I’m feeling stunned. I’ve just come back from watching The Dark Knight.
Like a lot of people I couldn’t help but be affected by Heath Ledger as the Joker and couldn’t help but wonder whether playing a part like that every day would somehow affect the psyche of the person playing the part. Is it as easy as that for an actor to switch off? What do others think?
As we left one of the part owners of our local movie theatre commented, ‘Even when he’s not on screen, you’re waiting all the time for the Joker to come on.’ If only we were as alert and waiting for the evil one in our world, so that we were ready for his attacks and not caught out unprepared and unsuspecting. Unlike the Joker, Satan often doesn’t leave us clues about where he is going to strike next. He just attacks our vulnerable points.
The other haunting thought that stuck with me was from the end of the film goes something along the lines of Gotham got the hero it deserved. How different is that from the hero of the Christian faith?
We did not get the hero we deserved. In Jesus we got the hero we did not deserve.
Our sin had separated us from God, Romans 3:23. God owed us nothing except judgment and condemnation. Yet he loved us and sent His own son to die for us, 1 John 4:9-10.
In the Dark Knight the death of the woman he loves, Rachel Dawes, sends District Attorney, Harvey Dent, to the dark side. From being on the side of good and right he no longer cares about anything but getting revenge. God, on the other hand, gave us all an opportunity through the death of His Son to come out from the darkness into the light, Matthew 4:16, Luke 1:79, John 1:9-14,29, John 3:16-21, John 8:12. Are you walking as a child of the light, Ephesians 5:8.
The Dark Knight is fuelled not only by the conflict between good and evil but ethical dilemmas about love, about the innate qualities of human kind and society, about right and wrong.
In the bible we see the battle between good and evil clearly laid out. We see the price paid by Jesus on the cross and the ultimate resolution not by a Dark Knight but by our Savior and the Lord of all.
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