MARVEL MAY: THANOS, INFINITY WAR, AND WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT THE LOVE OF GOD

“You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”

~ Jesus Christ {Luke 9:55}

It has been said “God moves in mysterious ways”. That certainly can be true, and in my own life (because of how my funky brain works) at times those ways can look downright weird (at least to other people), which perhaps was never truer than when He used one of the weirdest movies ever made to teach me a profound lesson.

I reference Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Infinity War.

Now, before we go any further, let me just say Infinity War was a mess (like, a mess!) and I would never recommend it to anybody (sorry to all my dear Marvel friends out there). On so many levels—not the least of which is the rampant “post-modern”, pagan, evolutionary, occultic confusion in just about every scene—the movie was probably the most chaotic thing I’ve ever seen.

And yet, God told me to go see it.

“Why on earth?” You may ask. Well, before I went, I couldn’t have told you. It certainly made no sense. I knew how crazy the movie was going to be just from the previews and reviews I had encountered. The only bright spots seemed to be about 2 minutes of Captain America onscreen, some tender moments between Iron Man and Spiderman (in their growing mentor/son relationship), another 2 minutes with Captain America, a funny grunt or two from Baby Groot (a baby tree with lots of personality), an epic charge with Black Panther and—oh yeah—Captain America leading a courageous army of high-tech Africans shouting “Wakanda Forever!” (which, I must admit, was pretty epic)…

And, uh, yep, that was pretty much it.

So when I felt the Holy Spirit leading me to actually go buy a ticket and see the thing in theaters, I scratched my head. More than once. Pretty hard.

And then I went.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the history and movies of the MCU (Marvel Comic Universe 😊), a brief breakdown of the overall plot is necessary for you to be able to understand the rest of what I’m going to say. So here it is (I do emphasis brief, however: an entire breakdown would keep us here for several days)…the entire plotline of basically every superhero movie belonging to Marvel Studios since the original Iron Man (way back in 2008) has all been building up to the climax of Infinity War and, ultimately, last year’s mega-hit Endgame. Though each movie had its own storyline, its own hero(s) and villain(s), they also fell into a much bigger plot, ultimately leading the beloved pantheon of heroes known as the Avengers to face off against their mightiest, fiercest, most cunning foe yet: the grimly philosophic titan known as Thanos. A hulking cross between blood-thirsty monster and benevolent god, Thanos takes it on himself to kind of “father” the universe. He doesn’t want to rule so much as he wants to cleanse. You see, according to his recent calculations, Thanos decides the galaxies have gotten too crowded (“over-populated”, to coin the phrase): too many creatures have bred too much suffering and Thanos decides his personal mission in life is to bring everything back into “balance”. Unfortunately, for him there’s only one way to do it:

Eradicate half of all living things in the universe.

Sounds simple enough, but in order to accomplish the mass genocide he must first collect the six Infinity Stones. Supposedly formed during the “Big Bang”, each stone represents an aspect of existence—time, mind, power, reality, space, and soul—and Thanos needs all six of them to snap them into the knuckles of a giant golden gauntlet, snap his giant golden fingers, and wipe out half of all living things in the universe. Naturally, the Avengers have different ideas of how to handle things and, thus, the “war” in Infinity War is waged.

(Phew!)

Now that that’s behind us, we can return to me sitting alone in a dark theater…😊

From the moment Thanos came onscreen, he bothered me. Not so much because he was big and scary. Not really because he was sly and cruel. And (more amazingly than anything) not even because the worst villain in the entire universe was entirely too purple. What bothered me most about Thanos was because he sounded so…reasonable. So understanding. Even, in a sick way, compassionate: as if he didn’t really want to do the terrible things he deemed necessary but did them anyway because he felt they were the right and just thing to do. What bothered me was because he sounded, well, quite a bit like…

God.

Maybe I’m the only person on earth who watched Infinity War and felt that way. Maybe the filmmakers didn’t have a clue what they were doing when they wrote that Thanos would introduce himself by including the phrase, “I am.” I don’t know what their relationship with the One True God—the God of the Bible—is like. But, for me, the parallels were strong enough to make me squirm for a while. I sat there, watching over two hours of madness unfold before my eyes, feeling increasingly uncomfortable and wondering why God would ever tell me to watch such a thing. And then I reached the point where Thanos willingly throws his adopted daughter off a cliff, tears rolling down his face as she creams for mercy, in order to acquire the Soul stone (which, according to MCU legend, could only be gained by the sacrifice of a life you loved).

And suddenly I knew why I was sitting in that theater.

You see, for reasons I honestly cannot explain through logic—certainly not because of my wonderful parents, my loving upbringing, or most of the theology I was given—I developed a kind of “slave mentality” towards God in my adult years. I knew He loved me and I loved Him with everything I was; I was His daughter and He was my Heavenly Father through the blood of Jesus. Nothing could change that…and yet, somehow, I had also accepted a reality where I was still dispensable to Him. Disposable. Not as loved as others. As if I was only important to Him until something or someone more important came along—and then, off I go: over the cliff. Like all of satan’s lies, this poison had mixed in with the truth of humbly “considering others as more important” than myself, and, for years, I truly believed I was honoring God by not accepting the full, unchanging, unrelenting love He had for me—not just the world. Yet sitting there in that dark theater, watching the mess of Marvel madness, I had an epiphany. Despite the incredibly depressing ending (a disturbingly clever setup for Endgame), I walked out smiling, grinning, actually laughing from the sheer joy flooding my soul. Six glorious words kept dancing around in my head as if they were on repeat:

“MY GOD IS NOT LIKE THAT!”

Two things had happened at once. One, in watching such a clear portrayal of how I thought God saw me as His daughter (i.e. disposable), I realized how very different that view was from how God truly saw me: as utterly priceless. And, two, seeing Marvel Comic’s version of an (almost) all-powerful, benevolently twisted supernatural being, I realized more than ever how worlds-apart opposite that was from the God of Scripture: the God I called “Father”.

He not only possessed the power to eradicate all life with just a word from His mouth but had every right to do so because of our rebellion as humans…and yet, He chose instead to humble Himself, take on the weakness of a human embryo, be born in a stable to a dirt-poor couple surrounded by shepherds and barn animals, grow up as a human to walk among us, gently showing us and patiently calling us to the Truth, and ultimately give His own life in our place to pay the debt we owed to Him for our own evil—all so we could know Him and be with Him and be loved by Him forever.

Wow!

Worlds-apart difference.

Which is why, as I walked out into the parking lot that May afternoon, it wasn’t The Avengers’ theme song playing in my head. It was actually a Christmas song: a simple, beautiful tune written by Audrey Assad entitled “Winter Snow”…

He could have come in fire. He could have come in flood. He could have come in thunder, and judgement, and fury. He could have thrown all of us off the cliff without so much as a flinch and been perfectly justified. God could have come to earth like Thanos.

But instead, He came as Jesus Christ. “Immanuel”.

God with us.

That’s my God! And “among the gods”…and men…and superheroes…there is none like Him (Psalm 86:8)!

Including purple, egotistical, finger-snapping titans. 😉

EMBRACE ADVENTURE,

CHRISTIS JOY