A Ramble About Rising

Among other things, I am also a superhero fan. Those who know me better know that I'm a little more obsessive than normal when it comes to Superman stories and movies, for example. I own all of the Superman movies on DVD including the lesser known Richard Donner cut of Superman II, and I keep a copy of the fan film Superman: Requiem on my laptop just because it brought a little tear to my eye. But I am also a fan of Batman, and have been for as long as I've been a Superman fan. I grew up watching reruns of the old Batman series with Adam West, and saw most of the late eighties early nineties Batman movies either in the theater or on DVD several times. I was a little unsure of Michael Keaton as the Dark Knight, but he pulled it off amazingly.

So, as I've been able to, I also made it a point to see Christian Bales incarnation of Batman in the Dark Knight trilogy, which I now own on DVD. Something lately told me to watch the last film, The Dark Knight Rises again, so I put it on today.

In the film, our hero Bruce Wayne is seriously injured and thrown into a prison that exists at the bottom of a deep dark pit. The only escape is through a huge hole in the ceiling which has to be climbed up. At the top is a ledge, and the only way to continue your ascent up and out is to jump from that ledge onto an adjacent ledge. The people who run the prison enter and leave by way of climbing up and down ropes lowered through the hole. The most torturous thing about this prison is that the prisoners can see the daylight, but no one can make the full ascent to get out because every time they try to make the jump, they fall. They don't always die from the fall because they have a sort of safety line tied around them to keep them from hitting the ground. But only one person is known in a prison legend to have made it to the top and made the jump, and that person was a child.

So, in true hero fashion, Bruce recovers from his injuries, rebuilds his body and strength, and then proceeds to make the climb, safety rope around his waist. He gets to the ledge and jumps... and thn he falls painfully. He does this three or four times, each time it makes him more frustrated and determined to get out of the pit, and each time he falls in defeat and is forced to watch the city and people he loves being abused and terrorized on a television.

As he continues to work out and condition his body, another prisoner tells him it's not about strength. It's about spirit. He goes on to explain that in order to reach the top, you need to make the jump in the same way that the child did, without the safety rope. This safety rope is the only thing allowing Bruce to try again, because without it any fall from the ledge is fatal. You have to make a leap of faith without anything there to catch you.

During the first part of the movie, I was trying to understand why I needed to see it again. Then it came to this part, the leap of faith. I would like to think I know all about leaps of faith, but the truth is that I like a good safety rope the same as anyone else. I don't like it when the safety net has been taken away, and watching this again reminded me of a very powerful truth.

God works with us where we are at, but He asks us to trust Him. As we get to know Him better and better, He asks us to trust Him with more and more. At first, He allows safety nets because of our weakness. But He doesn't allow them forever. His objective is that we learn to trust Him as a child, implicitly and with everything. When a child trusts a parent, the parent is that child's safety net. In the same way, we need to come to understand that when God asks us to trust Him, we need to understand that He is our safety net, and eventually we will be asked to let the rope we trusted to catch us go. God eventually asks us to jump without the rope, and only when we do this can we ascend to where He wants to take us.

The only way to ascend up at out of the pit is to make the jump as the child did, without the rope. Jesus said that unless we humbled ourselves and became as little children we would never see the kingdom of God. The reason why no one else had ever escaped the pit is because they were all trying to do it the safe way like grown-ups. The only way to truly mature as we follow Christ is to leave the safety rope behind and trust Him.