Superman II came on this morning. I’m watching it right now. And I’ve had a thought.
As most of you know, I’m rather atheistic towards most God-concepts. The one I find most problematic is the one you’re probably most familiar with. You know the one. All-Powerful, All-Knowing, All-Ethical. That guy. He really chaffs my hide. Chiefly because he can do anything. He sees everything, knows everything, can do anything. And the thing that really makes me angry at this pud-monkey is that he chooses not to.
(“Come to ME, Son of Jor-El! KNEEEEL BEFORE ZOD!!!” Good God, does anybody not love this movie?)
So, anyway, this Big and Powerful God, he created the whole universe, including suffering, pain, sorrow, rape, murder, violence, disease, poverty, hunger… you get the idea. And what’s worse, he allows all of this to happen. He wants it to happen. Every horrible act in the world… that’s God’s will. Every murder, every theft, every disaster, every catastrophe… God’s will.
Now, when I talk about Superman, a lot of folks do what’s expected: they compare him to Batman. “Superman can do anything,” they tell me. “But Batman, he’s just a man. He had to make himself what he is. Superman was just born that way.”
Yes, Kal-El was born with the powers of a God. He can see all the way across the world. He can hear every cry for help. What’s worse: he can’t help but hear them.
Kal-El isn’t a god. He isn’t a man. He’s half of one and not quite the other. He can’t be a man. He can’t live a mortal’s life. Because when he’s trying to pretend to be one of us, somewhere in the world, he’s hearing a child scream for help in Arkansas. He feels the earthquake brewing under China. He smells the fire seven cities away. Every moment that passes, Kal-El hears a life end in tragedy. A life he could have saved… but he was too far away. Or his hands were full with the flaming plane, plummeting to Earth.
Every moment of every day, Kal-El has to make a choice. Save the drowning child in Dublin, save the bus careening off the bridge in rural New York, save the space shuttle burning up in orbit, save the boy falling to his death, save the woman about to be raped in San Francisco, save the grandmother freezing to death in Northern Russia…
In America alone, there is one murder every 22 minutes, one rape every 5 minutes, one robbery every 49 seconds, and one burglary every 10 seconds (according to the United States Department of Justice). And Superman hears every single one. He cannot stop even a tenth of them. Not even one percent. And he hears every single one of them. He feels every single one of them.
He isn’t a god. He isn’t even a man.
Every minute of every day, Kal-El makes a decision. He decides who lives and who dies. Not because he wants to. Not because he chooses to. Because he has to.
Some say that Batman isn’t Bruce Wayne’s secret identity: it’s the other way around. Bruce Wayne is the mask Batman wears.
For Kal-El, Clark Kent is a symbol of weakness. Not the weakness he sees in others, but the weakness in himself: his selfishness. You see, for Kal-El, the desire to be “just a man” is a temptation he should not indulge.
And when Kal-El feels a moment of selfishness, when he tries to be a man, calls himself the name his adopted parents gave him… when he indulges his selfishness, he suffers for it. When he spends a quiet moment with Lois Lane, does he enjoy it? Does it bring him peace knowing that in this quiet moment, there are those who suffer who he could be saving?
In order to live the life of a mortal man, Superman has to deny what he is. To life a life as a man, he has to ignore injustice, suffering and pain. Not the injustice happening around him, but the injustice he can hear on the other side of the world. For a single moment of peace, he has to allow others to die.
He can’t be god. He can’t even be a man.
And let’s face it, if Kal-El felt like it, he could be General Zod. He could rule the world. Nobody could stop him, not even Batman. One heat vision blast from orbit would take out Batman, leaving nothing but a big, black spot and that little Kryptonite ring.
Every moment of every day, Kal-El chooses not to use his powers for evil. He chooses non-violence over violence. Chooses life over death. Chooses to be a symobl of hope.
That’s the Man of Steel I believe in. Unfortunately, I don’t see that. Instead, I see a blithering bungler with ultimate power. “Superman is all-powerful, so let’s make him a boy scout to ‘balance him out.'”
That’s the wrong way to go. Let Kal-El be what he is.
Not a god. Not a man.
A Superman. And all the pain that comes with it.
(Okay, so there was a little Batman bashing. But a lot less than I wanted. Forgive me.) 🙂