The billboard caught my eye as I was waiting at the lights. The new Batman game for PS3, Arkham Origins, loomed large to my left.
I don’t usually pay much attention to ads like that, I don’t tend to play computer games – partly because I have some ethical qualms, largely because I am unspeakably inept at them - but the blurb for this one got my mind whirring.
The plot is simple. An evil villain escapes a high security prison, along with some equally vile accomplices, and together they place an enormous bounty on Batman’s head. Carnage ensues as Batman tries to round them up before they kill him and the population rips themselves apart. The concept isn’t literary rocket-science but what intrigues is the strap-line: your enemies will define you. Set at the start of Batman’s career, the thesis is that his struggle against these particular embodiments of evil defines who he later becomes.
I guess there’s a sense in which that strap-line resonates with each of our stories. Every one of us will have been hurt at some point in our lives – we probably haven’t been the subject of a city-wide, mafia-led manhunt but we will have been through a relationship break down, cruel taunts in the schoolyard or possibly even the horrors of childhood or domestic abuse. And we will all have been impacted by those events. There’s no way to sail through life immune to the effects of a fallen planet - to be in community in this world, is to experience pain.
But will the actions of these “enemies” define us?
For many of us, the answer is “yes”. We remember the pain of loss and try to prevent it happening again by resolving to never get close to anyone ever again. We remember the fear of uncertainty and drive ourselves to control everything and everyone around us so we squeeze out the possibility of being that afraid ever again. We compare what we have had removed from us with what we see others around us enjoying and bitterness wells up from our hearts. We allow the pain to drive us to self-protection, control and discontent. Who we are, how we act, gets set in stone by the hurts of others. And often it’s far from a pleasant picture.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Jesus had more enemies than any other human being. The whole realm of evil conspired to bring him down. People plotted his death, one of his closest friends betrayed him for cash – he was mocked, tortured and nailed to a cross. They are events that will leave him scarred for eternity. But did his enemies define him? Not for a moment. Never a puppet, at every stage Jesus made choices about how he was going to act even to the point of choosing to forgive those who were driving the nails into his flesh.
Because of his work on the cross, the same can be true of us. Because of his forgiveness, and in the power of his Spirit, we can break free from our past. We will always be impacted by the pain we experience but we don’t have to be defined by it. Far better to choose to let the Lord Jesus and his gift of grace define us. He makes us precious children of God who have an eternal purpose and a sure and certain hope. That leaves us free to love, give, forgive and bless those around us, no matter how deep our pain. And that’s an identity well-worth having ...
