I love hero stories, of incorruptible leaders you’d follow through battle or disaster when there’s no way out—because if anyone can make it, they can. And they won’t just save themselves, they’ll rescue as many as possible.
The popular trend in fiction is flawed protagonists like us, who muddle through to victory and give us hope we can do the same. I understand it, but it’s not much fun.
I miss the wonder, the larger-than-life dream, the characters I could admire.
Maybe that’s why I re-read favourite novels. I don’t have many “new” fictional heroes and a few have fallen to moral lapses along the way. In new fiction, the best I can hope for is a quasi-hero or heroine, the reluctant hero model where s/he grows into the role and may someday be pedestal-worthy to me.
Hero-worship… could it be the soul’s instinctive longing for something—someOne—higher, bigger, greater? That God-shaped hole inside us aching to be filled?
God took on flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus subjected Himself to human limitations to reach us. He went farther than that. He gave Himself as a willing sacrifice to rescue us from bondage to the enemy of our souls.
He wasn’t a hero sneaking into the strong man’s lair only to be caught and executed as a failure. He came intentionally, deliberately, with a plan so outlandish that the devil missed it entirely until it was too late.
Jesus, Son of David, Son of Man, Son of God, Messiah, Saviour, Prince of Peace. Arrested and condemned to death. He could have called more than twelve legions of angels to rescue Him.
Remember Elisha’s servant’s eyes being opened to see the angel army poised to rescue them? I think Jesus saw the heavenly hosts around the Cross and held them back by His own will. He chose to finish His work.
He saved us. At inexpressible cost.
How does that make you feel?
To me, it demonstrates one and for all the absolute and utter proof that He loves us with a strong and active love.
If our spirits are open to understand what He has done, and why it was necessary, what other response can there be but absolute and utter devotion and loyalty?
That’s what I’d give unreservedly to a fictional hero if I were in a story. It wouldn’t be a choice, it’d just happen. That’s what I want to give to my God. It’s His right. It’s cause and effect.
But God is unseen and His whispers are soft. The world is loud and in-your-face. I need to choose this day, each day, to take every thought, idea, doubt, suggestion to God—take it captive to Christ—and examine it from a point of unquestioning loyalty and devotion to my Saviour. My Rescuer. My Hero.
A fitting song is the newsboys’ “We Remember.”