Please note, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is rated PG-13. When Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings came out, I had the opportunity to see it at a drive-thru theater. Next to us was a car with a young family. The father was so nice and switched places with his son, letting him sit in the front seat and have a better view of the movie. It was wonderful to see this love. This family was of some asian descent. When I sat and reflected on this fact, I thought "how great is this for this kid that he gets to see a superhero who looks like him!" This is especially true as frankly many heroes out there are people who look like me. Representation matters, for the same reason we heard in the last post. Once again, as Neil Gaiman paraphrases from the great theologian G.K. Chesterton: Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. Having a hero who looks like you makes it easier to believe that you too can face dragons, even soul-consuming ones like in Shang-Chi. Christians in the West understood this idea early on. Many Western depictions of Jesus don't look like a Middle Eastern Israeli man from the 1st Century A.D. They look like the people who drew them. In our modern age, we can look around and see many other cultures who have done the same. This brings an added dimension to the Incarnation of God in our Lord Jesus Christ. God came to live in this world as a human baby in the form of our Lord Jesus. As Jesus, God lived into the fullness of our humanity, both on a whole and on an individual level. Seeing Jesus as one of us shows God's solidarity with us as well as God's love for us. At the same time, it is helpful for us to understand that Jesus was an ancient Middle Eastern man. That means He wouldn't have looked like all of us, at the very least He wouldn't have looked exactly like me. That doesn't take away from God's solidarity with me or anyone else. If anything it can show how we are all in this journey together with one another, no matter what we look like. As Paul says in Galatians: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Representation matters. We all need heroes who look like us, especially heroes that help us mover closer to God. Shang-Chi does this by helping us look at our own journey through sin, redemption, and forgiveness of self and others. At the same time, we need to be able to view ourselves in others who may not look like us or have the same experiences we do. We can learn how to move closer to God from all different kinds of people, and accepting representation helps us do that.
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Please note, there maybe Spoilers in the Posts below!
The Rev. Trey KennedyHere is my take on how Superheroes and other characters can help us know God better. Categories
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May 2024
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