Superman And Christ? Not So Fast

I'm kind of stunned at how much play the mainstream media has given the whole "Superman as Jesus" thing. I saw the picture last night and it was a better-than-average superhero flick. Though, in my mind, it really doesn't hold a candle to the original. Of course, I was a nine-year-old who was floored by Richard Donner's 1979 Superman: The Movie, but that is neither here nor there.

What is striking is how much of the movie did play to the savior aspects of the Man of Steel. (Spoiler alert) Specifically one scene where a jilted Lois Lane tells Superman the world doesn't need a savior. Superman responds by taking her skyward and asking her, as she peers down on Metropolis at night, what she hears. She hears nothing, she reponds. Superman replies that he hears everything, including countless cries for a savior.


The filmakers leave it at that, but the scene was the most interesting to me because it got me thinking about what could have been with this film. As "super" as he is, Superman can't be everywhere at once. He isn't all knowing. He can't save everyone. He couldn't save his own father (either Marlon Brando or Glen Ford). People will still die under his care. In short, as a savior, he's a pretty poor substitute for an all-knowing, all-powerful Lord.

It made me think of how unique the Gospel is as a story. We've created countless heroes for ourselves through the years -- Gilgamesh, Hercules, Odysseus, Sherlock Holmes, Superman, Batman, and on and on. Humanists love to point out our Lord's similarity to these, as if the Lord Jesus Christ is just another father-figure springing from our sub-conscious to save us from all manner of shadows and fears. Jesus, however, came as a servant and he came as one who eagerly and often pointed to our failings as humans. Indeed, that is the reason he came.

I thought of all these things as I read Superman And Christ? Not So Fast by Jordan J. Ballor, who sums things up much better than I.

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These days has become commonplace for Christians to make connections with elements of popular culture in the quest to have a relevant and timely voice in the world. The latest examples come with the recent spate of articles ahead of the release of this summer's anticipated blockbuster Superman Returns.

Religion educators in the UK are using Superman "as a modern-day example of Jesus Christ" to "give children an insight into morality and religious thinking." Dr. Greg Garrett, professor of English at Baylor University, says that Superman "is just about as near as popular culture can come to showing us what a savior might look and act like."

These kinds of observations stem from a laudable impulse to responsibly engage the culture and bring religious convictions to bear in the public square. But Christians risk undermining their own influence when they simply latch on to the pop icon of the moment in undiscerning and uncritical ways. They simultaneously risk becoming unwitting tools of clever marketers, who wish to tap the financial and moral resources of evangelical Christianity.

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Superman is a figure who is striking not so much for his similarity to Christ, but rather for his dissimilarity. Indeed, those looking for a more direct analogue to the comic hero Superman would do well to look at the writings of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose intellectual influence was in full bloom on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1930s, the decade when the Superman comic was born.

Many Christians embraced the Superman hero when a trailer for the new movie was released using the words of Superman's father Jor-El, voiced by Marlon Brando: "Even though you've been raised as a human being you're not one of them. They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I sent them you... my only son."

The superficial similarities between Jesus and Superman are clear. Both are sons sent to Earth to save humankind. But it is here that the likeness ends and the more fundamental differences appear. What the preceding quote illustrates is that Superman is supposed to lead humankind into a future in which we realize our own innate potential.

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The antithesis of power and strength is weakness and suffering. The apostle Paul writes of Jesus Christ, who "humbled himself and became obedient to death--even death on a cross." Christ the suffering servant, who sacrifices himself and endures the ignominious death of crucifixion for the sins of the world, is the scandal of Christianity, the stumbling block opposing the wisdom of the world. And this is why Nietzsche, who captures worldly wisdom so well, writes so disparagingly about "the death of the Nazarene."

Superman, the secular savior-figure, manifests the superlative qualities that the world worships: power, strength, immortality. Jesus Christ embodies mercy, weakness, and suffering. But as Paul also writes, "The foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength."

The comic figure of Superman may indeed point us to Christ. Many Christian commentators are right in recognizing this. But if we do truly see Christ through Superman, it is by contrast and not by similarity.