time and His life and that of the early church is written by the Greek Eusebius)), He pretty much stayed under the radar until He was 33. Then suddenly, He was a super.

So if He had come today, would He have appeared in tights – or black leather, as spandex superheroes seem to be out of fashion now? Would He have saved humanity from itself? Would He have found Osama bin Laden – better yet, would He have caught and grounded the planes BEFORE they hit the Twin Towers? Would he have picked up Harris and Klebold before they massacred twelve students and a teacher at Columbine? Would He have intercepted the Enola Gay before it delivered its cargo to Hiroshima?

Those are all good questions and ones I leave for you to ponder – or argue, or for me to take up in a later PIE. But for now, I will suggest that Jesus Carpenter would have done none of the above.

He came to save us from ourselves, not in a physical way as the Jews of the time expected so that we could live a few extra years; but He came to save us from our sins so that we might live FOREVER.

∞.

If THAT ain’t super, I don’t know what is.