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?
No comments:
Post a Comment