Embrace the Narrative: Thunderbolts

I grew up as immersed in biblical stories as I was in comic books. Both sets of narratives had an important impact on my life during my youth, and I am still pulled to these stories for the truth they reveal. Today I went with my eldest son to watch the latest Marvel movie, a month and a half after it opened, “Thunderbolts”. I don’t get out to the movies too often, BUT a Marvel movie or a biblical story will probably get me there. If you have yet to see the film, I am sure that this post will contain spoilers, so I wanted to just put out that disclaimer before I get too far into writing today. So, fair warning to stop now if you have yet to watch the film and you don’t want it spoiled for you. For the rest of us, let’s move forward.

I have been a fan of comics from around fifth grade, BUT my collection and fascination started around eighth grade, the more I teach the eighth grade, the more I embrace that time of my life. Anywho, I started reading G.I. Joe comics and then found my way into the Uncanny X-Men when I started getting comic books from the old Sears catalog for Christmas presents. And G.I. Joe and those military stories faded into the background as mutants and altered humans became the narratives I enjoyed the most. Over the decades, I have bought, sold, and retained collections of comics to read and cherish. They are there as I call back to times of long ago. I don’t have a lot of Thunderbolts comic books, unless Marvel was having me pick them up as tie-ins to other storylines, BUT a simplified explanation is that they are the misfit group of young powered people that are trying to get it together. And more times than not, they don’t.

Today, I wanted to look at what the film, “The Thunderbolts,” gets right about the truth it sets forward in its narrative and how Christians can embrace that narrative in their own lives while adapting it a bit further. So, one of the main characters in the film is Bob, a deeply disturbed individual with superpowers, lots of superpowers. And the resolution of this narrative’s conflict involves Bob fighting against his mind. He is fighting the darkness that is inside of him. Bob has lived a life of pain and suffering. And Bob finds himself in a struggle for what part of him is going to win, the darkness/void or the light. As the conflict reaches its resolution, Bob is mounted on his shadow self, pummeling his fists into this other self, all the while the darkness of his shadow self is creeping further and further up his body. And then, one by one, his friends break free of their restraints and embrace him. They embrace him with their unconditional love, after facing their demons and some of Bob’s in the minutes leading up to this final boss fight.

The shadow/void/darkness of Bob tells him, “You thought you were going to be someone big? Some kind of savior? You can't even save yourself.” And those words, those accusations, are some of the same things the Accuser will tell us as well. And he gets Bob so angry and out of his focus on what is right that he resorts to the Accuser’s game, violence. And the Accuser does a great job of letting the door open for us to join him in his game. He openly invites us to be violent instead of embracing the love, service, and healing offered by Jesus . . .

We all have our internal conflicts to face. Are we going to become violent, or are we going to live nonviolently? Are we going to choose the way of life or the way of death? We all get to decide. Hopefully, we can rely on something other than our judgment. Hopefully, we can go to our Father in prayer, we can look to the example of Jesus, and we can communicate with the Spirit to discern God’s plan in all things. And I pray we, like Bob, have a community that will help steer us back into love through loving us, like God does. A community that trusts God, and not its judgment and understanding. A community of abundant love. I pray that we all find that loving, serving, and healing community of followers of King Jesus.

Live free. Be a blessing. Grace and Shalom to your home.