Why Heroes...

Why It's Popular...

            It’s X-men meets X-Files. Heroes is the phenomenon of the ’06-’07 television season. Its characters are interesting, its plot is tightly woven, and it offers the perfect balance of mystery, conspiracy, providence and the supernatural. It takes the best qualities of the X-Files, Lost and comic book superheroes and draws them together into a story line that, so far, features all the best elements of its predecessors but at a pace more pleasing to those of us who are tired of having our appetite for answers handed out in crumbs and bare mouthfuls over three seasons now in Lost. As is still the trend in TV, Heroes is violent and at times sexual, but it also offers insights both timely and timeless.

            I always said of the X-Files, “When we deny the supernatural, we replace our angels with aliens, and when we remove the mysteries from life, we replace them with conspiracies.” The theology of Heroes is a combination of evolution and earth goddess. The show’s controlling concept is that, in a time of world crisis, evolution will invoke remarkable changes, giving some people super powers that will help avert global disaster. Of course the unspoken contradiction behind the vision is that an impersonal rock with a thin layer of life on its surface could make any choices to invoke anything at all! But these are exactly the kinds of contradictions we’re likely to find in our post-modern American culture.

            Evolution becomes the religion of Heroes. It’s not just that people find themselves with strange supernatural powers (flight, invulnerability, mind reading, super strength, time travel, prophetic visions and more); they also find themselves brought together by the hand of some supernatural but clearly intelligent power—brought together for no other purpose than to save the entire world.

            The popularity of Heroes is a testament to human desire for divine encounter. We want there to be a God who is actually working in the world. The desire for a divine plan—a guided fate—continues to break through, even in the most secular of shows and movies. We also want to achieve the divine natures to which we have been called. The reason we like stories of superheroes with super powers is because we all know that we were meant for supernatural lives. We cannot imagine what Adam and Eve were like before the fall, and we can’t imagine what we’ll be like living the glorified life that Paul hints at in I Corinthians 15. But I don’t hesitate to think that human beings in the kingdom of God are themselves “godlike” after the manner which God intended for us (see John 10:34). We were meant to be super powered people all along.

Why They Matter...

            Heroes is also a testament to our need to have heroes in our lives. A few months ago I wrote an essay in this column called “Right vs. Cool” in which I talked about the importance of heroes in the moral development of children and even in moral motivation in adults. Heroes inspire us, convict us and influence us. They motivate us to be better than we are or shame us for settling into comfortable lives of complacency and mediocrity.

            In the show, various characters frequently face the temptation to a normal life. They’re told not to take risks, not to use their powers for good (in fact not to use them at all), and not to seek their purpose—the reason behind why they are what they are. Some try to ignore their abilities, to live normal lives. Some try to run away from trouble only to find that they can’t. A few choose to accept their calling and, though they’re almost clueless as to how their powers work or what they should be doing, they forge ahead anyway in the hope that some greater purpose is guiding them in the path heroes should take. What a wonderful way of looking at the Christian life. God has called us to be heroes. Will fear, selfishness or just plain complacency cause us to deny the call?

            An unusual chapter in the book of Hebrews makes perfect sense in light of the simple truth that heroes are role models who inspire us to be better than we would otherwise be. Hebrews 11, often called the “roll call of the faithful,” is a long list of people faithful to God and their achievements in this life. The list is there to inspire us to be better than we are—to follow the heroic examples of these great heroes of faith.

            I’ll say again what I’ve said before: we are not motivated to lives of moral excellence by being given inspiring ideas about right and goodness but by being given inspiring examples of them—heroes we can imitate. Imitation is the key to lives that move from average to extraordinary. The amazing life moves us out of complacency; heroes push us farther than we could push ourselves. Paul tells us to imitate God—that’s what the Christian life is supposed to be (Ephesians 5:1). But even Paul recognizes the need for visual examples, so he also said, “Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ” (I Corinthians 11:1). Paul knew that Christ seen in the lives of Christians is also inspiring, is something we desperately need if we want our lives as Christians to be lives lived as heroes.