The Diabolical Encounter

My fears, temptations, anxieties, come to me very much like an external force. I can hear the devil's voice whispering to me when I'm afraid, or when there is something I desperately want. The devil offers a hard and fast security. "Come to me", says satan, "and all will be safe, and secure, and you can seek out only what you want for yourself, and there will be no more need to take risks with what you want most. Bow to me and I'll take away all the things that make you afraid and make you vulnerable. Hate what you want to hate, love what you want to love, seek out your own goals and plans and work with me to vouchsafe your place in the world." The voice of the devil can be cruel and taunting, telling me how worthless I am and how impossible God's love is for me, or it can be sweet and seductive, offering me a life focused on what I want in the world and a place without suffering or vulnerability... and all ostensibly without any price at all.

That is one mistake the movies make. They always have the devil there offering all you want for your immortal soul. But in truth the devil makes no such claim. The devil offers what he offers without cost. It is an offer of all you ever wanted, without judgment and without consequence, and nothing is required in return.

God's voice is almost always different. God does not offer to take away those things that make you anxious, but offers instead to take away your anxieties in exchange for a life with Him. There is no guarantee of safety and security, but only the promise of a life of eternal value and virtue. Nothing comes without a cost. The cost is clear and seen with eyes wide open: the cost is the cross. "For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’" (Luke 14:28-30). No, there is no denial of cost nor any promise of safety and security in the world. 

In a sense the devil's offer sounds very much like the voice of death, which I spoke of here: http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-lies-half-truths-of-death_6.html

There is a detectible lie in the offer of life without cost. The only way that can truly be without cost is a way that lacks dynamism, struggle, or evolution, for all of these things are born of tension. The only life without tension is living death. It takes experience, reason, experience, and faith to be able to detect this lie. This is why it is not enough just to believe, but one must struggle to gain as much understanding as one can. For certainly the promise of safety and security is not one immediately associates with the diabolical.

We all have those things we'd like to use as material for 'deals' with God. "O God only vouchsafe this one thing in my life, and I'll believe in you and be faithful." "O God, I can give everything to you but this one thing, ask for all but it, and I'll believe and be faithful." Such prayers betray the true nature of God, of the God who is revealed and known in and through the Cross. They are at best idolatrous and at worst something more diabolical. We all do this, we all find ourselves at times serving the wrong side. 

The devil has learned enough about me to know that he can make life hardest through a direct attack. When at prayer, or meditation, the evil one comes to play his tricks. When I forget who I am, and am prone to lust pride, or anger, then he comes in his more subtler forms. In these times recognizing him robs him of his power, in the other my power comes from ignoring him, and focusing only on God. I turn to the Lord for who He truly is and not who and what I want him to be and I fall before the cross. That is my salvation, and my protection, not from the things of this world, not from the vicissitudes of life, but from the disease of my soul. Amen.

One-Post Wednesday: My Favorite Superheroes (10-6)

#10- Superboy (The Clone)- While I liked the television show SUPERBOY, I was never a big fan of the comic that focused on the early life of Superman. I can't tell you exactly why, but it never really appealed to me. However, after Superman died at the hands of Doomsday, several beings came forth to take his place, all of which became some of my favorite all-time comic book characters. But my absolute favorite was the clone of Superman that came to be nicknamed Kon-El. I liked the idiosyncratic powers of the character. His tactile telekinesis is a very malleable power indeed, and the source of some great story lines. But it was the fact that Superboy was created from a clone of Superman and a human being that really excited me. It was like Superman had a son, and I always thought that was cool. This son was matured without his presence and so there is something extremely complicating (in terms of complicating Superman's life) about that and anything that complicates Superman's life, I like. They gave him a great cast of villains to fight early on, and that original Superboy comic book was really solid. I loved it. Now since those early days the character has had some good times an bad times, and I've really been put off by some of the recent turns. All the elements for a great character are still there, but they haven't  gone the direction they should. It is much like what happened to Ghost Rider. Still, this was one of my first regular DC comics and it places high on my persona list of faves.

#9- Alan Scott Green Lantern- It shocks most people that Hal Jordan is not my favorite Green Lantern, but he isn't. I don't know what it is about Alan Scott, maybe it is because he figured prominently in one of the first comics I ever collected, or maybe it is the fact that his powers are magical and I'm always fascinated by beings that can defeat Superman (which a magically powered Green Lantern is definitely capable of). But Alan Scott is an old hero with an old soul, and the exploration of a person from a simpler time possessed of such massive powers and surrounded by a very different breed of superheroes makes from some great stories. I especially love the comics that re-imagine his old days during WWII. While I didn't like the fact that the New 52 retconned the character to be younger and homosexual, EARTH 2, in which he is featured, is one of the best things DC has going for it right now and and his character is a big reason why. Alan Scott started off as my favorite lantern and has grown on me since, quickly raising to the highest ranks of my team of faves.

#8- Ash From Army of Darkness- Nobody who knows me very well should be surprised by this. Originally a kind of anti-hero from a cult classic television show, the character exists in a very expanded comic book universe in DARK HORSE and DYNAMITE comics. Was upset to find out that the man who played him so brilliantly, Bruce Campbell, doesn't much like the Dynamite comics, as they use his likeness without permission. And while some of Dynamite's stuff isn't the best, some is absolutely brilliant, and I love collecting these books. Ash's character is comedic and fun, but also capable of some pathos. His place in the universe as 'the Chosen One', meant to protect us all from the demons and the deadites that originate from the world of the Necronomicon, is not a role he would've chosen for himself, and he has always been a character that has greatness thrust upon him unwillingly. But he wears the mantle well, both in film and in the comics. And I hope we keep getting to share in these adventures for a long time to come.

#7- Spider-Man- There was a time when Spider-Man would've sat prominently at the number one spot on this list. I collected more Spider-Man than any other comic for the first 5 years of my collecting (or so). I love Peter Parker, he's so human, and while he's mightily powerful, he remains very vulnerable both physically and mentally, and it is that vulnerability that has made him so popular with readers. A person who is torn between two lives, perhaps more than any other character, we read the comics with Super-Man as much for Peter Parker and his struggles, as for the hero that dons the mask. Spider-Man and Peter Parker are one, and figuring out how to navigate both sides of his life makes for some very interesting story telling. His powers are very malleable, driving the stories and ensuring that Spider-Man never overpowers the world in which he dwells. The only reason Spider-Man is no longer at the top spot is that I haven't loved the writing over the last ten years, and I miss the brilliance of the writing in the 90s. The films have captured some of that magic, and I can't imagine Spider-Man ever falling out of the top 10. How I'd love to see the kind of stuff that pushes him back to the top.

#6- Wonder Woman- I used to just like Wonder Woman until I met my wife. Her love for the character rubbed off on me, and since Wonder Woman is sort of responsible for the second most important relationship in my life (after God), she couldn't help but jump to the top of my personal field of interest. I particularly liked the Gail Simone run on the last Wonder Woman book before New 52. But it is the Linda Carter TV series that really captures the spirit of the character to my mind. Beautiful, powerful, and a fierce warrior, Wonder Woman is bit of a paradox: always prepared for war, but seeking peace above all else. I have simply come to love the new affair between her and Superman and I enjoy their joint comic book quite a bit. Her powers are malleable but expansive, for she almost as powerful as Superman but has the limitations necessary to keep her from being too overpowering in a book. She walks a delicate balance and does it well. But it is the aesthetic of the character that really gets me. The artwork out there that is centered round her has really gotten under my skin, and I love it.

Time, Heaven, Hell

Someone I know who recently read, on my recommendation, the book by Eben Alexander III, PROOF OF HEAVEN (great book, btw), asked me about the timelessness of heaven. Wouldn't one meet oneself in Heaven if there truly is no time? Indeed, I think this very thing is possible and probably happens. I can imagine holding my childhood self up on my shoulders.

You see I think Heaven is timeless, and that things are grown by God 'in time'... in our universes and other places like it where time is real. That which has positive value is retained forever in Heaven. You cannot have any new experiences of your own once you are in Heaven, though you can have the utter joy of sharing in the experiences of others. You have no more to give God once you are dead, you become a co-receiver with God of what comes next for the rest of existence.

This helps us make sense both of the grace of heaven and the experience of death as something terrible. Once I'm gone from this world, I no longer am able to give anything to God. When a baby dies, the family feels that loss deeply. The grief, the pain, these are experiences as real and as spiritually significant as joy and humor and hope. Most Christians' response to that pain is not helpful, it is an attempt to ignore the reality of the evil of the loss by convincing them the baby is not really dead. Nothing is lost for the child, and really very little is lost for the parent: the parent will be without the child and without the gift of life the child could give them but only for a very short period of time, relatively speaking.

So Christianity does to the experience of grief what secular philosophies do the experience of transcendence: they try to get us to ignore it, they deny any underlying reality behind the experience. The irony is thick in this intellectual territory. I would suggest that my understanding of God and eternity speaks and justifies the experience of grief while still holding up a faith in God's grace. For indeed the baby is eternalized as all beings of value are eternalized. But something is genuinely lost: all the baby could've been in the future, and all it could've given to God and Heaven. The baby may be able, like the rest of Heaven, to share in what comes next, but it will remain as a Baby, and all that entails. It cannot become more unto itself in Heaven than it became on Earth. It is not lost, but it has nothing more to give than what it gave. All that it could be, all it could've added to the life of God is lost forever.

This then gives sense and reason to the experience of mourning and loss. The loss may seem from the vantage point of human history to be small: what is one baby in the span of thousands of years, and the mass of infant deaths that have occurred in that time? But from a divine vantage point it is huge: all the baby could've been and could've given to God, all the furniture of Heaven it could've constructed, is lost forever. It cannot be, it will never be. So the feeling of loss is justified on the part of the parents and others: they are simply experiencing the loss God experienced, their grief is 'ultimately true'.

There is a negative consequence to all of this though, an implication that I don't like any more than the next person. For I have said elsewhere that I think that the 'punishment' for sin is the loss of one's self in heaven. A killer cannot make more of himself in heaven than he was on earth, and so a sufficiently evil person may be no more than a baby, for that is as much value as they ever added to God and thus to Heaven. A baby killer, then, suffers the same fate as the one they killed. The punishment they receive is to have robbed from them what they robbed from another. I would like, as I'm sure you all would like, to have the victim receive some special benefit denied to the killer. I want punishment for the wicked as much as the next person. But to believe that God is Christ is to put the Pain of God above the Mercy and Justice of God. There is no real 'punishment', there are just the factual consequences of God being who God is. What is good is retained, what is of value is retained, what is not is lost. No experience of an evil act has any eternity, it is lost forever. No experience of an evil and unredeemed heart has any eternity, it too is lost. Yes, the murderer's fate is the fate of the person murdered, at least in some sense (there are probably many murder victims that are much farther along the line than those who murder them, so there is a greater gain for God in Heaven and the victim when they get there, but still what is lost is the same: new experiences for God and Heaven).

However, might there not be a profounder truth in this? For to murder another is really to kill yourself. What is lost is the same... the murderer murders himself, if even for a moment. These thoughts are relatively unformed. I think they contain truth though, and perhaps a lot. Will they be lost to all but God when I am gone from this world? Will I be able to spread the Gospel as I believe it is meant to be spread to any more than a select few?

Two Must-Read Articles (With Some Commentary)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/opinion/brooks-alone-yet-not-alone.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

I cannot recommend this article highly enough. It really captures what a mature Christianity has to offer. I love Audry Assad, and she is one of my favorite Christian music artists and this article really raised her stock in my book. I've always thought that there is a maturity, a humanity about her music that a lot of other Christian artists lack. This article gets the thinness of much of Christianity and the reality of depth exactly right.

Humanism has a lot to teach Christians. So does science. Humanism, and secularism, is right to take the human experience as the starting point of the journey of life. We are, and must admit to being, human beings who are limited in both time and place, and we need processes that limit hubris and the tendency to make ourselves the measure of all things. Such methods only admit of the situation in which we find ourselves, thus science at its best is a humble endeavor, acknowledging the human tendency to bias and prejudice and doing its best to weed as much of that out as it can.

Secular philosophies that put the focus on people and helping people, rightly identify the human experience as the foundation for the moral encounter with the world as well. I matter, other people matter, and there are things I can really do to make the world a better place. But what secular philosophies leave out is what the very experience of me 'mattering' entails. The depth of human life and experience is left by the wayside. This life is indeed the only one I know, but when I really give myself over to this life with reckless abandon, and seek to find a place of genuine meaning and value within it, when I push the human experience as far as it can go I find that it is not self-justifying. There is a depth to life that no secular philosophy rightly illuminates. Science and secularism rightly identify the human element in all knowing and all ways of life, but fail to account for the fact that those ways of life put one in touch with something genuine: genuinely meaningful and genuinely valuable, and so only justifiable by pointing beyond themselves.

Fundamentalists acknowledge the depth and power of life itself, they know that there is more to life than meets the eye and they have a sense of eternity, of meaning and of value, but they lack any sense of the role of the human element in their experience. They acknowledge not cultural bias in their judgments, and fail to see that the experiences that they are basing their lives on are genuinely human experiences. They do this with the Bible: The Bible becomes some product that is solely from God. The fact that human beings wrote it and that their prejudices might have gotten in the way isn't even considered. Everything is one direction, everything is an act of God. There is no element for human creativity, or giving to God, or even really for human experience. All of life: good and evil, pain and pleasure, is solely an act of God. The human element is completely drowned out.

But for some of us the question is whether life, real life as we experience it and know it, doesn't contain within it some beckoning to greater meaning and value. The question is whether this entire human adventure might not contain within it evidence of some divine activity, whether the temporal process doesn't reveal some in-breaking of the eternal. For those of us who think it does, and for those of us who are not ashamed of the human element nor ignorant of it and its perils, the Bible, prayer, meditation, these become for us the medium by which that encounter takes place. They are the vehicle of God's presence, not it's eternal, divinely sanctioned form.


http://phys.org/news165555744.html

My comments on this article will be briefer. I just want to say how sad it is that so many Christians reject evolution. There is so much more to be gained by embracing it than rejecting it, especially theologically. For a great film that explores that theological richness, I suggest TREE OF LIFE. I really liked this article, especially because they included theological reflections on the ridiculous CREATION MUSEUM by scientists who were also Christians. It was refreshing. There was more of God in this science reporting than in the museum the article is about. 

The Faith of Nerdom

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF_6OfgbF7c

That clip captures the true spirit behind geekiness, I think. I've spoken about it before, but I found the clip and I wanted to share it. In our hearts, we all just want someone to give us permission to believe. Nobody gets that obsessive about something they know is a lie, or just a fantasy. Everything in our behavior... the behavior of the geeks, the nerds, etc...speaks to the fact that in our heart of hearts we do believe. The leap from this attitude and faith is a short one. I believe that there is SOME TRUTH to which all our great fiction points, some grander adventure that it reaches out to, and that the point of contact between fiction and Truth (rather than just truths) is the reason why fiction can be so motivating, inspiring, moving, and so on. My role as minister, as a minister who really looks for that point of contact, is simply to give people permission to believe. Every pastor is Jason Nesmith from GALAXY QUEST.

Dostoevsky And Responsibility

I don't know how anyone could've read the one and not believe in the other. Nobody presented the reality of freedom and responsibility better. The great moral and religious truths cannot simply be argued... they must be PRESENTED, shown, revealed. All great moral literature, every story that truly struggles with the place of man in the world at least flirts with the idea of God and attains a status that almost approaches scripture for this reason. Great art is revelatory.

Maverick Philosopher Posts

It has been a while since I've tipped my hat to the inspiring Bill Vallicella, but he's got some great stuff today:

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2014/01/the-parable-of-the-tree-and-the-house.html

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2014/01/two-cures-for-envy.html

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2014/01/on-taking-pleasure-at-the-death-of-an-enemy.html

The Sumerian Roots Of the Noah Story

http://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium-1.570484

The fact of the matter is that the story of Noah found in the Bible has its roots in Sumerian and Babylonian mythos. This may upset some Christians, but it doesn't bother me much at all. That is the beauty of not being a fundamentalist: one doesn't close one's mind to scientific discovery nor does one throw the Bible baby out with the certainty bathwater. I can hold fast to the truth found at the core of the Bible without needing every single detail to be true.

The simple fact of the matter is that the Biblical writer was led to rework this taken-for-granted story in a way that tells us a lot about the nature of God. If we compare the Biblical story to the original Sumerian texts then we can see in the changes that were made, a message about the nature of God. The Sumerian texts help us realize the degree to which the return of the waters was not just 'a flood' but a kind of attack by uncreation. The near-eastern identification of water with chaos or formlessness is made all the clearer by grasping the Sumerian versions of the story, and so we see in the Genesis story the way in which the evil of the earth, the sins of human beings, give the waters of chaos a kind of 'foothold' back in the world. God removes His grace, His protection, and the world is un-created.

The world in the Bible is formed out of a giant ocean of chaos called Formless or Void. The Noah story is not a story of God somehow 'making it rain' but rather the story of God allowing that ocean to reclaim the territory it once held. This is made all the more clearer by looking at the Sumerian roots. In fact, without that analysis the real message of the story may be lost. That the Hebrews moved the seat of the action to Yahweh rather than Marduk or some other pagan deity is simply a statement about who and what God really is: that God is one and that God is the God that the Hebrews encountered at Sinai.

This is just one example, and I could go on and on about how examination of these original texts, and they ways in which they were changed as they entered the Biblical record, has revelatory power. You get a clear view of what God is trying to say in the text of the Bible, by comparing the two. The message is the story, and the truth is in the telling, the facts of the story are not the revelation, the story itself is the revelation. For more on all this, I highly recommend Bernard Batto's book SLAYING THE DRAGON.

Comic Book Reviews

It was a light week for comic books this week, for me. Only three in my box. I did my in-depth review of one, here are the other two.

DC's BATMAN '66 #7
This book continues to delight, though this issue was not as funny as the rest have been. I love the coloring of this book, and the way the art really captures the 1960s television show. The random "public service announcement" moments work really well too. I loved this show when I was a kid, it came on right after I got out of school in the 80s. It is so much fun seeing it re-worked in this comic book. Some comic books fail because they get into 'villain of the week' patterns. But it is the characterization of the villains that drives this book, for sure. The dialogue just wasn't quite as funny as weeks past. I didn't laugh out loud as much. Still, a fun book that I will continue to read.

Storyline: 3.5 Stars
Dialogue: 3 Stars
Pacing: 3 Stars
Artwork: 4.5 Stars
Overall: 3.5 Stars

DC's Batman Beyond Universe #6
I have to say that some of the BEYOND Universe stuff, which spun off from the television show BATMAN BEYOND, is really good. Most of the comics are too short, but this comic book completely turned that problem around, it is long and meaty and I loved this story. I usually collect the BEYOND stuff on my DC comics App, and don't review them here (I only review comics I read paper bound). But this one was one of the 'picks of the week' over at Bedrock and this was the last issue, so I took it for myself. I was not disappointed. Brainiac returns after more than a decade underground, and threatens to destroy Earth and some of her cosmic allies. This comic hits all the points, though the art is a bit too much like the animated series, which is a problem with all the BEYOND comics. A little artistic variation would not hurt. Overall, a great book I highly encourage you to check out.

Storyline: 4.5 Stars
Dialogue: 4 Stars
Pacing: 3.5 Stars
Art: 3 Stars
Overall: 4 Stars

Quotable

"The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm."- Aldous Huxley

Not Really Off-Topic: In Depth Comic Review of the Week: Justice League #27

So much of the DC universe is 'on hold' because of the FOREVER EVIL crossover event. The filler stories range from very boring to downright brilliant. Justice League is one of those books that is maintaining very well during this storm, which isn't surprising as it is the flagship publication. Geoff Johns is at the helm and he's not letting a holding pattern ruin his book.

This issue begins with Johnny Quick and Atomica killing off more at least SEEMING to kill off more of Earth's heroes. I have really come to hate these two villains. There is this meme that talks about "villains you can't bring yourself to hate" like Darth Vader, Voldemort and Lex Luther, and then it says "then there's this jerk" and lists Geoffery from GAME OF THRONES. Well Johnny Quick and Atomica are more like Geoffery than the others. I really am getting tired of these two.

It is a little annoying that they seem so overpowered. Some of these heroes they are picking off so easily should be more effective than they are. But that's just a pet peeve about the issue.

The main thrust of this story is all about Vic, The Cyborg, and his quest to get a new cybernetic body. He appeals to his father to rebuild him, and upgrade him. His father resists, upset that his original transplantation of his son's brain into the cyborg body that would become the monster Grid is part of what caused all this mess.

The storyline and dialogue are great and the art is strong as well. I loved this issue. I liked seeing Cyborg's relationship with his father explored in more detail. Cyborg's dad suffered from a lot of guilt from abandoning Vic and his mother, and even more from trying to salve his conscience by saving his son through cybernetics. Vic talks about how he now is embracing his place as a superhero and that this is now HIS choice, and he wants his father to do this. Of course, his father complies and we get a pretty badass new Cyborg.

What was cool about this issue was the exploration of embracing one's calling. Cyborg WAS a hero by circumstance, now he is one by choice. Often our roles are defined in part by chance, if not primarily by chance. We find ourselves called to a life we do not want. But by struggling through that call, by learning to deal with our circumstances, we find that which we resisted is actually who we really are. God has a way of shaping us into the roles we fall into. What originally was just the situation in which we happened to find ourselves BECOMES a calling, and once we embrace that fact we find that the real work of God is in responding to the world rather than simply shaping it. God does not have to have planned some tragedy for that tragedy to become, in God's hand, a genuine calling. Embracing that is the key to happiness and living out the Will of God.

This relates to the redemption we see in Victor's father. He expresses great remorse about 'not being there' when Vic was younger. Vic says, 'all that matters is you're here now.' This is a statement about salvation. The past has been transcended. What had so much impact, the past, is replaced by what really matters, the call of God here and now. Evil, the mistakes of our past, the rejection of the call of God falls into oblivion. Only the choice to do as God asks has meaning, for only those moments are eternalized. There is a kind of grace in both facts: the loss of the evil and the retention of the good.

This is a good comic folks, and does what a good comic always does: elevates the reader and makes you think while entertaining and producing profound visual art.

I give it 4.5 Stars

A Sacramental Theory

It uses modern turns in philosophy of mind/psychology wherein an object is not separate from that which perceives it. Not idealism but like mental externalism. There is this paper, e.g., that talks about rainbows and how the exist as a meeting of perceiver and certain features of the external world. I'm thinking about talking about faith and the encounter of God through sacraments in a similar way. I find a fascinating parallel in the arguments about, say, direct and indirect realism, how perceiver and perceived interact and the arguments about how a sacrament mediates Grace in relationship to the faith of the believer. Is the grace in the faith the sacrament inspired or in the element itself? To what degree is the faith of the recipient important in the economics of Grace which by definition is supposed to be a gift from God? I'm thinking of using this paper on rainbows to talk about faith putting one in right relationship with external circumstances (the sacramental elements) 

The Glory and Pitfalls of Vulnerability

Love, at least as humans come to know it, really is just being comfortable with vulnerability. I'm not strictly speaking about romantic love, though I think this is central to that as well, but I'm talking about the phenomenon of loving another human being, taken in the most expansive understanding of that idea.

Take any person in your life. If you are 1) vulnerable to that person and 2) comfortable with that vulnerability, than you love them. The more vulnerable we are and the more we are comfortable with that vulnerability, the more we love a person. There is a noetic quality to love. As we become vulnerable to a person, we become aware of our interconnection with them. That we are all part of an organic whole is a truism that can only be apprehended through vulnerability. But to fear that vulnerability is to fear that truth, ie, to reject it.

There are so many ways in which we make ourselves vulnerable to other people. and in which we are inherently vulnerable to others. If I make the core truths of myself known to another, they may use that as an excuse not to like me, or to even hurt me. Over and over again, we find ways in which the world is a dangerous and risky place, especially where other people are involved. It can be frightening to think about, really. And then the question stares us in the face: are we going to embrace this fact, or run from it? Do we seek to mitigate our vulnerability or find in it an ultimate truth? Might the quest to embrace it not be at least part of the meaning of the phrase from 1 John: perfect love casteth out fear?

Part of the fear of embracing that vulnerability, is that it no longer becomes something we restrict to certain people. I mean, the truth of the matter is that I am at least partly vulnerable to every human being on the planet, and thus there is at least the possibility of loving all people. Yet what kind of life might this be like? What would it cost me? One can see quickly why 'love is hard, and takes work.'

And what of God? Anyone who knows me knows that the other famous 1 John statement: God is love, is of paramount importance to me. Perhaps God, too, is vulnerable, radically vulnerable, and what makes him love is the fact that He does not reject or fear this vulnerability. Vulnerability and love, what is the connection? And once the truth of vulnerability is faced and accepted, what comes next?

Off-Topic- My Favorite Superheroes

#15- Beta Ray Bill- It may seem insane to some that Beta Ray Bill would be higher on this list than the superhero from whom he derives his look and some of his powers, Thor, but the simple fact of the matter is I have always been a bigger BRB fan than Thor. I don't know what it is, there is just something about a being who is mortal who has, simply by his nobility and his warrior's spirit, elevated himself to the level of a being like Thor. Beta Ray Bill EARNED his place as a brother to Thor, whereas Thor's powers are all inborn. Born a member of the alien Korbinite race that was enhanced cybernetically to be a protector of his people, Beta Ray Bill came into conflict with Thor. But Thor discovered in the alien a spirit of such sublimity that Bill could actually wield Thor's hammer mjolnir. Eventually, Bill and Thor became the closest of friends, and Bill was given his own asgardian powers and weaponry in the form of Stormbreaker, his magical hammer. Bill looks like a monster, and perhaps it is that monstrous exterior which hides that gentle and moral spirit that has made him one of my favorite all-time characters, and a character that is closer to my heart than even Thor.

#14- Ghost Rider (Dan Ketch)- There was a time when this character would've been higher on my list. But the overall Ghost Rider mythos has been weakened in recent years by some bad writing, causing both Ketch and Johnny Blaze to lose some of the cache they had with me in the past. Yet the first 25 or so issues of the Dan Ketch Ghost Rider series remain some of the best in all of comicdom. I simply loved reading those years, and a lot of that was because of Dan and his alter ego. A living embodiment of the spirit of vengeance, with an aesthetic like no other character and powers both strange, malleable, and story-driving, this character will always have a place on this list. And even a lifetime of bad writing can't take away the genius of those early years.

#13- Johnny Blaze- I list Johnny Blaze here separate from Ghost Rider because some of my favorite Blaze stories took place when he was not the Rider, but rather a kind of low-level magic user that had powers related to, but different from, the hellfire-clad skeletons like Zarathos. There is just something about Blaze, who has in him definite seeds of goodness but who let earthly attachments, which we all identify with (like his love for his father) lead him down a path that has caused hell itself to be a dominating feature of his life. As the Ghost Rider, Blaze's demonic form has always been darker and more merciless than the being incarnated in Dan Ketch. Yet it remains the man himself, John Blaze, that really makes the stories involving him so damned (pun intended) interesting.

#12- Rocket Racoon- Another recent addition to my collection, I've quickly come to absolutely love this character. Rocket Racoon grew up on a planetary insane asylum, where animals had been genetically enhanced to care for the patients. Rocket is a kind of science fiction version of a 'rogue'. There is a skill in some role playing games that rogues can have called 'incredible luck', which is kind of like probability manipulation mentioned elsewhere on this list. But it is not so much a superpower as a grand skill of 'making one's way' in this world. Racoon is that kind of lucky rogue. A merciless warrior, but with an incredible sense of humor, the dialogue they come up with for this character can have you rolling in the aisles. Some characters are on this list for power, others for complexity of character, and others because they are simply funny. Rocket Racoon is an example of the latter.

#11- Silver Surfer- Man, have I collected a lot of Silver Surfer and Silver Surfer-involved comic books. One of my favorite all-time issues is SILVER SURFER #50, where he fights the Thanos Golem. The Surfer is incredibly powerful, but his spirit is so noble. He's much like Beta Ray Bill on that level. Yet the Surfer has the added character benefit of being someone who has done horrible things in his past. The quest for atonement can make a great basis for character motivation in comic books. It is part of what makes Spider-Man so interesting. With a rogue's gallery both mighty and unusual, the entire expanse of the cosmos as the settings of his stories, powers both versatile and frightening in their scope, and a complex but noble mind and spirit, Silver Surfer has always been one of my favorite all-time characters.

One-Post Wednesday: The Acknowledgement and Phenomenology of Evil

Acknowledging and identifying evil is easy enough. Oh, there are some evils that we label as such that are not clearly evil. We are from time to time prone to take what we don't like and call it evil. But most people, or rather anyone who has actually encountered it, can tell genuine evil when they see it. Evil comes to us as inherently condemnable. Peter Berger writes about this in A RUMOR OF ANGELS. There are some things that people simply cannot do, and yet they do them all the time. It is the experience of the impossibility of the act, like what is being done puts them outside the human condition itself. Some acts simply deserve hell. Any religion, and philosophy, which fails to do justice to this human experience, this 'demand' for hell leaves out something extraordinarily vital.

Yet what does one do if one has undertaken such acts? I heard once of an ex-nazi who took up the mantle of helping people to try to pay for his crimes. He changed, at least he changed what he did. And even if you do not take up such acts, most of us are capable of them. And really it is who you are that matters, on the scale of eternity. That is the point, I think, of Jesus raising up intention as more important than action. Your attitude tells you who you really are, it reveals your brokenness, your lostness, and your sinfulness. What happens when one experiences oneself as terribly wretched?

There is the hope, I suppose, of repentance. And one can feel the weight of one's sin so terribly. There is genuine penitence in the human heart, sometimes. But how often do we feel penitent about a sin one minute and commit anew the next. Is there no truth in the axiom: 'the only true repentance is ceasing the sin?' Oh, we all experience those acts, those moments, those tales that call out to us for hell. It is a transcendent experience as important to belief in God as hope, play, humor, or the importance of the moral, though I tend to talk about it less. Yet what we fail to do is turn that burning flame of judgment inward, or if we do, we don't do so consistently.

What I'm talking about is human depravity, of the evil and sinfulness that moved Calvin to believe in predestination. I can't escape it, it is all around me, and all within me. I must have hope for myself, yet I can have no hope for myself that doesn't then remove my sense that the act of the other is demanding of hell. Do I believe myself then condemned? I don't believe myself condemned. For the God who reaches out and puts justice and penitence in my heart also provides there the hope that comes from mercy. I experience God as all-embracing, all-consuming Love, as respecting me and empowering me and inspiring me, and moving me towards improvement, however small. And that gift I cannot reasonably believe goes to me alone.

And so God, to be both mercy and justice, must be something beyond both. But this 'beyond' cannot be annihilating of that which it transcends. It must fulfill the human experience and the divine experience of judgment, justice and mercy, while somehow reconciling and being more than them. Is there, then, any vision of God that is reasonable that does not conform to Christ Crucified. One can believe in God without Jesus, but the God one believes in must look remarkably like Jesus to really command ascent. Only the Pain of God, God as SUFFERING LOVE, can help us make sense of our experience of evil as separating sin and of mercy as overcoming that separation.

Off-Topic: My Favorite Superheroes (#20-16)

#20- The Cowgirl Dorothy Gale- I struggled with whether it was right to put Dorothy from LEGEND OF OZ: THE WICKED WEST on this list, but ultimately, I think the way she is handled in that comic book rightly classifies her as a 'superhero' and indeed she is one of my favorite characters in all of comicdom. I started to collect this comic book a couple of years ago, right when it first came out. I loved it from the start. The pacing of the book, the off-beat storytelling and the unusual but convincing dialogue all come together to create an artistic and entertainment experience that is almost too good to be true. And at the center of it all stands Dorothy Gale. But this is not the Dorothy we know from the original books or movies. This is a larger-than-life rough and tumble cowgirl who doesn't take crap from anyone. Her status as a 'superheroine' has increased as she's apparently attained great power after replacing the Wicked Witch of the West. And while she's played a rather minor role on the more recent ongoing series, I'm sure she's soon to return full force and when she does I for one will be very happy.

#19- Captain America- Cap has been involved in almost every major storyline I've come to love, and always plays a role as leader and strategist. He's run operations that have actually taken out Thanos of Titan, the most terrible of all Marvel villains (in my humble opinion). What makes Cap so interesting is that he's not really 'super' in the traditional sense of the word, at least not in the comics. In the comics every one of his physical abilities has been pushed to the maximum human level they could possibly reach. So what makes captain truly 'super' is his heart and his mind. On that level he's very much like Batman. But unlike Batman, Captain has an optimism about him that makes him both vulnerable and inspiring in a way that truly moves you. In this sense he has the best character traits of both Batman and Superman all rolled into the same person. With the recent films pushing his stock even higher, Captain America is a character I truly love, though I've never collected massive numbers of his individual books.

#18- Thor- There was a time when I would've said that I loved Eric Masters' Thor or Beta Ray Bill even more than the original Thor. But the films have changed all that for me. When major films are made about characters, it can't help change the way you think about that character, and I think the THOR films, especially the most recent ones, are just some of the best comic book movies ever made. I have more Thor comics than, say, Captain America or Iron Man, but still there was a time when Thor would've been further down on this list. Like those other two, Thor has played an important role in almost every major story I have come to love (Thanos and Adam Warlock in the 70s, Secret Wars, The Infinity Trilogy, etc). But it is the old Asgardian stories, taking place wholly on another plane of existence, that I have really come to appreciate as something special. I think the films took great risks in being set primarily on those planes, but they paid off big time. And rightly so.

#17- Batman- Okay, I know I'm going to get some boos from the peanut gallery on this one, but this is just me being honest. Look, I love Batman, I LOVE Batman, but there are other characters I have come to love even more. Batman has a big role in most big DC story lines, and I have tons of comics with Batman in them, but like many of the individual Avengers, I don't have many Batman-only comic books. A couple of dozen at the most. However, I love many of the Batman films, and especially the animated series which I might list as the best animated television show of all time. Frank Miller's classic THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS is not only one of the best graphic novels of all time, but one of the best novels of all time, period. Batman will always sit high on this list, but not as high as some would like. Batman fans can be brutal to those who don't agree with them that he is the best superhero of all time. He may be the best, but I'd be lying if I said he was my absolute favorite.

#16- Green Lantern- Hal Jordan- I know people who think that the Green Lantern is the dumbest character of all time. I am not one of those people. In fact, Green Lantern is one of my favorites. That is why there are four GLs on this list (John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, Hal Jordan and Alan Scott). I guess part of it has to do with the thought of what I could do with such a ring, which is powered by willpower and imagination, which I (perhaps egotistically), believe I have a lot of. Hal has been involved in some very important story lines including the groundbreaking GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW series in the 70s. But it was the Parallax storyline, when Hal went bad, that really cemented in my mind just how complex and interesting the man Hal Jordan actually is, beneath it all. And it doesn't hurt that green is my favorite color. 

Quotable

"The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to treat it a little lightly."- Madeline L'Engle

Quotable

"Oh what greivous pain a little fault doth find."- Dante

Lessons From "The Road"

Lessons From "The Road"

A few years back a film came out called "The Road", it starred Vigo Mortensen of LORD OF THE RINGS fame. It was the story of a man and his son, traveling down a long and dangerous road in a post-apocalyptic era. The vision of the future was terrifying, though much of it was cliche in films these days: cannibalism, an earth destroyed by some ecological disaster, etc.

But underlying this story was a profoundly theological message. Everything is full of Christian symbolism, so much so that some churches were screening the film. The central issue was whether or not the father could maintain his own humanity in the midst of such terror, all the while trying to safeguard the boy's life and his innocence. The man crosses lines many times, and in the end seems to all but lose himself but the boy's goodness and light redeems the father, granting him the soul he would've lost unto himself.

The central message of the story is given when the duo encounters an old, nearly blind man played by Robert Duval. The man tells the father, "when I first heard that boy's voice, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. His voice sounded like the voice of God." To which the father replies, "he is God, to me." Later on, the old man says something to the effect of, "that must be a terribly difficult burden, carrying the last god around with you."

Leaving aside the polytheistic undertones of the words themselves, the overall message is powerful, and to me reveals the fundamental insight of the Christian message. God exists in and through the vulnerable. We are in God's hands, yes, and God does for us all those things we can't do for ourselves: redemption, hope, forgiveness. But those gifts are given much like a child gives and is given. God saves us by falling into our arms, by suffering and dying for us. In that film we see both the manger and the cross, all in one. We hold in our hands the very presence of God. This is God's gift to us, for indeed it is GOD that we hold, the eternal incarnated in the human moment.

Our choice to help or not help, to love or not love, to believe or not believe even, is a choice to let God die and suffer anew, or to pick up the Cross with Simon the Cyrene. Every moment we birth God into the world or sacrifice him to our own satanic impulses. In this is the horror and the wonder of the human experience.

A final query: must we know God to help Him? I think unbelief hurts God, but that doesn't mean that the average atheist hurts God more than the average believer. Does the one who loves the child as a child receive the benefits of God's manifestation as the child?

My Favorite Martin Luther King, Jr Quote/Poem

My Favorite Martin Luther King Poem:

"We shall overcome, deep in my heart I do believe, we shall overcome.
Now I join hands often with students and others behind jail bars singing it: We shall overcome.
Sometimes we've had tears in our eyes when we joined together to sing it, but we still decided to sing it! We shall overcome.
Lord before this victory is won some will have to get thrown in jail some more but we shall over come. Don't worry about us, before the victory is won some of us will lose jobs, but we shall overcome.
Before the victory is won, even some will have to face physical death. But if physical death is the price that some must pay, to free their children from a permanent psychological death, then nothing shall be more redemptive. We shall over come.
Before the victory is won, some will be misunderstood and called bad names and dismissed as rebel-rousers and agitators. But we shall overcome.
And I'll tell you why.
We shall overcome because the arch of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
We shall overcome because Carlyle is right: No lie can live forever.
We shall overcome because William Collin Bryant is right: Truth crushed to earth will rise again.
We shall overcome because James Russel Lowell is right: Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. Yet that scaffold sways the future. And behind the dim unknown standeth God within the shadows, keeping watch above his own.
We shall overcome because the Bible is right, "You shall reap what you sow."
We shall overcome. Deep in my heart I do believe! We shall overcome.
And this with this faith we will go out and adjourn the counsels of despair and bring new light into the dark chambers of pessimism and we will be able to rise from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope. And this will be a great America! We will be the participants in making it so.
And so as I leave you this evening I say, Walk together children! Don't you get weary!

Discernment

The process of discernment, trying to figure out what God is calling you to, is one of the most mentally and spiritually difficult processes one engages in. I think this is especially true for pastors and priests. For most people, what God calls you to is something that doesn't necessarily have to do with what you do for a living. People are called to help others, to get involved, to worship God, and so on and so on. But what does one do when these things are not only what one is called to in one's life but in one's job? Every decision to follow or not follow God has these massive consequences. This is both a good and a bad thing. It means that one's moral life is more consequential. Doing what God wants me to do has a bearing on my income... this is a productive albeit a self-centered motivator to do what God wants me to do. But it also puts a lot of pressure on the individual. If God calls me to poverty, what does this mean for my wife?

This is the one bit of wisdom in the Catholic tradition's injunction against married or romantically involved priests. I think the pros for married clergy far outweigh the cons, but this is one of the cons. So when a priest or pastor tries to figure out what God wants for their lives, they have to be very deliberate. Every minister should be motivated by three factors:
Revelation from God
The people of the Church
The institution of the Church

If I feel God moving my heart a particular direction, I best go that direction. Similarly, if my closest friends and family feel God moving me a particular direction, I would be wise to listen to them, although in the end the decision must be my own. So if I receive a call from God, I go.

But God doesn't always make His ways so clearly known. Mysterious is the Lord, and larger than life. I must also gauge my situation on what God has called me to in the past. God calls ministers to community, usually, and so when a community leaves, so too must the pastor. I cannot stay with a dwindling group of people for many reasons. I may be the cause of the dwindling, and that is no good for anyone. Or I may have somewhere else I am needed. The people who want me in a particular place have at least some power to decide if I stay in that place. They are a part of my call. God tells me where I am supposed to be by them and their actions. Yes, God calls us sometimes to what seems to be failure. But that doesn't mean He wants us to masochistically wallow in it. If the youth in my youth group like having me as a resource both spiritually, emotionally, and practically, then they have part of the power that keeps me where I am. My commitment to them is total. My commitment to the job that makes me available to them is conditionally. One of those conditions is them.

Finally, the institution of the church must choose to compensate me. The laborer is worthy of his hire. I spend too much time and money on education, and work too hard with too many sacrifices to allow myself to be used for no material benefit. God does not call me to take the food out of my wife's mouth. A church's willingness to pay for my work is part of the way in which I know I am called. I may be called to other things, even unpaid ministry, but then the sacrifices and calculations will change, and I need to live in that world if that is where God is calling me. I cannot live in this world and deal with the consequences of that one.

God works in many ways, some spiritual and some material. This is how I try to find my way as a minister, as a pastor. I cannot put limits on where God can bring me but I must have some process as an embedded human being to figure out where I'm supposed to be in this world. It can never be easy, it should never be easy. But it must in some sense be simple. God is mysterious, not complex.

Off-Topic: Comic Book Reviews *Spoilers Alert*

I'm adding a new feature to my comic book reviews, which includes my wife's overall feelings about the book. She is a harsh comic book critic, though she reads just about everything I buy. If she likes a book, it has to be really, really good. So I'm going to be adding a new addendum entitled: "my wife's review." It will be either a thumbs up or a thumbs down. I just think y'all should take extra notice when my wife likes a comic book. I do.

DC's SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN #4
They did something weird with the pacing in this issue, by telling the story out of order. I'm not sure if it did much to add to the issue, but it didn't detract from it much. Here we see Zod up to his old tricks, while Superman-as-Clark and Wonder Woman seek to deal with the repercussions of the world finding out they are an item. The world, too, is reeling from the news. There is some really great stuff here, especially regarding the latter storyline. I know some are critical of the way Wonder Woman is handled in this series, but I don't see it. Both this and the main Wonder Woman comic book are emphasizing different parts of the classic character. I'm loving this.

Storyline: 4.5 Stars
Dialogue: 4 Stars
Pacing: 3 Stars
Art: 4 Stars
Overall: 4.5 Stars

My Wife's Review: Thumbs Up

Dynamite's GRIMM #9
In this issue Nick faces a Japanese wessen unlike any he's ever faced before. It is a cross between an insect and samurai. The twist is that this samurai is a serial killer that targets cops as a way to get to Nick. It is gruesome and frightening, though the art deadens the emotional impact (I'm still not a fan of the art in this one). There is a surprise ending and a hint that we will be seeing some Hercules-inspired stories coming up. This comic book continues to capture the spirit of the show, and I'm a big fan. I hope that the actors on the show approve of this book, because I know some don't like the way Dynamite gets to use their likeness. I'd like to get one of these books signed by the actors some day.
Storyline: 4 Stars
Dialogue: 4 Stars
Pacing: 3.5 Stars
Art: 2.5 Stars
Overall: 3.5 Stars

My Wife's Review: Thumbs Up

Marvel's THUNDERBOLTS #20/ NO MERCY #1
I've never been a huge fan of the Red Hulk storyline (though I like the aesthetic), so I've not kept up with this comic. But this month it features Johnny Blaze's Ghost Rider and while the last few forays into this character by Marvel have sucked, I had to give this book a try. Ghost Rider is an old favorite of mine and I know how great the Rider and Blaze can be in comics. In this book we have a team of anti-heroes (heavy on the ANTI) who have teamed up to take care of each other's personal business. Business none could deal with alone. The comic has a deep dark side, but there is a ton of humor here, too. I loved this book. The jokes were spot-on, and the use of Johnny Blaze was superb. This was the best single comic I've seen him in since Trail of Tears. There was this joke about Blaze doing 'two bad movies' that was obviously a reference to real life, and that was just cool. My one issue here is that there is all this devil imagery, and talk of 'hell' and I just don't handle that stuff well. When I laugh at that stuff I feel a little dirty afterwards. It is the mysticism in me... I've seen hell and I've see the seductiveness of evil and I don't like to even think about that stuff. But there is no way to be a John Blaze fan and not get exposed to that kind of stuff and really, in the annals of comic books Ghost Rider is pretty tame when it comes to that. So can I handle it? I think so. I'm definitely going to be collecting more in this series, now, that is for sure.

Storyline: 4.5 Stars
Dialogue: 4.5 Stars
Pacing: 3 Stars
Art: 3 Stars
Overall: 4 Stars

My Wife's Review: N/A

DC's JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #11

JLA has been in a kind of holding pattern since FOREVER EVIL began and I'm getting just about sick of it. I like Martian Manhunter and all, but really none of this is advancing the character for me. Here Manhunter and Star-Spangled girl continue their quest to free the rest of the Justice League. They fight Clayface and I have to say, that battle is pretty epic. But it only makes up 1/5 the book. The rest is really just filler, and that is too much filler for one comic book. Like so many of my favorite books right now, my favorite JLA member is missing: Green Lantern Simon Baz. I like the way Justice League: Dark is handling the Forever Evil storyline much better. But JLA has been a crawl of a story for four issues now. The dialogue is okay, and the art is fantastic, but the rest is falling flat.

Storyline: 2.5 Stars
Dialogue: 3 Stars
Pacing: 2.5 Stars
Art: 4 Stars
Overall: 3 Stars

My Wife's Review: Thumbs Down

Archie Comics' AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE #3

This book came late to my subscription box, but boy was it worth the wait. The world has become aware of what is going on as the zombie plague spreads rapidly beyond Riverdale. Archie goes off to find his parents, while two of the kids at Veronica's mansion turn zombie on the rest. The individual scenes are what really drive this book, and boy are there some doozies here. Ginger and Nancy burning down Pops and boosting a motorcycle to get the heck out of dodge was my favorite, but I also like Archie's interaction with Betty as he escapes Veronica's house through a grate. The dialogue, the art, it all adds up to create this individual vignettes that are something right out of a horror movie. I can't wait to see where it takes me next.

Storyline: 4.5 Stars
Dialogue: 5 Stars
Pacing: 3.5 Stars
Art: 4 Stars
Overall: 4.5 Stars

My Wife's Review: Thumbs Down

DC's DC UNIVERSE VS MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE
The adventure continues as we learn the details of what happened to Superman, and He-Man's allies are left to fight the rest of Earth's heroes. Dark Orko takes center stage and we learn more about his relationship with Skeletor. This comic has a difficult task as it must play tongue-in-cheek sometimes and serious others. It only succeeds in either task about half the time, but when it does succeed its just a blast. I'm enjoying this way more than I thought I would and I will be coming back for more.

Storyline: 3.5 Stars
Dialogue: 4 Stars
Pacing: 3 Stars
Art: 3.5 Stars
Overall: 3.5 Stars

Not-Really Off-Topic: Weekly Extended Comic Book Review *Spoiler Alert*

This week I am going to be reflecting on the theologically-rich comic book from DC, Constantine #10. Wow, does this have a lot of blog-fodder. Let's begin with some background. Constantine, sorcerer and leader of Justice League: Dark, is looking for his friends, banished by the Criminal Syndicate way back in Forever Evil #1. Along the way, he has discovered a massive spiritual evil, galvanized by the presence of the Syndicate, who originate from the birthplace of all evil, Earth-3. To combat this evil and find his friends, including the only person he truly loves (Zatanna), he has formed a makeshift "New JLD", composed of Phantom Stranger, Nightmare Nurse, Swamp Thing, and the newly recovered Deadman.

Attempts to fight the being known as Blight have so far failed. So the team, desperate for some hope in all this darkness, go to the very center of all hope in all of the universes: heaven itself. Here Constantine is faced with a reality he doesn't really believe in: God. Standing at the gates of heaven, Constantine questions how there could be a God who could let all that is happening on earth take place. First he faces the terrible power of one of my favorite characters, the Spectre. Spectre despises Constantine and is committed to sending him the hell (which Spectre, being the vessel of God's wrath, believes he deserves). But before Spectre can fulfill his promise, he is stopped by a talking God, which claims to be the Voice of God.

Constantine laughs at the suggestion, but he feels he has no choice but to petition this being for help. Spectre shows great fury at Constantine's doubts, but God acknowledges that in Constantine's heart, despite his protestations to the contrary, there is at least the desire to have faith. This God accounts as 'enough' and thus shares wisdom with each member of Constatine's new supernatural team. Everyone gets a very positive message, except Constantine himself, who only sees reflected back at him his own doubts about his new team.

There is something supremely profound here, and I really liked this issue. The writers are saying, in essence, that Constantine has no more reason to doubt God than he does to doubt those around him, those in whom he has put his trust. God is trying to show Constantine that he is more a man of faith than he thinks. Of course, this goes over the scoundrel's head. Constantine is too prideful and self-centered to see the truth God is trying to reflect to him. But God's response to Constantine's challenge about the problem of evil is not to explain himself, but to give hope to the rest of the team, and to give them one of his top angels to help them on their quest. Heaven's response to evil is to to explain why it exists, but to fight it. What a great message.

This angel tries to get Constantine to see that God was actually giving him hope, too. Not only hope against the evil they face, but hope in that Constantine was allowed to converse with God at all. This is the first time in the New 52 DC universe that we've really been able to see some redemptive possibilities for this hero. And I, for one, like it. It may be more exciting to some to see a character fight without hope, to some this may seem more of a realistic framework for comic books. But I see it as less realistic, not more. For who can really fight without hope? Without light? Everyone has to hope in something. The New 52 Universe has had me down because it has been a less hopeful reality, but some recent issues have reminded me why I'm more a DC guy. There is a sense here that indeed God is on the side of good. And that is refreshing indeed.

Characters like Spawn and Ghost Rider, they get my energy up. They are certainly fodder for good stories, and in fact Ghost Rider was recently featured in a doozy of a story (see: my general comic book reviews when the come up). But I want to feel excited AND uplifted. The one without the other is just a momentary high. Together, they can change you for the better.

On an aesthetic level, I liked this book. The storyline was good, even if lacking in much action. The dialogue was pretty good and the art was good to. Overall: 4.5 Stars. This is one of the best JLD-linked books I've read in a while.

The Truth About Drugs & Alcohol

This is going to be a post about an issue I care deeply about, because it is an issue that marks my life. I am a 10 years in-recovery substance abuser. I had a serious drug problem that persisted from about the age of 18 until the age of 21. For three years I was literally high all the time. I did a lot of marijuana, drank, and hard drugs as well. It was through God's grace, good people, and luck that I found my way out. In the years since, I have tried to steer people away from these activities. I believe them to be a supreme evil in our society, and one that needs to be stamped out. Here are some things I learned along the way:

Most people who do drugs and alcohol do not get addicted. Recreational substance use usually causes little to no harm for a person. The lie that those who oppose drugs and alcohol use that somehow doing drugs will automatically mean you will mess up your life, does not help matters. Those who experiment with drugs and find out that they were lied to, tend to become more involved in the life, not less. We do our children no good by trying to use terror tactics to dissuade them from drug use. Many parents will warn their kids against marijuana use while drinking on a somewhat regular basis. Yet when those kids try marijuana, and drink a little, they find that the two are not that different. This throws into question everything their parents tell them about drugs in general.

Yet I believe that drinking to any excess and drug use are terrible evils. You see, the very fact that drugs might not affect you that badly is a reason not to do them. If drugs destroyed every life they touched, no one would do drugs. And those whose lives will be destroyed would probably not do them either, as their would not be enough of a market to maintain the sale of these substances. If you, you there, can do drugs and drink without great consequences, then you by your normalization of the process invite in other people, who are likely to have extreme consequences. There is a kind of aristocratic element here, too. As most of the people in the middle or upper classes have the family support, the easier life, to keep them from falling to far into the hole that drug use represents. And even if they do get arrested or have some consequence, they have the money to mitigate that consequence.

But the lower classes...the poor and the underlcass, when they experiment with drugs and alcohol to any degree, they take a much higher risk. They look at the culture of substance use, both drugs and alcohol, and they see that people engage in it with limited consequences. They enter into that culture and it almost always destroys them. They do not have the kind of life that offers anything better than the drugs that they are taking, and they can only gain that kind of life if they do not do drugs. They do not have the money to hire the lawyers that will keep one night in jail from ruining their entire lives. In this way drugs and alcohol are a kind of oppression... the rich and middle class get to have their little fun, as they support a way of life and an institution that rots their poorer brothers and sisters like a cancer. It is a bit disgusting.

There is also a religious aspect to all of this. This is God. Right here, right now, this is God. You will never be closer to God than you are right now. The world is your contact with the Divine. Any drug and all but the smallest intake of alcohol, filters your contact with the world. It separates you, even if to a small degree, from reality itself, and so from God. To run away from the world as it actually is, is to run away from God. Even fiction and play, which I so often commend, are only useful if they are actually increasing rather than decreasing our contact with what is ultimately real. Drugs and alcohol are always a way of running from yourself and the world around you. They are sin make manifest in physical form. As sure an incarnation of satan as the great empires Apocalypticists railed against.

However, I believe that the drug problem is not best faced by the legal 'war on drugs'. As much as I hate drugs and alcohol, I hate the war on drugs more. The truth is that sin is a disease, and drugs are an instantiation of that disease. The acceptance of alcohol and the rejection of drugs is hypocritical, and creates an inconsistent legal system that is bad for society. Moreover, countries that have legalized drugs across the board have lower rates of drug use over time. Drugs are kept exorbitantly expensive and that helps fund organized crime. Further, the government has to resort to questionable tactics to fight this war, turning neighbor against neighbor, using systems of informants that amounts to creative entrapment, and using search an seizure patterns that are all but evil in and of themselves.

We need a new way of approaching this problem, that is cultural, religious, and medical. Allow people to go to clinics for their fixes, and get told by a doctor all the evils it can cause and ways in which they can find help. Use the money from the sale of the drugs to set up recovery centers, and the saving on law enforcement to focus on actual crimes. To use an analogy: I believe that pornography is one of the great evils of our society, and rots our collective soul in a way we can't even imagine. Yet I do not want to make the practice illegal. I want to change people by appealing to reason and the heart, not by legal force, unless absolutely necessary to protect citizens from each other.

So to sum up: unless there is a medically compelling reason (including the reduction of extreme pain), using mind-altering substances of any kind is, to my mind, separating oneself from God and thus literally devouring sin. Fighting this evil, which is a cancer in our modern world, will take a new mindset and some new approaches. Finally, the War on Drugs is wrongheaded, misunderstanding the nature of the problem and surviving only on misrepresentations of the problem that hurt primarily the underclass.

One-Post Wednesday: Limiting the Conversation

I have argued before that people who try to "Ockham's Razor" God out of existence are wrongheaded. Simplicity is an intellectual value, an epistemological value, one that is foundational to the scientific endeavor. But it is not the only such value. There are other values that have to be balanced out with simplicity. Predictive efficacy, explanatory power, instrumental efficacy... all these play a role. Is String Theory to be preferred because it explains so much? Or does its vast complexity mean it is rather unlikely to be true? These are the kinds of trade-offs scientists get involved in all the time.

One of these values is intellectual fertility, the expanding of the mind. New questions, new avenues of study and thought, whenever a theory, thought or idea spawns this kind of activity it is taken as a sign that it is true. An intellectually fertile theory is preferable to one that is less fertile, all things being equal.

Intelligent Design or Creationism are problematic not only because of Ockham's Razor but because of intellectual fertility. If everything ends with the explanation "God did it", that so limits our avenues of thought that it in and of itself has the mark of untruth. That is the consequence of a commitment to this epistemic value, which is foundational to the scientific endeavor.

But atheism, too, has an intellectual fertility problem. Questions of meaning, of purpose, these things are just not allowed in an atheistic world view. Today I sat with a group of youngsters as they explored the following question: "why does God allow evil?", "can good exist without evil?", "what would the world look life if it were ruled by a God of indifference rather than love?", and so on. These questions and the discussions that surrounded them were fantastic. And since they were questions we took seriously, and very seriously, then the discussion had a weight that allowed more and more questions to be explored.

Taking the universe as only objective fact and not subjective encounter, you can explore only the physical facts of the universe, i.e., its objective components. How does the world work? This is the limiting question of science. Taking the universe as subjective encounter and not objective fact, focusing only on the Mind behind it all, almost every physical encounter lacks any depth to it. There is no deep thinking needed and no new questions to be asked about the physical world.

Yet if the universe is looked at from within our subjective encounter with it, and beyond that subjective encounter. If we study the universe as "Thou" and "It", if we have both physical and non-physical modes of study, then we have a maximally intellectually fertile world. Of course this fact in and of itself cannot commend faith. You need reason to believe before you can start thinking about these things. I gave such reasons in my apologetics project. But the questions confronts one of whether to trust the data. I think that valuing an extension of conversation, a pushing of inquiry as far as it can go, gives one a reason to trust.

Off-Topic: My Favorite Superheroes (#25-21)

#25- Incredible Hulk- Now we are getting into my top-tier favorites. Most of these characters are featured in a great number of comic books that I have or currently collect. Though not all are. In fact The Hulk is not a character I have a huge collection of. However, he has played important roles in some of my favorite story lines, and of the Hulk comics I have, some of them contain the best stories I've ever read. I actually enjoyed the Hulk best when he wasn't a lumbering brute. I love the issues where Banner's superb mind is in control of all that power and rage. Its like the power of a hydrogen bomb focused onto a single point. Bruce Banner's childhood was terrible, and that fact helped contribute to the Hulk's complicated existence. It is the psychological complexity of the entire situation in which the character finds himself (itself), that really makes the whole thing work. Anyone with anger issues can identify with Banner and his alter ego. I loved the television show, too, and that helped push the character high on the list, though the movies have not handled him as well (except the Avengers, which presented the character superbly). I have to mention one particular issue THE INCREDIBLE HULK Volume 1 #384. A Banner-controlled Hulk is shrunk down to only 6 inches. He tries to argue The Abomination out of a destructive course of action. That comic book is pure brilliance, and works in a number of levels, both dramatic and comedic. Comics like that have the power of literature, and it sticks with me to this day. If that was the only Hulk comic I had, he'd be on this list. That is how good a single issue or storyline can be.

#24- The Wolverine- There was a time when the Wolverine would've been at the top of this list. He is featured prominently in a huge number of my comic books. Wolverine's a ball of rage, but he knows right from wrong and desperately tries to be the man he wants to be. The fact that he fails from time to time just makes him that much more interesting. From a great aesthetic, malleable powers (his regeneration and claws make for interesting stories but don't overpower the stories themselves), a great cadre of colorful and frightening enemies... Wolverine is to the X-Men and mutant story lines what Spider-Man is to the rest of the Marvel universe. Issues 40-60 of the original Wolverine comic book are just fantastic. But when Wolverine temporarily lost his adamantium (unbreakable) skeletal lining, it turned me off. I just hated reading Wolverine as a de-powered character. And really it was just the beginning of the whole mutant storyline going off the rails. I lost interest in the X-Men towards the end of the 90s and I never regained that interest. What I know of the House of M storylines and even X-Men vs Avengers hasn't helped. Still, those glory years were glorious indeed, and enough to always keep this character towards the top of this list. 

#23- Doctor Strange- Doctor Strange, like the Hulk, was a major player in almost every major storyline that I loved when I was primarily a Marvel Comics fan. He was a big part of the Infinity Trilogy, and the Midnight Sons, which centered round Ghost Rider and other supernatural characters. Strange's power is hard to explain to people who do not know the comics. He is the Sorcerer Supreme... literally the most powerful mage on this plane of existence. Strange, like so many of the truly great Marvel characters, is a complex person, filled with moral tension. He was plagued by the sin of pride until an accident caused him his hands and he failed at his first attempt at becoming a great sorcerer. Beaten down by life, Strange sought a new path. Yet his ego continues to return to plague, albeit in subtler ways. It is that subtlety of his weakness, which each writer must finesse in his own way, that really makes the story lines so consistently good.

#22- The Spectre- I only recently became a major fan of the Spectre. He is very much like a DC version of the Ghost Rider (or, more accurately, Ghost Rider is like a Marvel version of the Spectre, since the Spectre came first). He is literally the living embodiment of divine wrath, bound to a human host whose spirit must temper the Spectre's thirst for vengeance. Mysterious, often playing strange but important roles in some of DC's greatest story lines (like Alex Ross' "Kingdom Come"), the Spectre is one of those characters that always keeps you guessing. I recently picked up a SHOWCASE collection of a bunch of back issues reprinted in a trade paperback, and it is really incredible how well those old stories hold up. Yet it was his actions in some more recent books, like the VENGEANCE crossover series that really piqued my interest. If there is one bad thing to say about this character, it is that he is often too powerful, and tends to overpower any book he's in. I mean, this guy makes Superman look like a regular Joe. I hear that the New 52 has brought in a new Spectre which is not this titanic in scope, but I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'll check out the new book and get back to you. Until then, I'm basing this review on what I've read which is mostly back issues. I've thoroughly enjoyed that adventure so far.

#21- The Tick- Comic books are not only about depth or titanic action. Sometimes they are about plain old comedy. The Tick combines the best of mainstream comic tropes with a sense of humor that is absolutely dynamite. I cut my teeth on the cartoon version of The Tick, which is just hilarious. If you've never encountered that show, I highly recommend it, especially the first season, which may be one of the funniest things ever to grace the small screen. It is that good. But my interest expanded as I started to pick up the original comic book, which long predated the show, in trade paperback form. The writing was awesome...the best kind of satire, and the aesthetic was spot on. One of the high points of my life as a nerd was meeting and getting the autograph of the creator of the Tick, Ben Edlund.

Off-Topic: The Other Comic Book Reviews *Spoiler Alert*

Dynamite's GRIMM THE WARLOCK #2
One of the great things about the entire GRIMM universe, from the comic books to the television show, is that it is both a fantasy story and a police procedural. So the stories can lean one way or another. This issue of the limited-series GRIMM: THE WARLOCK tends towards the latter. Nick is faced with a death that looks by all lights to be an accident but which his gut tells him is something more. When he finally finds the killer, he finds a being prepared for a fight and one that catches him off-guard at first. Seeing Nick come back with a vengeance was a lot of fun. The art still bothers the crap out of me, though.

Storyline: 4 Stars
Dialogue: 3.5 Stars
Pacing: 3 Stars
Art: 2.5 Stars
Overall: 3.5 Stars

Dynamite's ASH AND THE ARMY OF DARKNESS #3
Ash tries to rekindle the relationship with his medieval girlfriend Sheila, who resents him for having left her to return to the future. Meanwhile, Ash has to deal with the quandary of him being the only person who can find the Necronomicon (again), which puts the book in reach of the deadites, but is also his only means of getting home. This book is not as good as some of the other Dynamite ASH offerings, as its pacing is a little off. The art is less than it should be, too.

Storyline: 3 Stars
Dialogue: 3.5 Stars
Pacing: 2.5 Stars
Art: 2.5 Stars
Overall: 3 Stars

Predestined Line of Reasoning

It is hard to argue with Calvin's reading of much of the New Testament. Like all issues in scripture, predestination is not somehow the end-all be-all of the text, but it is the prevailing view. There are many more New Testament passages that imply or directly commend predestination, than passages criticizing it or implying a different view. Paul, especially, seems to hold something like this view.

Now, we are not required to take the prevailing Biblical voice on an issue. The way to solve the conversational nature of scripture is not by just picking out which every voice is the dominant one and calling it the truth. For instance, God's omnipotence is the prevailing view of scripture, yet there are passages that seem to point a different direction. It should be clear to any of my regular readers that I add my own voice to the smaller group of Biblical writers. Yet I do this admitting that I am not on AS FIRM Biblical ground as those who disagree with me. My reason for taking the position I do comes not solely from scripture (though if it were not there at all, I think I'd have big problem), but from reason. Those lesser voices had an answer to that ever-pressing problem of evil and innocent suffering, and that is just too strong an argument to discount, for me.

Yet the predestination voices, dominant as they are, have behind them a similarly strong line of reasoning. For one, they are part of the Biblical writers' way of dealing with the fact that not all people exposed to the Gospel accept it. This is particularly difficult when you realize that the Jesusian message was not very popular with the Jews, at least not on a mass scale. Why could God's own people not recognize His son? It also deals with the simple issue of Grace. How do we make sense of the mercy of God in light of the New Testament's very negative theological anthropology (picture of human nature)? Predestination does just that.

So I'm a predestinarian. But let's be clear about what predestination is not. It is not a denial of free will. Predestination does not require belief in TOTAL depravity. I am still free to drink sprite or coke. I am still free to help this person, right here, right now. I am always free to do the right thing. What I am not free to do, what I do not have the power to do, is make myself into the kind of person who somehow deserves heaven. My freedom is damaged enough that I cannot create by my own power the kind of self-hood that would make me worthy of heaven.

Predestination is not fatalistic about all things. It only says that whether I am getting into heaven or not is decided from the beginning. I was chosen from the moment I was born or conceived (or from eternity if you believe in divine omniscience, which I don't). And predestination doesn't decide the scope of that salvation. Who God is chosen is not defined simply by virtue of believing in predestination. And I believe that all people are predestined for heaven. I take another minority view in scripture: universalism, and combine it with this more prevailing view of predestination (in fact, there is no way to be a universalist without also being predestinarian). My reasons for this are many. But let me say that over and above all reflections, the prevailing message of the Bible are this: mercy, justice, and the Cross. All doctrines, all Biblical conversations, must be interpreted in light of these Biblical themes. And moreover, I would say that it is only the last theme that really matters, since it swallows up the other two. Predestination need not make us wonder if we are one of the ones called, for all concerns such as this fall into shadow beneath the substance of the cross. The cross is beyond mercy and justice, and it ensures both our judgment and our salvation. Whatever predestination is or isn't, it is not greater than that message.

Off-Topic: My Favorite Superheroes (30-26)

#30- Iron Man- It may shock many that Iron Man is not higher up on my list. Iron Man is today one of the most popular characters in Marvel's repetoire, largely due to the highly successful (and actually very good) films. But while Iron Man has always had a fairly prominent place in my collection, and rightly is one of my favorite characters, he's never meant enough to me to crack the top 25. In fact, if not for the films, which I genuinely loved, he probably wouldn't be this high on the list. Though films or no, he would be on it. I love the aesthetic of the armor. There is something about the classic gold and red that really speaks to people, myself included. I also like the fact that there are all these different armors for various occasions. But it is Tony Stark, and his dysfunctional relationships with those closest to him, that really make the character riveting. Stark is a genuinely flawed human being, and seeing his struggles with, for instance, alcoholism really spoke to someone in my situation. That a person with so many flaws can make such a huge difference, and in the end find that place that pushes him to be something better, is a message that should resonate with everyone.


#29- Scarlet Witch- Like Longshot, Scarlet Witch is on this list in part because she possesses my favorite super power: probability manipulation. But unlike Longshot, her control of these powers is greater and so the results are that much more fantastic. Additionally, she is a far more interesting and complex character. Her on-again off-again relationship with the vision, and the fact that many beings of cosmic proportion seek to use her for nefarious ends, makes for some dynamite storytelling. You see the big secret of powers like the Witch's is that underneath it all is the power to control the fundamentals of reality, for reality at its base is dominated by the laws of probability. All that power, but with a limited ability to focus it, combined with an interesting character, all make for a perfect storm of comic book awesomeness.

#28- Phoenix (Rachel Summers)- Some might scofff that Rachel is up higher than this list than her mother, but to be honest, I've always followed Rachel more, because by the time I started collecting comics Jean Grey's adventure was back issue fodder.  Rachel is an escapee from a future time when mutants are hunted like animals. She is ostensibly the daughter of Jean Grey and Scott Summers, though in another universe that no longer exists (or rather will exist). She eventually learned to access the vast powers of the Phoenix and that sent her back in time. I love Rachel because she is the ultimate fish out of water, and possessed of vast power. My favorite Phoenix adventures are those that take place with Excaliber. I just loved that team (three of its members are on this list.)

#27- Speedball- I like characters that are possessed of vast power but limited ability to use those powers. That makes for interesting storytelling, plain and simple. Speedball is a teenager who is connected to another dimension composed of pure kinetic energy. Any force direct at him is absorbed and transmitted elsewhere, usually causing him to bounce around and randomly project kinetic energy. Speedball is on this list because of an extended storyline in the New Warriors, of which he is a member. The Sphinx found a way to use his powers against others, and the Sphinx's more enlightened use of those powers revealed a force greater than most realized. That exploration of his true nature remains one of my favorite all-time storylines and that is why Speedball is on this list.

#26- Steel- John Henry Irons is descended from the legendary railroad worker of the same name. When Superman died, John had some kind of spiritual experience involving the Man of Steel, possibly even housing his soul for a short time. Irons had made quite a mess of his life, using his unique genius to create weapons that threatened the streets of Metropolis and later the world. Steel used his encounter with Superman as inspiration to create a super-powered suit that got him involved deepl with the Superman Wars leading up to Kal-Els return to the land of the living. Steel is the Iron Man of the DC universe, and I've always liked him better than Iron Man. Partly because he is a black hero, but also because of his nobility and desire to make amends, with which I identified. Tony Stark creates his suits of armor using vast monetary resources. Steel makes his without much money, using only the power of his vast ingenuity. He is the poor mans's Iron Man, and I always liked that.

Quotable

"When God grabs you by the scruff of the neck, although theologically you have a freedom to say 'no', in another sense you can't say 'no' at all, because its like Jeremiah: 'God you have cheated me. You called me to be a prophet against a people that I love, and all that I proclaim is words of doom and judgment. And yet, if I say I will shut up, I can't.'"- Desmond Tutu

"Who is like You, O God?"..,

... Thus asks Miriam in Exodus  15:11. The Jewish answer to this question has always been the same: no one is like God. Despite all the similarities that exist between Judaism and Christianity, this will always amount to a dividing line. For Christians believe that there was one, indeed, who is like God. Jesus at minimum REVEALS who God is, and thus Jesus is at minimum LIKE God. Of course we believe more than that, but this is the real line between Judaism and our faith. God enters into the world as a man, and so God is brought near to us. I will extol all days all the ways in which Judaism and Christianity are alike. But we cannot deny the differences. This is a big one.

Not Really Off-Topic: Earth 2 #19

Last post I reviewed, in detail, Big Dog Ink's LEGEND OF OZ: THE WICKED WEST #14, here I review another book that demanded this kind of treatment: DC's EARTH 2 #19.

Darkseid's army begins a mass invasion of Earth, and the world's heroes seem all but impotent to stop the onslaught. Seeing Superman as a full-on disciple of Darkseid, is very much like a vision of the anti-christ. One cannot help but think of that Biblical imagery as this story unfolds. This Ersatz Superman stands before the people, deriding the weak and praising the strong as 'chosen'... an inversion of everything we think of the Man of Steel standing for.

I like the new Batman, a lot. We know this one isn't Bruce Wayne and that reinforces my long-standing position that we can have a great Batman who isn't Bruce (why isn't Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing a Tim Drake Batman in the new movie?). I also like the central theme that is beginning to form in this book: "hope shines in the darkness." Things couldn't be grimmer here in Earth 2 right now, and the tension has reached heights you could never reach in the primary DC universe, because we know literally 'anything can happen.'

But while terrors abound, the glimpses of hope are for that reason all the more powerful. Batman discovers another Kryptonian (or is this Earth 2's version of Superboy, and thus only half Kryptonian...we don't know yet), and we find out he has some Kryptonite on him. Lois Lane's attitude as the new Red Tornado is uplifting, and the ending where we get this glimpse of the return of Green Lantern, all this and more adds up to this sense that it is always darkest before the dawn. I can't wait to see where this all is taking me.

This is the way life really is. Hope can come in small packages. The message of a light in the darkness is perhaps best embodied by Jimmy Olson, who here is a very young boy possessed of some fantastic superpowers (he's some kind of tech-master.) There is something appropriately apocalyptic in all of this. The Book of Revelation looms large. The Book of Revelation is so full of hope within darkness, and everything turning around at the last moment. All great comic books are in some sense deeply theological, and this is a perfect example.

The art is some of the best DC has going, the storyline has surprises at every turn, the dialogue is good. Only the pacing is off, and then only a bit.

Overall, I give this book 4.5 out of 5 Stars

Not Really Off-Topic: In-Depth Comic Book Review of WICKED WEST #14

I said I would do one in-depth comic book review every week, but this week really demands that I deliver two, because two of my favorite books came out this week and they both delivered, though to varying degrees. In this review, I will review and reflect on Big Dog Ink's LEGEND OF OZ: THE WICKED WEST #14 from a theological perspective.

First, let's begin with what I liked about the book, as a comic book reader. Visually, there is no more stunning book out there than LEGEND OF OZ. From the first page on, over and over again there are panels and pages that are works of art unto themselves. The artist and colorist on this book just boggle my mind with their talent. I like the use of full-page spreads. I would have prints of every page on my wall, they are that good.

Second, the storyline is interesting. I have just come to love the character of the Tin Man in this book, almost as much as I love the Scarecrow, and that is saying a lot. Seeing some of the abuse he takes is hard, as he's been kind of invulnerable up to this point. It is similar to the emotions DC writers can bring up by having Superman get a beat-down. Beyond that, the character development in this book has been so good, that I genuinely care about the character and that helps. Its like Stephen King's ability to take a character and get you to know them intimately, and then just messing with them in ways that make you uncomfortable. I hated seeing the Tin Man get tortured here. And it made me angry at Dorothy that she hasn't found some way to do something about it yet. That brings up some thematic issues I want to touch on more in a second.

Now for the negative. Unlike most books in this series, this issue and the last have been a little off on pacing. That is a big disappointing, as this has been one of the best paced books I have ever encountered. Perhaps Manning is just not as good at this as Hutchison, I don't know. What I do know is that the slowness of the storytelling, and the choppiness, is more conspicuous here than it would be in other books BECAUSE of the excellent pacing that marked the book early on.

As a minister, I liked the thematic elements explored. Dorothy's character has gone in a surprising, genuinely surprising, direction. Her place as the new Wicked Witch of the West, which was a huge shock to begin with, has obviously changed her in ways that we don't fully understand yet. The central question of this issue, and really of the last few issues, is this: "what does one do with vast power one doesn't fully understand?" What is the effect of giving power to the powerless? Kingu, one of the chiefs of the flying apes, made huge errors because he was drunk with power once he took the throne, and now he has to struggle with the burdens of leadership.

Dorothy is in roughly the same place. The powers of the Wicked Witch allow her to see her friends suffer, but she seems unable to actually help them, which is frustrating for her and for us. You get angry at Dorothy, seeing her watch as someone she (and we) cares about suffers and being so aloof about it. One of the difficulties when trying to take power away from those who abuse it is the danger that the oppressed who overtake their oppressors will become oppressors once power is theirs. And even when power does not corrupt, inexperience and ignorance in its use can sometimes be even more dangerous than malice.

That these themes are subsumed under the telling of an ancient story...the story of the flying apes, is a wonderful feat of storytelling, but the deeper themes are there, and they really come to surface in this issue. As usual, I encourage anyone and everyone to go out and find LEGEND OF OZ: THE WICKED WEST, get caught up and start collecting future issues. It is a book that deserves support.

My overall rating is 4 Stars out of 5.