Nerd Rage and a Statement of Purpose

You wanna make a nerd mad? Get his obsession wrong.

You can take the easy way out - asking about the latest episode of "Star Track" is a pretty popular choice - or you can get really advanced and spend over 250 million dollars on an unholy abomination that ruins whatever credibility was built up with the first two movies...

I can't say enough about how wrong Spider-Man 3 was. And it's not just that 3 was so horrible on its own that makes it sting the most... The real salt in the wound is that Spider-Man 2 was nigh-upon perfect. Doctor Octopus is my favorite Spider-Man villain, and the flawless portrayal by Alfred Molina fit seamlessly into an outstanding story that balanced action, romance, personal pathos, and just the right amount of comedy.

But Spider-Man 3... Oh, goodness. That really set a standard for bad movies as far as I'm concerned. The third X-Men movie, X-Men: The Last Stand, was pretty bad. The Roger Moore James Bond movies start off pretty terrible and get worse as they go along. Beer For My Horses was so bad that it wasn't even worth mocking. But none of those are as bad as Spider-Man 3. It's a disaster.

There are a lot of reasons for the 2 hours and 19 minutes of torture found in Spider-Man 3, but it mostly boils down to the studio folks shoving the Venom character into the script against director Sam Raimi's wishes. Sam Raimi felt (correctly) that Venom is a pretty dumb character who wouldn't really work with the style of Spider-Man stories he had told with the first two movies. The studio guys didn't care about that - they just knew that Venom was a hugely popular character (mainly among people who don't actually read Spider-Man comics and just have vague recollections of the '90s cartoon and video games) who could sell a lot of toys on the cheap, because hey, it's Spider-Man painted black.

So the studio guys force Venom on Raimi, Raimi forces Venom onto his version of Spider-Man, and the whole thing comes out an ugly mess.

And whaddya know, a convenient metaphor for the church in today's world just showed up!

I think most of you reading this have already seen this somewhere else, but I didn't get the job with the church in Oregon.

For the record, I also didn't get the job with the church in Tennessee, California, Montana, Alabama, Arkansas, Virginia, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Hawaii, Arizona, Mississippi or Ontario. I'm sure I've left a few out, but it really doesn't matter - I didn't get the job there, either.

I don't want people to think I'm harboring any sort of negativity to any of the churches that have turned me down in the past two years. God has a plan for those congregations, and I'm not a part of that plan. That's OK, because God also has a plan for me, and it's really starting to look like part of God's plan for me is to bypass working at an established congregation of any kind and plant one of my own.

Like Paul leaving the Jews to reach the Gentiles, I'm leaving the churched to reach the unchurched.

It has become very obvious to me, through an occasionally painful and disheartening series of lessons, that I am not cut out for institutional preaching. For a long time I had hoped that I would be able to find that one church, wherever they were, that would be just crazy enough to trust that God would actually speak to them through me, but that door has been pretty firmly shut. The youth ministry door - the one I was originally trying to enter - was apparently never even as open as I'd thought! For whatever reason (and it's not like a shortage of options), I just am not what churches are looking for.

BUT!

It's absolutely undeniable that God has equipped me to do something for Him. I don't really care what you think about my blog - I'm mostly writing this for myself - but I definitely care what you think about God. And for whatever reason, people are generally willing to talk with me about God. Sometimes they're even eager. I can't tell you how many people I've met through just the experience of following one particular band who are open to the questions of God - and are actually seeking out someone to help them find their own answers!

I can't tell you how many people have introduced themselves to me through Facebook or the PGroove message board or even in person who have said that they specifically wanted to get to know me because they want to talk to "the preacher." Some of them want to encourage me to keep sharing my faith in an environment that might not always be as accepting of religion as some others. Some of them come to me for encouragement to hold fast to the faith that they're struggling with holding on to. Some of them just have questions.

Do I have to work at a church to share the gospel with those folks?

Back to the Spider-Man 3 metaphor now...

I'm a God nerd, and a lot of churches (not all, but a lot) are really making me mad because they're getting my obsession wrong. I am completely obsessed with God, and other people are messing it up.

And I want to assure you that it doesn't have as much to do with churches not hiring me as it does with my thinking that I've actually got anything to say to churches in the first place. I know I don't look the part of a preacher. Like, at all. I can totally understand a church's hesitancy to take a chance on a guy like me. But what I don't understand is a church's hesitancy to take a chance on God.

I am not the second coming of Jesus, nor do I think myself to have any sort of extra-Biblical revelation to the Will of God. I just think that a lot of people aren't paying attention to what the Bible actually says, and therefore distorting Christianity into a wrecked mockery of itself. Churches have become so caught up in things that shouldn't even be an issue (like what version of the Bible we use, what clothes we wear to church, whether or not a preacher can actually be effective if he's single, etc...) that we've missed the real point.

We've become so caught up in what the world thinks church should be about that we've missed so much of what God said the church should be about.

Love God, Love Others. There you go. That's it.

Musical instruments don't matter. The name on the sign in front of the building doesn't matter. The mistakes of the past don't matter. The only thing - the only thing - that matters at all is Love.

So... I'm moving to Texas.

It's not gonna happen right away, but it is going to happen, hopefully by the summer. Specifically, I'll be moving to Arlington. I've got some people down there who are itching to help me in my efforts to reach out to the people that churches have, at best, not known how to reach or, at worst, completely ignored and maybe even maligned. It's going to be a thing.

The healthy don't need a doctor. I'm going after the sick.

In the process of doing that, I'm probably going to get a little "out there." I'm probably going to be hanging out with some (more) folks that a lot of pew-fillers are pretty uncomfortable with. I'm probably going to look like someone that is rejected by the legalistic standards of people who think that following God is about following rules. I'm probably going to be surrounded by sinners. I'm probably going to drink a lot of beer.

But I think I'm in good company, because I can think of at least one other person who did all of that. Do you know who I'm thinking of?

Let me give you a hint: starts with a "J," ends with "esus Christ of Nazareth, the crucified and resurrected Son of God."

Pray for me. Pray for my efforts to reach the lost. Pray for Christians the world over who need to be reminded that our faith is not about how good we can be for God, but instead about how good God has been to us, and the responsibility we've been given to take that goodness to others.

I love you all.

Why I hate Superman so very, very, very much

Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's an incredibly boring character whose very DNA is filled with deus ex machina story resolutions!

I hate Superman.

Oh, dear sweet goodness, do I hate Superman.

In the interest of fairness and full disclosure, I need to point out that I specifically hate what Superman has become today.

The original Superman - June 1938, Action Comics #1 - wasn't bad. Not my favorite by any stretch, but definitely better than what we've got now. I absolutely love the 1941-1943 Fleischer/Famous Studios Superman cartoons, but that's partly the animation nerd in me showing. Same thing goes for Superman: The Animated Series: if it was just another Superman cartoon, I'd skip it completely. But since it's from Bruce Timm and all the other guys that made the Batman series, well, then, I've got no choice but to own the entire thing on DVD. I mean, really... No choice. What choice do I have? None!

But Superman as he exists today... Yeah, not a fan.

I'm gonna do you a favor and skip over a lot of my nerd rage here and just bring up a couple of quick things that will hopefully at least help you understand why I hate Superman. So the quick version is this - 1) Superman is so powerful it's downright stupid, and 2) Superman is so morally pure and good that he makes for some really, really, really boring stories.

As I'm sure you know, since Superman is unfortunately one of the select few superheroes who has been chosen for universal recognition outside of the world of comics, Superman isn't actually human - he's a Kryptonian. His home planet of Krypton was destroyed years ago, and young Kal-El (Superman's real Kryptonian name) was stuck in an interplanetary escape pod, crash landing outside of a farm in Smallville, Kansas, to be raised by his adoptive parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent. Since Krypton orbited a red sun and our earth orbits a yellow sun, as Clark Kent grew into manhood, he discovered he had powers far beyond those of mortal men. Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive... You know all of this.

But the point is that there are other powers that Superman has in the comics that just kinda stop making sense. For instance... Superman not only has X-Ray vision, but he can see radio waves if he squints. This is a silly thing. Seriously. Radio waves. Squinting.

And that's not all! Because Superman has been spending so much time absorbing all of the yellow radiation from our sun, Kryptonite doesn't even slow him down anymore. The only way to make Superman vulnerable to any sort of physical harm is to bathe him in the light of a red sun - and how many red suns do you have lying around, hmmm?

Even his hair is bulletproof.

But an indestructible character is not necessarily an uninteresting character. It's the addition of the super-duper good guy persona that makes Superman so intolerable to me. No matter what Lex Luthor does - from kidnapping Lois Lane and holding her hostage in the heart of a volcano to brainwashing Jimmy Olsen to become a Superman-hating hippie (both of these things happened) - Superman never gets angry, never gets out of control, never shows emotion beyond a stern disapproval of Luthor's naughty ways.

And that gets boring.

Sure, there's all sorts of drama about how he never knew his real parents, and his entire planet was blown up, and he's the last of his race...

But then there's also the bottle city of Kandor (an entire city from Krypton shrunk down to the size of a snow globe), Kara Zor-El (Supergirl), General Zod and the other surviving Kryptonian villains from the Phantom Zone, Krypto the superdog, Streaky the supercat, Comet the superhorse, and Beppo the supermonkey, because why not?

So no matter what happens to Superman, unless Lois Lane were to actually die, none of it matters, at all, because at the end of the day, he can still punch his way out of whatever death trap he's in and then smile for the camera when he snatches Jimmy Olsen from the claws of the Thanagarian snare-beast or whatever inane crap it is this week. (For those of you who care, check out Kingdom Come for an alternate-future story where Lois in fact is killed by the Joker, and Superman is for once an interesting character.)

I have a point with all of this, and it's not just to indoctrinate you into my way of thinking about arguably the most popular superhero of all time.

What I want you to think about now is how many Christians you know (maybe including even you yourself) who try to present an image of themselves as being like Superman.

It has become an epidemic: some Christians in today's world are trying to convince the rest of us - and even themselves - that they are bulletproof, that they are above reproach, that they are without weakness in any shape, form, or fashion. They have (rightly) taken God's grace into their lives and realized that they have been forgiven of all of their sins, but then have also (wrongly) used that as an excuse for a stand-offish superiority.

One of the stereotypical scenes put into just about every media translation of Superman ever is the image of Superman foiling a robbery in progress and the bad guys wasting all of their ammunition firing into Superman's impenetrable chest as he stands stock still, an ever-vigilant guardian of goodness and pretty hair.

Sometimes some Christians try to convince people around them that they're the same as Superman - bulletproof, immovable, never-failing, never-faltering...

And that's just wrong.

If there's anything that Jesus was trying to teach us throughout His ministry, it's that God is Good and we aren't. We miss it. We miss it by miles. And it is only through a confession of that missing it that we ever get any closer.

And it's not good enough to just say "Well, I'm not perfect." We've actually got to be willing to open up to God and to each other and confess - BY NAME! - our sins.

I have something of a problem with lust and pornography. I am unbelievably arrogant at times. (Believably arrogant at others.) I pass judgment on people with little to no hesitation just because they don't act or look like me - and most of the time, I'm judging them for (possibly) judging others who do act or look like me. How's THAT for awesome?

I could go on, but those are the three it's hardest for me to actually own up to, so I think you're getting the picture.

The purpose of our redemption in Christ is not to transform us from sinner to super saint so we can stand firm in our goodness and watch the bullets of sin and darkness just ping! and ftwang! off of our perfectly chiseled pecs. In fact, it is that very mindset of thinking that our righteousness is so secure that we're impervious to the attacks of Satan that will land us directly in the enemy's camp in no time.

So don't do that.

If you pay attention to what Mary is saying in Luke 1:46-55, you'll see a lot of the "theology of reversal" - God opposes the proud but lifts up the humble, fills the hungry but sends the rich away empty... This is an invaluable peek into what it means to actually seek the Heart of God. It is only through assuming a correct relationship with God and man that we can actually enter into a blessed relationship with God or man.

We are residing as aliens in this world, which means that we're definitely not supposed to be like everyone else down here, but in our uniqueness from the earth, we've also got to be willing to be a part of it. We are to keep ourselves pure from the pollution of the world, but we're also supposed to reach out to the world in efforts to bring them to God. In order to do any of this, we have to admit our own weakness - total, complete, ground-up, all-consuming, inevitable weakness - and rely fully, wholly, entirely, and solely upon God. Nothing else works. Ever.

Weakness is strength and strength is weakness. The exalted will be humbled and the humble will be exalted. The first will be last and the last will be first. The sooner we all get that idea into our heads and start living it out on a daily basis by treating everyone we ever come into contact with as being more important than ourselves, then the sooner we can get the world closer to something of a respectable condition so we don't have to be embarrassed when Jesus comes back and sees the total mess we've made of things since He left.

(Also - anybody who makes any lame Superman/Jesus comparison in the comments is gonna get mocked. Just warning you now.)

Why you ought to be more familiar with Hellboy

This is Hellboy. He is a demon, the son of Satan himself.



Hellboy is one of my absolute favorite comics.

If you've never read Hellboy, I highly recommend it. "The Wolves of St. August" is a great starting point. I'd at least recommend that everybody see the first movie. Skip the second one, but definitely see the first one. It's not perfect in its translation of Hellboy and the BPRD (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense) from the page to the screen, but it's pretty dang close.

Like I already said - Hellboy is a demon, from the place known to Christians as Hell, in at least a mythological and literary sense. It is definitely the dominion of Satan and all his armies of darkness. Hellboy was brought to earth in December 1944 as part of a collaboration between a desperate Third Reich and the mad Russian monk Grigori Rasputin. Rescued by a group of American soldiers and Professor Trevor Bruttenholm, appointed head of the BPRD by Franklin Roosevelt, Hellboy was raised as an American citizen and - under Professor Bruttenholm - a Catholic.

As Hellboy grows in stature, wisdom, and favor with man and God, he becomes a fully active field agent for the BPRD, using his demonic strength and thorough knowledge of various evils in the world in combat on the side of good, which normally winds up being the side of God. On several occasions, Hellboy is shown (in both the comics and movies) as only being able to defeat some creatures of evil with Christian relics.

In the movie, there's actually a scene that really accents the Christian symbolism in a more direct way than is usually shown in the comics. Hellboy has been lured into the realm of sin (claiming his birthright as the bringer of the apocalypse by virtue of being the crown prince of Hell itself) and is about to destroy the world. Another field agent shouts to Hellboy, telling him, "Remember who you are!" As he says this, he throws the late Professor Broom's rosary to Hellboy, who catches it. As Hellboy catches his dead father's rosary, the cross makes contact with Hellboy's skin, burning it. This breaks Hellboy away from the darkness, brings him back to kill the bad guys, and we get a happy ending.

I used to catch a lot of flak from people for reading Hellboy.

"The main character is a demon. His name is 'Hellboy.' He's FROM. HELL. How can you, as a Christian, possibly think that this is worth reading?"

Hey there, nameless accuser... Have you ever actually sat down and read any Hellboy?

"Well, of course not! I don't read that kind of sinful material."

Have you ever seen the movie?

"Why would I? Anything that promotes Satan is beyond my tolerance as a Christian."

So you have no way of knowing, then, that Satan always loses in the Hellboy comics. So you have no way of knowing, then, that Hellboy himself is consistently written as actively fighting for the forces of Good - the forces of God - fighting the countless evils that seek to war against Heaven.

Hellboy is a fictional character. I don't really care if you think I'm not being Christ-like for reading it. If it bugs you, don't read it, and if my influence on your Christianity is going to be wasted because of something I read, then I assure you, you'd have a lot more problems with me the more you knew about me, so maybe it's just good if you start ignoring me right now.

But the reason I bring up Hellboy in the first place is that I think Christians have developed a reputation for being spiritually pessimistic. We look at someone who doesn't look like they could possibly be a good Christian and let what we see determine a lot. The way people dress, the way they live, the way they talk... We look at people trying their best and decide that their souls are half empty instead of thinking that they could be half full.

Hellboy is good. It's a good comic book, Hellboy himself is a good character (in the sense that he's written well and has very interesting conflict potential for any story he's found in) as well as being a character who is good. He's not a saint. But he's definitely good. And he's definitely trying.

There are so many people - so many - in this world who are trying their dead-level best to be the people that they believe God is asking them to be, yet they can't get very far because they've been turned off by the behavior of other Christians. They've been excluded from churches, from communities, from schools, from families, from humanity itself at times, simply because they didn't look like good Christians.

Why come to church when everybody at church is shocked that you'd ever dare to come to church after what you did?

Why come to church when everybody at church can't believe you'd come to church in that?

Why come to church when everybody at church knows that you're too far gone to even talk to?

I'm not gonna put up any scripture for this one, because you've heard it. Open your Bible to anything in the New Testament and read the two pages there before you. If you don't hit at least something about not judging others, you're probably missing a few pages.

The only reason people don't go to church is the people who already go to church.

Either you're the kind of person that will tell those in the darkness of the world just how lost they are in all that darkness or you're the kind of person who will ignore the darkness and focus on showing others the light.

God Loved us before we ever Loved Him. He took us from where we were and brought us to where we are. Why would we ever think, then, that the world outside has to come to us?

A brief theological reflection on Batman

What comes to mind when I tell you to think of Batman? This is actually a pretty important question, because we can't talk about Batman until we've got some agreement on who Batman actually is.

The 1966-1968 Batman TV series, starring Adam West as Batman, is not a good version of Batman. I know there's folks out there who like it, but I just hope that they understand that it's not really the best version of Batman out there. Really, folks, let's be honest - the Batusi is not going to be a recognized action of a man who dresses up as a giant bat in order to more effectively avenge the murders of his parents (which he witnessed at age 7).

But on the other hand, the 1992-1995 Batman: The Animated Series is a very good version of Batman, largely because it is much more in line with the central idea of "Bruce Wayne saw his parents murdered in front of him and now fights a one-man war on crime as the dark-clad spirit of vengeance."

Of course, those aren't the only two televised adaptations of Batman to ever exist. Batman was also portrayed on SuperFriends and all of its spinoffs, as well as spinoffs of the 1992 animated series. And then there are theatrical adaptations of Batman to be considered, as well. The Adam West series had its own movie, Tim Burton directed Batman in 1989 with Michael Keaton, and then Burton and Keaton reunited for Batman Returns in 1992. After Burton and Keaton left, director Joel Schumacher took the reigns for 1995's Batman Forever starring Val Kilmer, and 1997's Batman & Robin with George Clooney. None of those are very good, but I'll allow that some are worse than others.

Then we come to the most recent film adaptations of Batman: Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, both directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bale as Batman. Both of these have been excellent, and I'm personally looking forward to the third film in the series, The Dark Knight Rises, due summer 2012.

Now, I realize that I'm not the supreme arbiter of taste when it comes to interpretations of Batman - my opinion is just that - my opinion. If someone else thinks Adam West was the best Batman ever, who am I to say he or she is wrong?

Well, for starters, I'm the guy who's read a whole lot of Batman comics.

I won't claim that I've read every Batman story ever, but I've read enough that I have a pretty solid idea of who Batman is, what defines him as a character, what kinds of stories work best for that character, and also what kinds of stories don't work as well for the character.

And sometimes when people get to talking about Batman, it's very important to make sure that everybody comes to the table with a common understanding of what makes a "good" Batman, because it's only after everybody agrees on what's good that you can actually determine what's bad.

Tim Burton's depiction of Batman is no good for a lot of reasons, but there are two huge ones that stick out as flagrant errors in Batmannery. First - the Joker did not kill Batman's parents. That's a pretty cheap storytelling move, trying to tie unrelated elements of the story together in order to create more emotional tension. Second - Batman doesn't kill people, not even the Joker. But hey, Tim Burton has said before that he never read Batman comics, and really, that explains a lot of things.

I'm not saying that you can't enjoy Batman without reading the comics... But that does make it really hard to get a fully accurate picture of the true nature of the Batman.

Movies and TV shows are operating within time-sensitive frameworks where there's not really enough room to put in ALL of the wealth of information and characterization that can be borne out of more than 70 years of work on Batman. In pursuits of a deeper understanding of Batman, however, it becomes necessary at some point to at least read a few of the comics. (I would suggest starting with anything written by Frank Miller.)

Sometimes people have ideas of what they think Batman is like - based on their exposure to various TV shows and movies over the years - that either line up perfectly or don't fit at all with what the real Batman is like. These misconceptions of Batman have a lot to do with how people react to Batman, and it's important to know if somebody's idea of Batman is right or not in order to know what they actually think of Batman.

And now replace "Batman" in that last paragraph with "God" and you'll see what I see in a lot of Christians today.

A lot of Christians today are operating under a set of mistaken assumptions about who God is. The corruptions of the idea of God come from all sorts of places, not excluding movies and TV. And even worse, once we get to the root of the misconceptions about God, we find that they come from someone who hasn't ever actually read the Bible to see what God Himself says about God.

Batman as portrayed by Adam West in the 1966 TV series isn't such a terrible Batman that it's something else entirely. It's just a somewhat goofy Batman with painted on eyebrows and a charming smile, surrounded by caricatures of his villains, all reduced to brightly colored practical jokes instead of genuinely threatening psychotics with seriously altered understandings of reality.

Batman as portrayed by Michael Keaton in the Tim Burton films still isn't so horrible at being Batman that we have to call him Superman, but it's still not a 100% accurate Batman, either. This version of Batman goes too far and crosses lines that the real Batman doesn't, violating one of the central codes of the actual character's definition, leading to a corrupted vision of who Batman is.

Again - that's how some people are with God. Some people - Christian and non-Christian alike - operate with understandings of God that deviate the Biblical picture of God to create something that, although not entirely worthless, definitely isn't completely correct.

God is not the eternal sunshine and rainbows machine, wanting to shower you with nothing but happiness and Lisa Frank stickers; nor is He the universal drill sergeant, barking orders and keeping His troops in line through harsh routines. Both of these ideas of God come from corruptions of aspects of God - both ideas are based on the Truth of God, but still fall so very short.

I'm hoping that the Batman analogy helps you see why it's important that we all have a fully functional understanding of who God really is. While I'll grant that it doesn't matter too much (while still mattering a good bit) what you think about Batman, it definitely matters, more than anything else does, what you think about God.

As I've become more known in social circles as "the preacher," I've found myself having more and more discussions about God and faith in Him. One of the inescapable commonalities among people who hold objections to Christianity is a theologically incorrect picture of God. If God Himself is misunderstood, how can anything else make sense? When I'm talking to non-Christians who object to the idea of a God who tells His followers to bring hateful acts of violence down on - for instance - homosexuals, I try to show them that they're operating with a mistaken understanding of who God is. Once they understand that what God actually asks of us is to love all people as much as we love ourselves, then we are one step closer to sharing in an experience of the Truth of God.

But at the same time, I often have conversations with Christians who are themselves coming from dangerously awry understandings of the true nature of God. When I meet a Christian who is struggling in his faith because God hasn't blessed him with material wealth, it's there that we've got to make sure to look for and find the Truth of God, the Truth that transcends worldly desires and focuses on living by the Spirit. It is only when we come to understand the Truth of God that the Truth can set us free - truly free.

It's no mere coincidence that Jesus refers to Himself as the Truth - there's a very powerful idea contained in that. One person's understanding of God might seem to work for them, but if it's not actually based on the correct understanding, then things fall apart pretty quickly when the questions are asked.

I'd like to encourage you to read the book of Job. I know it's long, and I know not everybody's got just tons of free time, but trust me - if you take the time to read the Bible, God will bless you deeply for it, and you'll be blown away how much you can get out of just reading for a few minutes each day. But specifically and especially in reading Job, I want you to look at the version of God presented in the closing chapters and compare it to your own concept of God. Does Job's God look like your God?

There's only so much any preacher can do. Eventually everything comes down to whether or not the listener is willing to seriously question his or her own beliefs and make adjustments based on the reality of Truth when compared to the illusion of personal preference.

When faced with the choice between a difficult belief that challenges you to take the hard step of living a better life or an easy belief that allows you to stay the same and placate your conscience, it's not hard to see why most people through the history of the world have taken the easy way out. It's easy. Duh.

But following God isn't supposed to be easy. Good Batman isn't easy. But finding - and adhering to - the genuine Truth is what makes all the difference.

When The Dark Knight came out in theaters, the girl I was dating at the time was extremely reluctant to see the movie, citing a huge hatred for Batman. This simply wasn't gonna sit with me, so I had to find out where this hatred was coming from. As I dug and poked and prodded, I found out that she'd never actually experienced any good Batman. Once she saw The Dark Knight, however, she admitted that she enjoyed it - and why wouldn't she? It's awesome! It gets Batman right! I firmly believe that it's next to impossible for anyone to see Batman done well and not enjoy it at least a little bit.

But Batman done wrong? Yeah, that's terrible.

Same thing goes for God. When people are operating with a poor understanding of who God actually is and what He actually does, it's easy to see why they'd reject the idea.

Once the Truth is understood, however, and people have a correct understanding of the Nature and Will and Love of God, then I don't see how anybody can pass it up.

Make sure you know the Truth of who God is. Don't be content with your understanding of God as it stands now - dedicate yourself to a constant search for knowledge of God on the most intimate of levels. Know Him with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and you will find yourself sharing what you know with everyone around you. Just like Batman, once people see God in the right way, it becomes a lot harder to reject the idea.