What Sim Could Have Been Thinking About If He Had to Write Something On the Spot

I wrote this paper just a while ago. Yet, I can't get around the fact that Simon has impacted me in such a way that I can actually write such an ingenuous prose. So, kudos to Sim, my "cape crusader"!

What is the Gospel?

Imagine being a sidekick of a superhero. Imagine the fame, glory and honor for being able to participate alongside Batman in the action of saving Gotham City. Do halt pondering about the metaphor immediately if you are thinking about the ludicrous red velvety tights Robin wears. Unfortunately, such a figurative manner of portraying the gospel has its limits. Then again, by using this approach, a reasonable, yet fresh, understanding of the gospel can be observed. So, if God is the hero and those who have responded to the gospel are God’s sidekicks, the gospel can then be fully comprehended as an invitation in partaking in the mission of God’s kingdom. Thus, the good news becomes a verb in the present continuous tense, rather than just a product that guarantees salvation if accepted at a certain point in life. Nonetheless, many church-going, Bible-believing Christians are more inclined to take the latter definition of the good news, probably writhing at the thought of becoming God’s Robin. After all, who in the right of mind wants to wear such a tight and humiliating outfit? Anyway, aside from the crude humor, perhaps modern Christians are so indoctrinated with the “product gospel” because the modern church has so codified the gospel in the consumerist language. This obviously also results in the good news of Jesus Christ becoming a doctrine about the “I” pronoun, rather than being about what God has done. After all, do we not hear in church that the good news is about “my” salvation, “my” baptism and “my” Jesus?

Sadly, we have replaced the cover of every Batman comic with that of Robin’s images. Such a thought only brings chills to one’s back, especially if it has to do with Robin’s ridiculous costume. Yet, it is the truth. For what God desires is, through His gospel, a partnership with humanity – He is the hero and we are his sidekick. Nonetheless, the postmodern and post-enlightenment good news has been degraded to the point that God has no place in it anymore. Even if He does have a room in such a gospel, He is still almost always not the focal point of it. Much worse, God acts like a puppet king, whereby we act as his ventriloquist, mouthing words as if they are the actual words of God. For instance, many Christians often have their preconceived ideas about the gospel, and to justify their opinions, they make it seem as if their message is in accordance to the Bible.

Perhaps, we might have jumped a little ahead of what the gospel, in its simplistic form, means. Despite the tying in with the hero-sidekick mythos, the gospel is still about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Thus, without Jesus, there is no good news. Nevertheless, the gospel is not just about what God has done through Jesus. There is a choice to be made after the gospel is presented. Either one rejects it or one accepts it. There are no maybes here. If one chooses to accept the good news, that person is essentially joining with Christ in His mission of opening the eyes of the blind, of freeing the captives from prison and the releasing of those who sit in the dungeon of darkness.

Of course, this partnership is also hinted at in the wedding feast of the Lamb in Revelation. Here, the church, the bride of Christ, celebrates and participates with her Bridegroom. The wedding feast is not depicted as a Christ-only affair. It is the merry-making with the Church – an act of cooperation. Similarly, when Jesus promises the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, He is talking about the Christian individual working together with God. Thus, the good news of Jesus Christ is not merely about God alone, or humankind alone. It is a beautiful picture of the coming together of the Divine and His people in a oneness – a dance, one might even add – never thought possible. Without one or the other, the good news sounds vain and is no different from the other world religions. In any case, Christ has not left us with that definition. That only brings back the metaphor of Batman and his sidekick, the leader and his assistant swashbuckling through the darkness of Gotham City. It really does make so much sense to picture Christ as Batman and the church as Robin, does it not?