The Rabbit Room

We received The Jesus Storybook Bible as a baby shower gift for our daughter. That was almost 21 months ago now, and it makes me smile every time I ask her to pick out a book and she says “bibo” and goes for that wonderfully written book. She likes to go on a mission to find Jesus on every page (she thinks He’s in the tower of babel picture too because of one character’s white tunic. We’ll cross that bridge later.). With the JSB as such a great tool for our daughter’s spiritual development, I’m looking forward to getting my hands on this latest book too.

I love the Jesus Storybook Bible. Whenever I read the ending (whether to my daughters or to myself), I get choked up. Thanks for letting me know about this new book!

Great article! I know these books are written primarily for children, but for older children like me they provide deep theological truth wrapped in delightful imagery. They definitely make my heart sing too!

I read this and then started thinking about Sally reading excerpts at Hutchmoot this year and then I got all weepy… in that good way, of course .

Isn’t there still a place for heroes?

Had the pleasure of meeting Sally at Hutchmoot 2012 and got to tell her how much my granddaughter loves The Storybook Bible – even the stories I thought might be too hard or dark for her. The grandbabies are going to love the new book too.

I know I do.

Yankee Gospel Girl, one of the amazing things about the Gospel is that Jesus is the end (telos) of our hero search. We can rest in Him. And as we rest in Him, we lay aside our strength for His.

All other “heros” just fall short

YGG: I am a big fan of hero movies. Gladiator, Braveheart, Batman Begins, Spiderman, the Avengers, etc. I think such stories speak to a universal desire in man to do the right thing no matter what it costs, to help those in need, to fight against evil – in short, to be a real hero.

This desire can be twisted, of course, to want acclaim and honor from men. One thing I loved about Batman is that he intentionally chose to be despised in order to do good to Gotham. There is no way to be a true hero without this disavowal of the need to be noticed; as George MacDonald said, “He that would be a hero will scarcely be a man.” And “The desire to be known of men is destructive to all true greatness; nor is there any honor worth calling honor but what comes from an unseen source. To be great is to seem small in the eyes of men.” (From Donal Grant).

But the twisting of the desire doesn’t make the desire itself a bad thing. We have the image of God pressed upon us, imprinted. We want to be everything we are meant to be.

The trouble comes in how we go about it.

To know Jesus as the only true hero of the ages, to know him personally, to have him infuse us with that same life that fills his, is to learn to be a real and true hero – real in the sense of doing tangible good in this world, and true as a good arrow is true. On the mark.

So – I wouldn’t say “Heroes are bad.” But as Christians we have the prototype, the Hero-Spirit, living within us, available at any moment to rise up and be the hero in us – making us true heroes.

Hey, thanks for the responses, Tom and Ron. Tom, I would agree that sadly, yes, many heroes will fail us as Christians. At the same time, I’m not sure that we as Christians were meant to truly “go it alone.” Certainly this is true “horizontally,” in terms of community and relationships, but I think it’s also true in the context of leaders and examples—people we look up to. That doesn’t mean we’re under any illusions about their fallen-ness. Everybody is a sinner. But we admire them for remaining humble and faithful to God in their chosen field. Are they our Lord and Savior? Of course not. Still, I don’t think the Bible discourages us from having men of whom we say, “I want to be that man. I want to have that kind of integrity and compassion. I want to follow that example of courage and faithfulness.”

Ron, you mentioned movies. One thing that worries me a tad about an increasing number of crime dramas/films is the deliberate creation of moral “gray areas” through the attempt to draw out similarities between hero and villain. I think I’ve now seen three different scenes from three different crime dramas where the villain says something to the effect of “We’re not really that different” to the hero. Now film-makers still want the hero to come off heroic because that’s entertainment, but more and more it’s becoming the trend to have the heroes wonder “whether there really are any good guys in the world,” or whether maybe the hero and villain are just two sides of the same coin. It’s as if even while we watch and enjoy our chosen hero’s kick-ass heroic exploits, the moral philosophizing creeps in to steal some of that pleasure.

I think maybe this is partly because our culture has bought the lie that unalloyed goodness is boring, uncool or uninteresting. Do I deny that real men are flawed and imperfect? Heavens, no. But I think if you look, for example, at how the makers of the _LOTR_ films changed certain characters’ choices from the books, there was a consistent pattern of more self-doubt, more hesitation, less pure motives. Faramir is the clearest example of this. In the book, he’s clean and honest to the bone. He never even touches the ring. In the movie, they introduced all this extra stuff that would be completely foreign to the Faramir of the book. Why? Again, I think they thought it would be more nuanced, more interesting or what have you. But this idea that goodness is boring—it’s everywhere. And I think, ultimately, it’s really not biblical. Because after all, if you really believed that, then how would you ever be able to enjoy heaven properly?

Just a few thoughts.

Rabbit-trail alert!

Something about this heroes discussion has caught my interest today. To clarify, I’ve pretty much always been a fan of heroes, but something about the things you’ve said, YGG and Ron, brings up some puzzling questions for me. First off, about the last comment, I wonder where that part of our cultural expression comes from? Why has “goodness is boring” become such a pervasive element of what ‘they’ think ‘we’ want to experience through hero stories? Is it just a confusion, or a false lumping together, of righteousness-by-faith and righteousness-by-law (which, as I read in Galatians 2:21, would nullify what we’ve established is the greatest hero story of all)? Maybe ‘the world’ around us has picked up on this imaginary picture of law-righteousness that we as believers struggle with (what modern heroes might call ‘right-ness’ or goodness) and come to the wrong conclusions about what goodness really is. This might sound crazy, but maybe human beings were purposefully made so that faith is more natural to us than following laws, and maybe those who write those ‘gray heroes’ can see that all the moral rightness in this world, by itself, could never give the fullness of life we all need. Without faith behind it, I guess any hero story will ultimately lack something, since there’s no basis for knowledge of what a true hero actually looks like. It’s ironic, but a story about a moral hero who followed all the rules would end up being more-or-less illusory; despite the difficulty, nay, the impossibility of actually achieving this, it would be, in a broad sense, too easy. The truest, most compelling heroic tale was one of hardship in the extreme, which only becomes more apparent the better you know it. I’ve often wondered how exactly the whole ‘glory through suffering’ thing actually works. Maybe this is part of it. And that might be a discussion for another day.

And I just realized that I neglected to put a “secondly” after my first part. I just wanted to share a story in response to what Ron said about being gaining “acclaim and honor.” I was in a prayer meeting recently, and at one point someone was praying aloud about reversals in people’s lives. This person was asking for healing where there had been sickness, peace where there had been unease, riches where there had been poverty, etc, and before I go any further I want to say that I agree with that prayer. But, what I felt the Spirit saying, in the same way, was a prayer for pride to be turned to humility! I mean really, how many people actually pray for themselves and their brothers and sisters to be brought low where they are improperly ‘high and mighty?’ It ended up being nothing but good that this was in my prayers that day (surprised?), but I thought that was terribly appropriate given Ron’s excellent commentary about the nature of true Christ-following heroes.

Your titles really do crack me up! Thanks for this.

I’m writing to you due to the piece of art at the tp of the page i would like to se asa cover of a song called a few thoughts i stumbled upon when i was looking for images who’s is it ? and could a please use it?

thanks mark