Life isn’t always kind. It’s not always fair. From time to
time, most of us probably feel like we’ve gotten a raw deal, though some of our
deals are rawer than others. Some of my closest friends have struggled with all
manner of challenges: Physical disability, rocky family life, just plain bad
luck. And yet, they’ve overcome and succeeded in spite of them.
They’re a little like Guardians
of the Galaxy in that way.
At Plugged In's blog, I talked a little bit about how our five
Guardians in Marvel’s newest megahit kinda remind me of Paul’s famous body
parts passage in 2 Corinthians 12, which goes in part like this:
The eye cannot say to
the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no
need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are
indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we
bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater
modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so
composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there
may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for
one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is
honored, all rejoice together.
And so it is with the
Guardians. But there’s more to them than that. They don’t just overcome their
own selfish natures to become stronger as a team. They overcome their own hard
knocks to inch closer to what, I’d argue, God might’ve had in mind for them all
along (if, y’know, they actually existed).
Think about these heroes for the moment. Peter Quill had his
mother taken from him and was kidnapped by space pirates in the span of 12
hours. That’s not what I’d call a great familial foundation for a hero. Gamora had
it worse: She was adopted by one of the worst people in the entire galaxy—the game
guy who killed her original family—and trained to be a fearsome assassin. It’s
like Hitler plucking a girl from and
turning her into a ninja. Drax watched his whole family die. Rocket the Raccoon
is understandably bitter at being the product of a weird genetic experiment.
And Groot—well, I don’t know about Groot. Perhaps he had a good home life. But
that would explain why he’s so comparatively well-adjusted.
These Guardians didn’t have anything in their backgrounds
that would scream “future hero” to you. And yet, they became heroes anyway. This
isn’t a Lord of the Rings-like story, where a handful of ordinary hobbits saved
the world. This is the story of a handful of extraordinarily scarred, damaged
people (or trees or raccoons) that saved
a world. No excuses, no pity parties (well, not many). They just saw what
needed to be done and did it.
I’ve talked before, and I’ll talk again, about how God can
use our weaknesses for His own nifty purposes. But He can work through and past
our pain, too, if we let him. If we look at the Bible, we see that theme at
work pretty regularly.
Jacob was tricked out of the wife he wanted. Joseph’s own
home life was pretty horrible—or at least it was when his brothers sold him
into slavery. Moses, a bigwig in Egypt, had to say goodbye to his home and
family and life of luxury when he accidentally killed somebody. David was
forced to run away from the palace, too. They were all cast out—just as these
Marvel vagabonds were. And yet, God had some pretty amazing plans in store for
each of them.
There are some preachers who teach that, if we have faith in
God, we’ll be safeguarded from sorrow. And there are lots of ordinary believers
who seem to believe that God is like a magic shield. I’m guilty of that
sometimes. I’ve been very blessed, and when I hit a season of life that seems …
well, less-than-blessed … I find myself wondering if there’s been some sort of
cosmic mistake. Did I forget to fill out some sort of good-person form or
something? Did I land on the naughty list accidentally? What’s with this crud?
The Bible reminds us that God-as-good-luck-charm isn’t
really good theology. Yes, the Bible talks about blessings and rewards, too,
but we’re explicitly told we will have trouble. We’re shown that we have to
persevere and work through difficulty. We can’t give up when life tosses us a
couple of curveballs. God still has plans for us. Big plans.
Guardians of the
Galaxy shows that concept at work. I see echoes of Jacob and Joseph and
Moses in this quirky little adventure. And that even if we’ve been saddled with
a whole bushel of lemons in our lives, we can take those lemons and turn them
into really eco-friendly air fresheners. Or something.
