Good, Evil & Shades of Gray

One of the enduring memories I have from the terrorist attack on 9/11 is the fact that when people were escaping Lower Manhattan it did not become the "every man for himself" free-for-all Hollywood has been selling us for years. Instead the world was flooded with story after story of heroism after the attack. Fire fighters were willing to walk up 100 stories to rescue people. Strangers helped disabled workers climb down stairs. Ordinary folks lent a hand to help those who were injured. I was reminded of those stories while watching the new movie The Dark Knight.

So often in the world of comic book good guys and bad guys everything is light and dark. The good ones are always good and evil is always bad. But life does not work that way. The reality is that all people are simultaneously sinner and saint. We are made saints through the blood of Christ but are still sinners capable of the worst atrocities. The Dark Knight shines a light on a world where not everything is so cut and dry... it is a world of many shades of gray... a world we know all too well.

Now when it comes to a villain like the Joker, its pretty clear he is pure evil. But where the Joker goes wrong is that he is certain that everyone else is as evil as him. Yes through his murderous mischief he does expose the darker sides of Gotham's most heroic figures, but he fails to understand that just as people are not all goody-goodies, they are likewise not simply all psychotic killers like him either. Instead people are shades of gray: capable of great harm and great good at the same time. People are a whole lot like the people in Lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001.

There are moments in the movie when the hero, Batman, struggles mightily with the shades of gray. What's best for him, the people he loves, and the 30,000,000 residents of his fair city? He learns something that we all can learn. And believe it or not, its a Christian lesson. Batman learns the same lesson that was modeled by the prophets in the Old Testament and was definitively lived through Christ: doing what is right will cause people to hate you, and even want to kill you... but that doesn't mean you stop doing what is right. If Batman holds on to that lesson there is hope for Gotham. Because Christ lived that lesson there is hope for us.