Here’s What The Avengers Helped Me Understand About God
(Major—I mean, major—spoilers ahead)
If you’re a Christian and you think I shouldn’t even be watching superhero movies, sorry, but you’re going to have to pry the Avengers from my cold, dead hands.
If you’re not a Christian but intrigued by the title, welcome. But also, buckle up—things are about to get a little weird for all of us.
Here’s the thing
In Marvel’s 2018 film, Avengers: Infinity War, the heroes face a formidable opponent (read: big ol’ meanie) named Thanos who is threatening to kill half the people in the universe.
As the heroes struggle to find a way to defeat Thanos, a character named Doctor Strange uses a fancy space rock called the Time Stone to look into the future to see if there are any possible outcomes in which the Avengers win in the end:
Doctor Strange: [panting] I went forward in time to view alternate futures. To see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict.
Peter Quill: How many did you see?
Doctor Strange: 14,000,605.
Tony Stark: How many did we win?
[Strange stares intently at Tony for a moment]
Strange: [pause] One.
For those of you familiar with the plots of Infinity War and Endgame, you know that in this one outcome, the Avengers do eventually defeat Thanos.
But a lot of bad things happen along the way — including the self-sacrificial death of the franchise’s biggest star, Tony Stark aka Iron Man.
Doctor Strange of course knows this once he sees the winning outcome, but still puts the plan in motion at the end of the first movie because—as he puts it— “There was no other way.”
Here’s what I don’t get
When I first returned to my faith after years of denying God’s existence, I still had a lot of questions. And even now—years later—Christ has my heart, but my head still needs convincing.
While a lot of folks question God’s actions (or inaction) in their own lives, it’s some of the bigger picture questions that keep me up at night:
- If God knew humanity was going to fail Him, why did He create us in the first place?
- Why did Jesus have to die? Why does sin require a sacrifice?
- If He knew Satan was going to become the source of all evil in the world and corrupt His beloved creation, why create him?
(If you’re thinking, yikes—I know).
What does this have to do with The Avengers?
When Doctor Strange sees all the possible future outcomes, he gains an understanding of the world that no one else has—an understanding of why certain things will happen or need to happen.
But without that knowledge, no one understands WHY ON EARTH he would give the Time Stone to bad guy Thanos, who then teleports to Earth, murders Sensitive Robot Man for the Mind Stone and then snaps his fingers, killing half of the universe’s population, including most of the Avengers. (Gosh I love comics).
We as viewers are completely baffled by that decision. Why would he do that? But eventually, we realize: he must know something we don’t.
We have to trust that he has seen every single possible situation play out to the end, and has decided that this is the only way to victory.
It’s not a perfect metaphor, but…
I know, I know. It’s not 1:1. Doctor Strange isn’t God. If He was, he could have made a different way where Iron Man doesn’t have to die and I can get back my box of Kleenex.
But isn’t that what we’re doing when we ask God, “Why did you make us this way? Why did she have to die so young? Why does evil exist?”
We’re essentially asking Him, “Why didn’t you make a better, easier way?”
But God is the Alpha and the Omega. The end and the beginning. He is all that ever was, is, and ever will be. His level of knowledge and understanding of every “why” for all eternity is unfathomably greater than ours.
As Christians, we have to trust that if there were a better way, He would have created it. That somehow, everything is going to work out in the end.
This is the essence, to me, of faith: hoping and believing in things unseen, AND in things un-understood.
That doesn’t mean I’ll stop asking the questions. And I don’t think you should either. Wisdom is a gift from God and I think He does reveal certain things to us if we need to know.
But I also think there’s a lot we won’t know. A lot we can’t know. Not yet at least. And when I’m feeling most anxious about my uncertain future or the bigger mysteries of life, I rest a little easier knowing that I don’t have to figure it all out. There’s someone greater and more powerful than me who has it under control.
And my firm belief that He loves me beyond comprehension is enough to trust that this life ends in victory.
