Taking the Controls (Evil, Pt. 2)

Picking up on yesterday's topic, I want to call attention to the sequence in "Batman" where the Joker has rigged two ferries with explosives and given the detonators to the other ferry, waiting to see which would blow the other up. His thesis is that when pushed to such a point, even good people are corruptible and will choose to commit evil to save themselves. To make the point even more stark, one ferry has mainly convicts on it while the other has law-abiding citizens. They have until midnight, at which point, if neither explodes, the Joker will detonate both.

"They had their chance and blew it," one "good" passenger says about the convicts. Hence, they should be the ones to be destroyed. However, when he holds the detonator, he cannot do it. His face seems to say that he cannot stand himself as a killer - even when it means saving himself.

The twist comes when a convict takes the device from another man on the other boat. We wait for the "bang!" but it doesn't come. Rather, he turns, throws the detonator out the window, and sits down.

All of these people had to wrestle with the problem of evil. In a way, they might appear to be only "pawns" in a cruel struggle between a greater Good and Evil. However, these men and women take an active role. They choose - and through those choices they forge who they are. One can choose to be a killer or executioner, but if that is not in line with who they want to be, that choice then becomes loathsome to them. The "good" cannot destroy the "bad"; the "bad" refuse to continued to be defined by past mistakes.

It's not who we say we are that matters. Rather, it is the choices that we make that define us. When we choose in line with our faith - when we choose to be Christians - we are defined by the One who has placed that call into or hearts in the beginning. All of us are actors - stars, even - in a drama that continues to unfold all around us.