Holy Vigilante, Batman! (Part One)

Sanctifying Civilian Justice

Parents watching superhero films or reading comics may note that many brightly colored superheroes perform acts they specifically forbid their children to mimic. Superheroes think their fists can solve problems. Superheroes hit back. Superheroes even hit first. Yet somehow the Spandex costumes and brightly colored symbols exonerate them from their behavior. And no superhero gets broader latitude than Batman.

Batman, like his peer Superman, arose in the late Depression, when rampant corruption caused Americans to feel desperate over their perceived personal powerlessness. During and after Prohibition, cops were often on the take, elected officials could be bought and sold by union officials and capital interests, and America’s perceived power structures teetered on the verge of collapse. Unlike other periods of mass corruption, like Teapot Dome or Tammany Hall, this was not a time when upper echelons appeared corrupt; everyone, it seemed, was tainted.

Therefore artists created someone who could enforce a vision of justice. Where Jerry Seigel (may have) invented a bulletproof man in answer to his father’s death Bob Kane and Bill Finger invented an avenging angel. Unlike Superman, who stands above corruption in patriotic colors, with chin upthrust, Batman’s depiction often resembles the full armor in which Renaissance artists depicted the Archangel Michael casting out Satan.

As a figure without official standing, Batman remains incorruptible, a psychological alternative to ordinary authority. Swooping from on high, his well-placed creative violence “fills the hungry, and sends the rich away empty.” His displays of righteous force in the interest of protecting the poor and downtrodden, tacitly supported across many media, resemble two of his peers: the Green Hornet and—no kidding—Fleischer Studios’ Popeye cartoons.

But to maintain his role, Batman needs a constant supply of enemies. Even as crime declines nationwide, and cities like New York and Los Angeles, formerly synonymous with crime, have become safe and family-friendly, mythic Gotham requires constant renewal in its grotesque grittiness. It is never free to improve. Whether in comics, Tim Burton’s opera bouffe exaggerations, or Christopher Nolan’s urban nihilism, Gotham never seems to get better.

Under a near-constant pall of night, Gotham’s criminals fester, even as the Bat and the rump force of good cops struggle constantly. Notice, in Nolan’s Batman Begins, that virtuous Sergeant Gordan lives in a shoddy tenement, while the Brooks Brother-clad commissioner wants to arrest the Bat, and Gordon’s slickly garbed partner Fless is on the take.

If Batman’s raison d’etre is to root out crime and corruption, he needs these to exist. He relies on criminals as much as law-abiding citizens depend on him. In Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne ruminates on the opportunity to shed his Bat persona and resume ordinary life; yet he suits up, because as a symbol, he has become his city’s patron saint. If anything ever recovers, his purposepeters out.

This limitation is not unique to the movie environment. Over the last twenty years, the Batman of the comics has struggled to cope with age, and even death. Bruce Wayne comes and goes, suffering through crippling injury and the limitations of encroaching age. But retirement never comes, because Batman—not the criminals he resists, nor the civilians he defends—shapes his city’s ethos.

In such an environment, violence becomes a righteous act. Neither reason nor law can keep Gotham safe, rendering only force effective. The city, and Batman himself, rely on his nearly constant righteous anger. But, as anybody who has ever faced someone trumpeting “righteous anger” can attest, this usually means my anger. Clearly my cause is righteous. Clearly I fight on the side of the angels. Therefore, if I put pain on those who transgress, I becom heroic.

But this advances another significant problem.  When violence is sanctified in pursuit of justice, justice often gets compromised. This is further complicated because we lack a meaningful definition of justice. Philosophers going back to Plato have failed to define justice usefully. In Batman Begins, Rachel Dawes differentiates vengeance, a self-gratifying act, from justice, which restores harmony. Yet that glittering generality is too broad to be useful.

Batman’s ethic obtains because he does not appear to enrich himself. He appears heroic because he stands aloof from the atmosphere of hunger and desperation that spawn organized criminals. But this sanctimony is only possible because of Bruce Wayne’s apparently inexhaustible wealth. Nolan briefly addresses, then discards, the question of how Wayne would deal with true hunger and desperation.

Next week I want to reconsider: is Carmine Falcone perhaps the more heroic character in this universe?

Part Two: Defining Justice in a Nihilistic Universe
Part Three: Bane's Dichotomy Between Servitude and Chaos

Three Books for a Christian World

Having recently questioned iffy Christian reasoning, and cast aspersions on more new-fangled spirituality, maybe it’s time I explain what I support. Throwing bricks is easy; building foundations is hard. Three Christian books that recently crossed my desk give me that opportunity.

Megachurch pastor Kyle Idleman has grown weary of fair-weather Christians whose loyalty runs no deeper than that to their favorite team. In Not a Fan, Idleman describes a life lived in complete submission to God’s will and Christ’s mission. While many call themselves Christian because they were baptized and attend church, Idleman wants believers to examine their hearts and their Scriptures for how that means they ought to live.

Idleman takes as his text Luke 9:23—“Then [Jesus] said to them all: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.’” He intricately parses this scripture to find that we become truly Christian only when we die to those desires which aggrandize ourselves, but prove as fleeting as the wind. Only a life founded on God’s will can give us the meaning most of us constantly seek.

Little of what Idleman says is new; Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship addresses the same topics, but Idleman states them in language meant for lay readers. From an earthly viewpoint, Bonhoeffer and Idleman agree, Christianity makes little sense. What other philosophy calls its followers to die? Yet our short-term desires leave souls ultimately unfulfilled; only when we die to those desires can we take on the nourishing spiritual life.

Unfortunately, Idleman focuses a smidge too much on what faith calls us away from, less on what it calls us toward. But Mark Batterson stands ready to step into that gap.  In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day uses a nearly forgotten image, deep in 2 Samuel, to show how God gives us all a choice. We can step out boldly, confident that God has given us a life of constant opportunity; or we can huddle in man-made security and watch life pass by.

Notice how often, in Scripture, God’s opportunities look terrifying: a flood, a giant, a cross. But victory falls to those who seek God’s instructions and never let earthly fears part them from their goals. Not that God makes everything easy. Remember, Paul fled Ephesus fearing the crowd. But even that boldness helped found one cornerstone congregation of the early Church.

Like Idleman, Batterson doesn’t want Sunday morning pew warmers. Christianity, to him, gives believers courage to step beyond the known, secure, and comfortable, and change their world. Christ did not come to write sermons, but to fill us with boldness and steer us to act. If we would honor God, Batterson says we must first find God’s opportunities, and face up to them wrapped in Godly courage.

Batterson chooses a few wobbly terms to express his belief. Early on, he says that “God is in the résumé-building business,” and implies that God’s opportunities build us up. He corrects himself later, thankfully, before lukewarm believers can distort his meaning. Batterson’s spiritual heart is clearly in the right place; his tongue, unfortunately, makes some statements I wish he could take back.

If we submit ourselves to God and act boldly, our family will be the first to notice. Christian counselors John Trent and Gary Smalley noticed this, and derived the idea of The Blessing so parents can pass on the strength their children need in our complex, discouraging world. Our society tells parents not to get too close to their kids; but if we’ve died to the world, what do we care?

Trent and Smalley craft a step-by-step process, modeled on the blessings passed from father to son in the Hebrew Scripture, and from Jesus to His followers in the Gospels. Their process is simple yet sound, requiring nothing risky or dangerous, but demanding that parents commit to their children. On the surface, it seems simple, even obvious; but since modern society treasures autonomy and tells parents to keep their distance, it’s actually revolutionary.

Indeed, by limiting themselves to parents, Trent and Smalley sell themselves short. Modified to suit cultural standards, the Blessing could transform how teachers relate to students, bosses to workers, politicians to constituents, and neighbors to each other. By sharing strength and giving each other a vision to pursue, the Blessing could give us a stronger, more community-minded world.

And between these three writers, they build a world I want to inhabit. God willing.

Also in this review: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

The Secret Keepers—Death of Free Society

This episode of PBS’ Frontline, “The Warning,” runs an hour, yet bears attentive viewing. Aired in 2009, as we only began to comprehend the 2008 financial meltdown, the producers spotlight Brooksley Born, an insightful official who anticipated the crash a decade in advance. But I flashed on one statement, buried around 18:30, that—as early as 1996—financial regulators already had let major financial markets drift into complete obscurity.

When we think of black markets, we often imagine drugs and guns, or peasants outwitting Communist oppressors. Yet white-shirt bankers in New York’s shiniest corner offices established an entire parallel economy operating in the dark. Our economy was jeopardized, and ultimately pushed to the brink of catastrophe, by financiers who danced the razor’s edge in secret. All this passed muster under the veneer of “free markets.”

Secrecy is the prime domain of terrorists, Mafiosi, and adulterers. While secrets may serve altruistic purposes, like planning surprise parties or conducting undercover law enforcement, these occasions happen infrequently, usually on an ad hoc basis. Secrecy always entails unequal distribution of information, and especially when stakes escalate, as happened on Wall Street during the go-go Clinton/Bush years, inequality is a licence to rob banks.

That goes double when you own the bank.

Joshua Holland, author of The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy, claims that free markets absolutely rely on honest transparency. Workers cannot negotiate honest wages if they don’t know their employer’s income, parity margin, and what comparable workers with comparable experience make in comparable jobs. That’s why the government bans securities trading on insider information. To conceal is to lie.

We could take that even further. Consider secret activities we’ve accepted in our society: papal elections. CIA Cold War atrocities. Supreme Court deliberations. Now consider the consequences of such secrecy: a man with a history of concealing clergy sex abuse elected leader of humankind’s largest religion. The death of Patrice Lumumba. The Citizens United decision. Secrecy has a poor track record.

Remember when Barack Obama promised, back in 2008, to bring greater transparency to the White House? He has successfully incorporated more information distribution and swifter press notification onto the White House website. But this didn’t stop both Obama and Hillary Clinton from angrily denouncing WikiLeaks and Julian Assange when he took them at their word and published American documents and position papers online.

Disclosing troop movements that jeopardize American soldiers would be irresponsible; but Assange’s information wasn’t nearly so extreme. Instead, he’s published footage of Baghdad air strikes, friendly fire and civilian casualty numbers in Afghanistan, and old diplomatic cables from Washington and London. Yet apparently these embarass the administration enough that Hillary Clinton has used the word “treason” in association with Assange.

Not all secrets are malign. TV networks conceal their fall lineup, and software designers keep new video games under lock and key, in a harmless attempt to make mundane products seem scarce and valuable. JK Rowling withheld Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows so readers worldwide could enjoy the big reveal together. To avoid a fruitless value conflict, my mother doesn’t need to know how often I have a beer with the fellas.

But notice how little is at stake in these examples. Rowling writes uplifting children’s fantasy, not the key to Mideast peace. If she withheld that, even for magnanimous reasons, people would feel justly offended. And I drink so infrequently that mine is a minor secret. Were I a chronic abusive drunk, concealing frequent daytime beer runs, my mother should intrude upon my secrets and shine the light of day on my habits.

Despite nearly a century of evidence that financiers who do dealings unseen are up to no good, an appalling number of American legislators, regulators, and voters have pushed to let banks continue conducting occult transactions with no oversight. Significant government business still occurs off the books. People responsible for our health, security, and spiritual well-being think we needn’t know how they do business.

My parents taught me early that “friends don’t keep secrets and secrets don’t keep friends.” French historian and theologian Jacques Ellul put it more eloquently when he said: “Propaganda begins when dialogue ends.” When people in power do not listen to us, communicate with us, or make their dealings known, their intentions are almost always pernicious. We must refuse such treatment.

Because, as Brooksley Born warns on Frontline, conditions exist for another catastrophic meltdown. And if it happens again, we’ll have no one to blame this time but ourselves.

Believing in Everything, Believing in Nothing

“Some pour out gold from their bags and weigh out silver on the scales; they hire a goldsmith to make it into a god, and they bow down and worship it.”
—Isaiah 46:6

Statistics indicate that “Spiritual but not religious” may be America’s fastest growing faith category.  People clearly hunger to experience closeness to something beyond themselves; but our society distrusts convention, tradition, and our shared heritage.  Thus many people cast about for any attempt to make meaning in their lives.  Yet I fear many trust something tragically artificial.

For some, scientific developments forbid them to accept religious dogma.  As the late Richard Feynman pointed out, the essence of scientific thought is doubt; we jettison certainty, and seek to reduce doubt to the smallest possible fragment.  Therefore we can believe nothing without question.  The scientific mind tests everything, even itself.

But this great hypothesis seldom describes real life.  Many people understand science so poorly that skillful hucksters pitching the lingo make us believe the opposite of empirical reason.  David Che, for instance, asks us not only to believe him without question in Total Law of Attraction, he requires us to trust theories disproved over a century ago.  This isn’t just unscientific, it’s dangerous.

The Law of Attraction enjoys faddish popularity based on quasi-scientific theories that “like attracts like.”  Rhonda Byrne, who popularized the idea, claims our ideas draw commensurate consequences through magnetic attraction.  But rudimentary physics says that magnetic poles don’t work that way.  In magnetism, opposites attract, so to gain wealth, I should wail and lament my poverty.

Che pushes this obtuseness even further.  For instance, his hypothesis requires us to believe in the luminiferous aether.  Che says: “Although science will say it’s been proven no such Ether exists, you’ll have to put aside that notion and firmly believe it to be true.”  This naked appeal to ignorance characterizes not only Che’s book, but this avenue of belief.  Che trusts ideas which contradict testable external reality.

Similarly, Banzai Vitale correlates metaphysics with science in The Burning Spirit.  His long, rambling memoir proclaims its author understands higher reality than the rest of us.  He spins yarns, drops bromides, and regales us with travelogues, all of which promulgate a system of belief based on agreeing that everything which enters his head must be transcendent inspiration.

Vitale’s rambling, undifferentiated anecdotes represent complete relaxation of judgment.  He confirms nothing; neither facts nor logic sway his steps.  Every life experience, every journal entry, and every Ecstasy trip merits our time.  In short, Vitale sanctifies himself and his life experiences.  He seeks out spirituality with no foundation, and becomes the very sinner Isaiah decries above.

Whenever spiritual seekers approach a religion or philosophy, they ask: how should I live?  The universe gives me this one life, so how do I live it in a way that makes meaning?  Such diverse seekers as Thomas Merton and Friedrich Nietzsche answer that question in ways that change society.  David Che and Banzai Vitale answer that question by ducking it and aggrandizing themselves.

Perhaps go-go technological people can’t afford to change their lives.  The great religious traditions that bolster society have threatened people, derailed their life plans, and forced them to deny themselves.  From the classics to modern writers like Shane Claiborne and Rabbi Heschel, those who found spirituality couldn’t remain on the same path.  But modern spirituality sanctifies self-service.

Which makes Ryuho Okawa a modern icon.  Having published over 500 books in Japanese, his Happy Science movement (there’s that pesky “science” again) are now making inroads in the West.  The Next Great Awakening, weighing barely 100 pages, introduces several important ideas.  And most of them appear plagiarized from X-Files scripts.

Like the biblical prophets, Okawa claims to have a direct line to God, and thus communicates divine will.  But his story offers little hope or direction.  His story of spirits creating life elsewhere, seeding Earth, and driving our destiny comes whole from countless prior science fiction storylines.  But maybe that’s the point.  Okawa doesn’t have to tell us how to live; his narrative lets us continue unimpeded

Maybe that’s the lesson of the “spiritual but not religious” movement.  Religion requires us to change.  It requires us to live for someone besides ourselves.  Modern, self-infatuated society can’t accept that.  So we find ways to sanctify ourselves, right where we are.

“The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way. But what will you do in the end?”
—Jeremiah 5:31

27th Precinct Book Club—Nicely Noir

Detective Lammers yanked the stainless-steel chair back and sat, propping his elbows on the interview table.  Countless interrogations like this with his sleeves rolled up had turned his elbows leathery.  Under the hot lights sat Hargreave, the unlicensed PI who’d given Lammers’ precinct the hot squats for the last year.  Hargreave laced his fingers over his ample gut, pretending to stay cool as a cucumber despite the sweat trickling down his collar.

“So,” Lammers finally said.  “Whaddya got for me?”

Hargreave grinned as he popped his attaché.  “First one,” he drawled, sliding a book across the table, “is Barney Rostaing’s Breeders.  I’d call this an unconventional crime novel.  There’s no detective story or heist as such.  It circles some questionable characters as they mesh themselves in a constant dance of moral compromise.  Each sellout causes one more, and one more, and one more, until they discover they’ve sold their souls.”

Lammers studied the cover art.  “Jockeys on horses,” he said, stabbing it with his finger.  “Something about racing, I gather?”

“Yep.  Everyone’s so busy looking for juice in baseball and cycling, seems we never knew how crooked horseracing is.  But when millions ride on breeding rights, which only go to winners, people will cross unbelievable lengths to make their horses win.  Rules, laws, and common human decency stop mattering.”  Hargreave leaned in toward Lammers, flashing an expensively white smile.  “But that ain’t even the best bit.”

“No?”  Lammers scootched back slightly from Hargreave’s stale cabbage breath.  “What is?”

“Race.”  Hargreave leaned back, smug like he’d flipped trip aces.  “The gentility of America’s whitest sport hides some pretty grotesque racism.  Black stablehands, Hispanic jockeys, and the first black trainer in a really, really white sport.  It’s a seething cauldron of subsumed hatred.  Plus old money, new money, sexuality...”  Hargreave tapped his knuckle on the book.  “If you can imagine something to make people hate each other, this world has it.”

“Sounds good,” Lammers said, nodding slowly.  “What else you got?”

Hargreave flourished a second book.  “Tony Lindsay’s More Boy Than Girl stars Chicago’s only girl pimp.  Dai Break Jones was born royalty to the Emperors of Game, and she don’t mind being the only woman in a hyper-masculine world.  She just wants what’s hers.  So she joins her daddy’s gang, pushing crack and raiding townie joints.  But she has a side income running two ho’es [sic] and showing them who’s boss.”

“Sweet,” Lammers said.  “And slim, too.  I like it already.”

“Wait a minute,” Hargreave said, flashing a stop gesture.  “Hold on.  Because this one has an awesome concept, great characters, and mean black urban English.  But just as it promises us a mind-blowing mix of Superfly and Donnie Brasco, it stops.  Really, just boom.  It’s slim because the end reads like Lindsay got tired.  So many excellent story threads, and he doesn’t finish them.”

Lammers nodded.  “Maybe I’ll wait.  Anything else?”

“One last.”  Hargreave produced a thick paperback and tossed it to Lammers.  “Randy Singer’s False Witness mixes John Grisham tension with breakthrough technology to create something familiar, yet nothing like anything I’ve seen before.  LA bail bondsman Clark Shealy has forty-eight hours to find Dr. Kumari, whose algorithm could invalidate global Internet security.  If Shealy can’t find Kumari, the Chinese Triad starts cutting on his wife.”

“Ooh, sounds gripping,” Lammers said.

“That’s just the first part.  Four years later, Atlanta law student Jamie Brock inherits a runaway defendant with Triad ties.  Seems they think Brock, too, can access this priceless information, and they don’t mind torturing her within inches of her sanity.  But just as she turns her razor-sharp mind on bringing the Triad down, she realizes the very people she most depends on may not deserve her trust.”

“I like it,” Lammers said, grinning.  “I bet it has all the classics: conspiracies, action, romance.”

“Well, the romance is pretty chaste,” Hargreave said.  “This comes from a Christian publishing house.”

Lammers’ face fell.  “Christian?  So this book is full of Jesus talk?”

“No, not really.  There’s a sermon around page 280, and a subplot about the persecuted church in India, but Singer tells a good story.  He isn’t preachy, he’s a really, really good storyteller who happens to be Christian.”

Lammers studied the book in his hand.  “I’ll give it a try.”

“You should,” Hargreave said.  “It’s excellent.”

Lammers squinted at Hargreave as he tucked the books under his arm.  “Awright then,” he said.  “Same time next week?”

“I’ll be on you like a bad rash,” Hargreave agreed, as Lammers turned and strode purposefully from the interview room.