As a kid I grew up wanting to save everyone by jumping into battle. I grew up wanting to be a green turtle. I grew up wanting to be a ninja. I grew up wanting to eat pizza everyday as a reward for my hard work. As an adult I've finally reached all of these goals. Let me explain.
You see I have a problem. I'm a superhero now. I've reached the status of life where I'm so powerful that I don't even have to do anything. I work a boring job to hide my identity. I go to the local Japanese restaurant to keep up appearances. I wear plain clothes so I seem like a regular dude. But secretly I’m a TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLE.
My greatest superpower is that I can hide my powers. I can leap large bounds (in video games). I can move faster than a speeding mountain bike (in my car, cause i'm going the speed limit). I can hear anything through walls (at my apt the walls are probably thin). I can pay my auto insurance bill on auto-pay (which i haven't used once in my lifetime, such a ripoff, I still pay so much, its not fair).
Okay, so maybe I didn’t become my childhood hero exactly. But I'm pretty close. Kinda. Every person tends to be the superhero in their own internet comments. Every preacher tends to be the moral authority in their own message. Every sports player tends to be the superstar in his own team. It’s the way our brains work. We see the best in ourselves without being the best at anything. It’s a lesson that Jesus talked about when he said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
I remember when I first heard this and I thought it was such an odd way to see love. I thought love my neighbor as myself? But i'm amazing. (I've forgiven myself for so many things. Extremely quickly.) Loving your neighbor isn’t that big of a deal but to love someone as yourself is another level that isn’t as easy as it seems. Like I said we all see ourselves as our own superhero in our own life. What would life look like if we saw our neighbor as a superhero? How would we relate to our world if our atheist coworker was Superman, I mean Clark Kent, but we knew they were Superman. How would we react if we could see the person that just cut us off as Buddhist Batman and not just the person we have a few four letter words for.
My point is that it seems hard to follow Jesus' words when we apply them to our own lives. Especially if you get on social media. A person's words can be taken very differently if you are talking to them directly. However on social media all you are left with are the words. No facial expression. No empathy. No picture of a neighbor. No superheroes. Just a random sentence. I remember when I first started commenting on social media as a hyped up 16 yr old ninja turtle. I gave my opinion as if I were an internet super hero. I held nothing back. I had the answer and it was Jesus and gummy bears.
Now looking back at all the conversions I've had and all the people I've met, I've begun to understand a few things. The internet constantly reminds me how unhealthy it is to think I have to have an answer for everything or the right opinion on every take. There is so much to life that we don't know and never will. It's okay to not know. God knows you don't know and he still calls you.
It’s part of being our own superhero. Your decisions are the best decisions. You always save everyone. You never fail. But if we know anything about real life it’s that we fail constantly. Our bodies fail sometimes. Our decisions are not always perfect. The book of proverbs says there is a path that seems right to a man but in the end it’s death. It’s saying sometimes in life you make the right decision but it’s also killing you. Killing your happiness, killing your productivity, killing your purpose. It's like you hit your target but you miss the point.
Unfortunately because we are not superheroes but just regular people we make decisions that seem right but in the end that decision was only right for us. Or we make a decision that makes everyone else happy but leaves us empty on the inside. Even still we reach for things that at one time made us happy but now only leave us drained and tired. It's a balance of life that many find difficult to deal with.
Another problem of trying to be our own superhero and make the best decisions in life is that we have a desire to be famous. It’s ingrained in all of us. We long to be famous for how we loved our families. We long to be famous for how we worked. We long to be famous for the amount of pizza we ate that one time. It’s unavoidable. With great power comes at least a little fame. We all want to be known and loved. It’s one of the by-products of being born to a world that says God is love.(1 John 4:8) We were created from love. We were not created just from dust. We were created by love. It's why we desire it so strongly. We were created by it. From it. Through it. We desire to be known. It’s a natural part of our human DNA. We love being loved.
However, the longer I lived the more I began to see that people don't need me to be a superhero. No one needs me to save them. Jesus already saved us. People just need someone to be there for them. People don’t need me to be famous, they just need to be relatable. People don’t need me to know everything about them, they just need me to love as much as I love myself. People don’t need me to always be right, they just need someone who does right by them.
So there it goes people. I'm here to announce that I have always been an internet super hero. As an internet super hero I constantly deal with the problem of not trying to do the great thing but just to do the right thing. The small things make up the great things. It’s a constant struggle to not focus on the big picture but the small dot. All the important words start with a small dot, just like all the unimportant words. The important part is to start not to be important. I’ve learned to not focus on the grand scheme but the minor habits. In the end a great life is not defined by the big accomplishments but the little commitments that got me here.
It is more important to learn the lessons than to focus on the mistakes that I made on the way. Though I’m still responsible for the mistakes. Being responsible for your mistakes means you don’t ignore the lessons that help you grow. Acknowledge them and allow them to change you. It’s what real superheroes do. Super Villains don’t question their mistakes. They just assume other people caused them. There is a fine line between a villain and a person that loves their neighbor as themselves. Too many Christians become the villain to the world that Jesus never called them to be. Our job as Christians is not to fight the world but allow the love of Christ to show through us. God fights our battles. That was the whole point of all of the old testament stories. We don't have to fight we just need to love and live like a superhero who loves his neighbor as himself.
My name is Gennie and I’m a TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLE! (in my mind). Oh and I love you. Wherever you are.
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