The Superman Complex
Abstract
What happens when we wish for talents other than our God-given ones, for powers beyond the normal? This article treats this subject matter by relating it to secular and mythical lore.
Article Topics
[ The Doctrine of Man » The Nature of Man ] :: [ The Doctrine of God » The Word of God ] :: [ The Doctrine of the Christian Life » Christian Behavior ] ::
Sometimes I want to be Superman. I imagine myself having such powers, and my mind reels at the opportunities they would afford me. Judging by the sheer quantity of comic books and cartoons out there, it would seem that I am not the only one with such thoughts.
There is nothing wrong, ethically speaking, with such a wish, if it is made with good intentions. To want to protect the world, to save the innocent, are valuable and valid desires, to be applauded and cherished. But they are utterly impossible to realize in true life. As assignable tasks, they are too insurmountable to be achieved, even with such superpowers as possessed by the likes of Superman or the X-men.
Imagine with me that you could harness the power to fly, the lift entire buldings, to put out fires with your breath, to move mountains with your mind. What would you do with such powers? If you were truly inclined to do good, you’d try to prevent disasters from happening, you’d try to save people in danger. And you’d have a full plate ahead of you. A plate so full I doubt you’d have time to sleep at night, not that you’d want to, because you’d feel guilty in the morning if something did happen overnight.
Every time I allowed my mind to wander freely into the land of super powers, I found myself lost there hours later, with a headache and unable to sleep. With infinite power comes infinite responsibility. You’d be your own judge, jury and executioner on how you use that power. Could you sleep with yourself at night knowing that you might not be there to save a person in need, that someone might yell for your help and you wouldn’t show up? People would start accusing you of “sleeping on the job”, of being partial to certain people, towns or countries. Would there be enough time to save everybody everywhere? Think about that. It can’t be done, not even if there was a whole team, not even if there were one of you in every city, like in the cartoons. The responsibility would kill you. You’d find yourself old before your time, depressive, neurotic, paranoid, arthritic and claustrophobic. You had all this power but it wasn’t enough. You spread yourself too thin, and didn’t do much at all.
Let’s face it. We humans aren’t built to take care of the entire world. While it’s nice to think that we could and we would, we’d fail miserably. We simply cannot carry that much weight on our shoulders. Atlas, from Greek mythology, was a god, and even he couldn’t carry the world on his shoulders; this surely was a metaphor akin to the subject matter of this article. He hated the task, and tried to pass it off to anyone through trickery, just to be rid of it. Hercules, the first human attempt at a Superman, couldn’t shoulder the task for more than a few minutes. He was nearly crushed by it.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, before he was crucified, received the responsibility of all the world, people and their sins, past, present and future. Even He, the Son of God, Our Creator, sweated blood and begged his Father not to let Him drink the “cup”, fearing it would be too bitter for him. Nonetheless, he accepted it, and that’s what killed him. On the cross, in his human form, the weight of all our sins, all of the people of this world, the insurmountable responsibility of it all, together with the sheer spiritual distance between Him and His Father (because of the sins he was carrying), finally killed his body, which had already been weakened by starvation, dehydration, the nails of the cross and the repeated whippings. And He was the Son of God. Though born a man, he had lived a sinless life, in constant communication with our Creator, our God. There was none better equipped to be a Superman. He had powers to heal, to calm the weather, to know people’s thoughts, to multiply matter, to fly, and the greatest power of all, to forgive sins. He was and will be the best Superman, and yet he was done in by bearing the responsibility of the entire world. That is not to say he failed. He fully accomplished his purpose. He needed to live a sinless life, witness for all the power of God, plant the seed of the Church, and die in sacrifice for all of us, so that we may have eternal salvation, and he did that. But what killed him was the weight of caring for all of us while in human form.
The kind of responsibility that comes with Superman powers is too much for any of us to bear, and that’s why we need to be thankful to God that none of us has such talents. If we did, we’d either use them for bad, which would be detestable, or for good, in which case we’d be overwhelmed, or we’d do nothing, which would be worse.
Let us each use our God-given talents for all they are worth instead of dreaming about what we could do if we had this or that. Such dreams can only set up conflicts between us and reality, and weaken our spiritual life. We will not be held responsible for dream powers, but we will be held fully accountable for the talents that were given to us. Let us think about this the next time we are tempted to covet what we do not and perhaps should not have.
