Jesus Is Not a Superhero

Irene Thomas
Nov 4 · 2 min read

I know that it’s considered silly or being a ‘Karen’ to have a complaint with your church, so I often struggle with struggling with my church’s format and content. I know that a lot of church’s aim their Sunday sermons towards those who are just becoming new Christians, including my own church, and I have no problem with that, it just gets old after a while.

This week’s sermon was part of a sermon series called The Most Fascinating Man Ever, it’s about Jesus, and it was titled The Superhero. When I got my copy of the sermon for doing the slides, I saw the title and just cringed inwardly. “Jesus? A superhero?”

First of all, superheroes are fictional, which lends Jesus himself a sort of fictional, out-of-this-world persona when you try to compare the two. Jesus is real, superheroes aren’t.

Second, Jesus isn’t that kind of hero. See, the Jews were expecting a kind of warrior king, who would come and destroy their enemies, just like a superhero would. But that’s exactly the kind of person that Jesus wasn’t. He came to tell us to love our enemies, and he came ultimately to save us once and for all from our sins by dying, not to remove all the bad guys from the scene.

Finally, Jesus doesn’t remove the struggles in life or the evil people that come with it. I feel almost heretical writing this line, but becoming a Christian does not mean life gets easier or that Jesus is some kind of magic eraser for toxic people.

That’s why Jesus is not a superhero.

There is a second part to this, because I feel very deeply that this type of characterization of Jesus is misleading to audiences.

Irene Thomas

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