One of the iconic lines from my favorite Batman movie comes at the end of The Dark Knight when Commissioner Gordon explains to his son why he is allowing Batman to take the blame for multiple murders. He sums it up with the statement: “He is the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now.”
I’ve thought about that concept a lot, particularly this year. Because this year, one of the most popular topics of discussion concerns the quality of our political discourse — or the lack thereof.
As our election approaches, we watch debates where shouting, name-calling, and interruption take the place of intelligent discussion of policy — or in most cases, we brag about how we DIDN’T watch it. If you’re on social media, it’s almost impossible to escape the bitterness and frustration so many are expressing toward both sides of the political aisle.
And despite whether you were “rooting” for one side or the other, even if you believe that one party is behaving itself in a more seemly manner than the other, most of us seem to come to the same conclusion:
We deserve better.
Are we getting what we deserve in this election?
After all, we live in a society that thrives on entitlement, even when we often decry our nation or our culture for all its flaws. On a personal level, we feel as if we deserve better than what we’re getting from our civic leaders. Maybe we extend that to our neighbors as well.
Maybe we only think that people who agree with us deserve better. We like to point fingers and say that one side or the other really started the downward trend, and now they’re getting it back in return — but we’ll still usually acknowledge that the result of that turnabout hasn’t been good for the country, or even ourselves individually.
But it’s worth asking the question: do we really deserve better? Are we really helpless victims of our political superiors and social media thought leaders, just carried along in waves of bitterness and outrage, adrift without any real leadership and left with no choice but to pick a side and join in the fight?
If we’re really being honest about ourselves, about our culture, and about how it got this way, the reality is that we’re getting exactly what we deserve. Regardless of what “side” you picked. Because I’m not even talking about “we” as a country, although we could go into great detail on how this year’s presidential election has been decades in the making, a culmination of all sorts of dysfunctions and divisions in this nation. America certainly has its share of unique internal issues both socially and politically that serve as the “perfect storm” for bad political theater.
I’m talking about “we” as in us. All of us. Humanity at large. Because when we look to human leadership, seeking deliverance from our troubles from some other person or political group or human ideology or concocted utopian fantasy, this is what we get: flawed leaders pandering to flawed people to give those people what (they believe) they want.
What we need, not what we want
We desperately desire to be part of something bigger than ourselves – to make our lives matter somehow. And in a culture that is growing more and more focused on the here and now, we limit our search for meaning to the here and now. We focus on the moment, on “mindfulness,” on making ourselves feel a certain way about ourselves in that particular moment. And we gravitate to people or movements that promise us that level of fulfillment.
But what people want – what they believe they deserve – is rarely what they need.
The Old Testament provides a dramatic picture of a people who constantly wanted what they didn’t need. They wanted freedom from Egyptian slavery but didn’t want to be free of Egyptian idolatry. In the wilderness, they wanted a return to slavery if it meant food security and some illusion of stability in their lives.
And once they finally settled into the promised land of Israel, they decided they wanted a king. Not happy with the current government – and in some cases justifiably so – they decided to replace a group of flawed human leaders with a single, all-powerful flawed leader. The prophet Samuel warned them of what would happen in 1 Samuel 8:11:
“These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”
But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And they said, “No! But there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.”
Maybe we could update that for today:
“These will be the ways of your political leaders, your media personalities, your social media influencers, your activists, your armchair political experts: They will talk about things they may not fully understand. They will make promises they are unable to fulfill. They will champion plans with all sorts of unintended consequences that they either will not tell you or they do not anticipate, because they are focused on saying or doing what will get a strong reaction from you. They will turn you against each other to make you believe they are your champion against the people who they claim want to do harm to you. And they will not care how this impacts your life, your family, your friends, your peace of mind. Because their goal is to mobilize you to do what they want you to do, not to make your life better, safer, more meaningful, more peaceful. Their goal is power to enact their vision — flawed and short-sighted though it might be. Because their faith resides in themselves, and in people who think like they do.”
But we the people said “No – but that’s the kind of leader we want. Because that’s how we see the world, too. Our faith is in humanity, and we know there’s someone out there that can pull all of us together and make this world the place we think it ought to be.”
Seeking human solutions to spiritual problems
The writer of Ecclesiastes said in the first chapter: “I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.”
One of the great vanities in life is to listen to someone tell you that they can “fix” a world that cannot be fixed. If we could only come up with a new political system, a new way of looking at the world, we could be rid of all the selfishness, bigotry, bitterness, and strife, and finally have unity with the people around us.
There is one man who promises unity who can actually provide it, and that is Jesus. Because Jesus tells us that the way to be one is to stop thinking like the world, stop following conventional wisdom that usually is simply a thin covering draped over selfish desires for power, control, and self-gratification.
Colossians 3 says that in Christ, we put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
Not just a bigger purpose, but a better one
All of us want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. The world wants you to settle for that. Let’s strive to be part of something – or someone – better than ourselves.
God save us from the hero we deserve! Praise God for the hero we truly need.
