Attaining to be Spiderman

Greetings Scholars and Warriors.

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Yesterday I read an article by www.comicbook.com about some recent comments by Andrew Garfield. He was discussing his 2 Spiderman films and how he felt about his role in them. When he was asked what he learned from being Spiderman, he said this:

"Well, nothing, because I was never Spider-Man. Because Spider-Man's a fictional character. He's not real. [laughs] You know what's funny, to give you the vulnerable answer, I thought I was going to be Spider-Man, you know?"

"I was the actor that I am. The person that I am. Struggling with trying to match up with something that I'd elevated so high in my mind. Elevated beyond what I could attain, what I could achieve. The great thing is, that's what Peter Parker was doing as well. Peter Parker created this symbol that he couldn't live up to. It was never enough. He never felt enough, and I never felt enough."

I feel like this happens to humans every day. We set a certain standard that we seek to live up to but just can't hit the mark. We have fictional ideas of what it means to be human. Fictional ideas of what it would mean to be ourselves. We create our own symbols that we can't live up to.

In reality, God's standards are not much easier. Did you know that in the entire Old Testament Daniel is the only person that never has a negative report? All those heroes we focus on such as David, Abraham, Noah, Joshua. They all made bad choices at one point or another. Noah was a drunkard. Abraham lied about his marriage out of fear. David had an affair. All those great heroes failed at some point or another to live up to greatness. Then when you get to the New Testament, you have Peter who often stuck his foot in his mouth and Paul who terrorized the Church before Christ intervened in his life.

Jesus was once asked if attaining the Gospel was impossible. Read the story in Matthew 19:16-30. Jesus had talked with a rich person. Jesus asked him about various laws and he was like "Yep, done that. Good there. Got that." But then He said this: "sell all you have and give to the poor, and follow Me." Then, this rich man went away sad. Jesus then commented: "It is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven. It is easier to put a camel through the eye of a needle." His disciples were shocked, "Then how can any of us achieve this?" Jesus response was simple: "With God, all things are possible". Jesus then goes on to describe a wonderful experience in eternity for all His followers.

We fail to live up to standards because we do it alone. Jesus called the weary to come to Him. To find rest and hope and help. We have this silly idea that we have to achieve our standards all alone. But we DON'T. Jesus would rather walk with you through it all. Ask Him for help. It might not come in the form you expect, but He will provide help. You just need to accept it. There is no shame in admitting that you need help.

The Network

Tek Ma Te Warriors and Scholars!

Well, have you seen Ant Man yet? I did! I laughed several times and really enjoyed the relationship between Scott Lang and Hank Pym. I thought that they kept the montra "It's all connected." quite well.

One of those little connections was pretty big news. During the second montage of Luis explaining a complicated story of how he got some information, we heard this: "We got one who jumps, one who swings, one who crawls up walls." The first MCU reference to our friendly neighborhood Spiderman!

Now, this is really exciting, but most of the blogs and articles I've seen about this have not talked about something. There is a network. This scene showed us that as various small time heroes have stepped out to fight crime something else is happening. A network of people has been built that is providing routes of communication and support and networking. Presumably, the network has reached from NYC where a conversation between one of it's members and an Avenger all the way to San Francisco where our man Luis is telling Scott Lang about the conversation. I am unsure of the location of the club where this conversation happened, but I'm guessing it was in New York.

Now why is this important? Well, because we find at least some people who do not have cool tech suits or super powers joining in a huge work that is all about fighting evil and crime. Not everyone making a difference in the MCU is a spy or a great engineer or a super soldier. Some are just normal people who want to help out.

In the church we tend to take certain gifts and abilities and treat them as some sort of ultimate achievement. Some do this with the gifts of teaching and preaching. There are churches out there where it is all about the preaching pastor and that is it. Some do it with speaking in tongues. They claim you must do this to show evidence of being truly saved. But what does scripture say?

"There are different kinds of gifts but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work." 1 Cor. 12:4-6

Paul later goes on to describe the church as a body. This is where we get the phrase "the Body of Christ". He comments "how can you see without an eye?" and "how can you hear without an ear?" Some people have a gift for helps. They just come in and help around the church by cleaning or setting up tables. My brother, Dad and I are on the tech team. My Dad runs a video camera multiple times a month and I run lights and my brother runs sound. Some have an amazing heart and ability for prayer. They never really "teach" or set chairs up or stuff like that but they will pray for hours every week for people in the church and within their influence.

EVERYONE is important. I remember that line from the 11th Doctor, "In 900 years I have never met anyone who wasn't important." God feels the same way and he has given you a gift to serve with. You might have to do some exploring to find it, but it is there. There are a lot of online spiritual gift surveys to take to find it, but in the end you will need to step out and try something. Your gift might be really helpful in areas of your church that you have never thought about.

How "42:Discovering Faith Through Fandom" Came into Being

Greetings Scholars and Warriors.

Thanks to Ruth Pike for her hard work on cover art!

If you have paid any attention to the Nerd Chapel FB page, then you know that Nathan Marchand and I have completed a new collaborative work. 42:Discovering Faith Through Fandom is the result of a vision I had probably around 2 years ago or more. I realized you find many daily devotionals for hunters, sports fans as well as gender and age specific ones; but none specifically focused on Nerd/Geek culture. When I started working on it, I felt God nudging me to bring Nathan on and I think that was a great idea. Nathan is a published science fiction author who has published both as a "self publisher" and through a publishing company. He was able to bring a lot to the project with his knowledge of editing, formatting, and pursuing publishing possibilities. He also found our cover artist, Ruth Pike, at a dance group he attends.

We chose to go the route of self publishing because very few publishers fit the niche of "Christian and Geek". Most Christian publishing companies don't understand Nerd culture in any way and most fantasy or science fiction publishers would never consider publishing a devotional. We did talk with one company but they are so far behind they would not have been able to even look at it for a year, let alone make a decision or get things going.

Here are a few of the daily titles in our book:

The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything
The Resurrection of Spock
Spiderman and the Pong of Vengeance
Beware the Dark Side

Nathan will have copies at his table in author's row at Gen Con 2015. We also are donating some to the Christian Gamers Guild booth at Gen Con this year. I will have copies at the Nerd Chapel table at Grand Con 2015. Copies are also available online:

 http://www.amazon.com/42-Discovering-Faith-Through-Fandom

If you would like to check out Nathan's other works, go to:

www.nathanjsmarchand.com 

With Great Power...

Found at www.unleashthefanboy.com.

Hey guys.

Tonight the growth group I lead for my church was discussing spiritual gifts. Interestingly, this discussion took place as part of an 8 week series on surrendering to God. I know this seems like a strange context for talking about spiritual gifts, but it really isn't. It was exciting to see how we were all exploring out gifts and where we might fit in.

Often times when we discuss spiritual gifts we don't look at the larger picture. Like a certain web-head, we focus on our own, individual situation. We look at our gifts without considering where we fit in the full plan of what God is doing currently or His great plan for all time.

Have you recently read any of the passages that discuss these gifts? The Apostle Paul often discusses them during the same time as he discusses unity in the Church.

Read 1 Corinthians 12-14 or Romans 12. God gives us these super powers but He has certain expectations. Both of these passages discuss spiritual gifts, church unity, and love. These 3 things are fully inter-connected.

If we think our gifts are useless, we fail to serve. If we think our gifts are the most important, we disrespect other members of God's people.

Think about Spiderman:he is a solo hero. He is not a team player but yet he has joined with the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and the Avengers. His uncle told him that (you know this line so say it with me) "WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY." We often think of that responsibility as it stands in relation to him and the citizens of NYC. But what about the responsibility of it in regards to the other heroes? What about his place in the scheme of the Marvel Universe? We found out how hard that is in the Civil War storyline, right? [spoilers] He joined one side, disagreed with them, got in a sticky situation, got rescued, and joined the other side.

We don't always agree in life. The Avengers movie showed how easy it is to showboat and how difficult to come to a place of cooperation. But what happens when that cooperation does come to it's prime? When we trust God and use our gifts as directed by Him instead of insisting that some gifts are better or more necessary. 6 Heroes defeated a full army led by an Asgardian, despite the huge size of the army.

Do you know your spiritual gifts? If not, get on the training ground and play around. Start serving and you will find your gifts over time. You might want to take a spiritual gifts assessment. Talk with your pastor. Find out how your gifts fit into what your church is doing. I would also remind you that these gifts tend to be useful outside the church as well.

With great redemption comes great mission. Get out there and serve!

Training or Gifting?

Geeksaresexy.com has this great cartoon up right now about the difference between Japanese heroes and American heroes.

Ryu (yes, that Ryu; from Street Fighter) decides to prepare to protect Earth from alien attack. He makes a point about how he'll train really hard, even carrying a bolder to do so. As he is fighting aliens, he feels overwhelmed. Way to many for him to fight alone. In come 3 heroes, from our 2 biggest hero houses, DC and Marvel, to help him. As he compliments them on their skills, they all admit that they haven't really trained that much. Iron Man just has cool gadgets and money, Spidey got bitten by a spider, and Superman was born with it.

This is a huge over-generalization, right? Look at the X-Men. They have a huge room devoted to training and even a whole school. Wildcat has a purpose in DC comics of training younger heroes and vigilantes. Think about our other heroes, that we label under other things. Catniss Everdeen trains on various techniques before going into the Hunger Games.Luke Skywalker has to train with Yoda and Obi-wan.

On the Japanese side it doesn't seem so off, though. Almost all Asian heroes that I know of have a lot of training and a strong emphases on preparation. I am sure there are exceptions, though. Feel free to let me know of any.

This week we celebrated Veterans Day. A day when we remember men who trained hard and worked hard to keep our nation free. Now, in some cases, such as Word Wars, the training was quickened a little bit. And in other cases, such as the Vietnam War, soldiers arrive to a theater of operations to find out they need to learn a whole new set of lessons from soldiers who have been there for a while.

As Christians, we are told to train. Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 4:8 that physical training is of some value, but the training in Godliness holds much more relevant value. This is one of the reasons we have the Bible. To train in righteousness. In 1 Corinthians he tells us about the proper uses of spiritual gifts. These gifts are given to all followers of Christ freely, but we don't always look for them.

You see, real heroes have a mixture. God freely gives all his followers gifts to use in fighting spiritual battles and in serving. Yet we still need training. We need to learn how to use those gifts, when to use the gifts, and we need to learn wisdom. But it isn't only training.

In the cartoon mentioned above, Spiderman, Superman and Iron Man somehow all come at once to aid Ryu. What did Jesus do when He sent the disciples out to teach? He sent them out 2 by 2. They went out as teams. Paul's treatment on spiritual gifts in his letter to the Corinthians comes in a context of unity. He discusses order in worship during this time as well as the beauty of the diversity of the Body of Christ.

In order to be real super heroes, we need all of these. We need training. We need natural talents and spiritual gifts from the Holy Spirit. We need each other. That is the recipe for true heroism.

**Quick Note: This Saturday, Nov. 15, is a gathering at Cornerstone Univ. 6:00pm. Come join us for a chapel service and some gaming after that.**

Spiderman, Drugs, Truth and Love

Today I contemplated something that happened in the comic book industry many years ago in the 1970s.  The government approached Stan Lee about writing a Spiderman comic that educated youth about the dangers of drugs and joined in the battle against such evils.  At that time the Comics Code forbade any mention of drugs.  The Code refused to give its approval for the comic because it mentioned drugs, despite the message that taking them was wrong and dangerous. So what did Stan Lee and Marvel do?  They published Spiderman #96 without the approval of the Code simply by not putting the Code's Seal of Approval on the cover.  This was so effective in the fight against drugs, that it led to a change in the Comics Code.  I honestly believe that they got so focused on their strategies, that they forgot their overall mission, which was to oversee the Comics Industry so that the entertainment found in it was healthy and family friendly.  Isn't a warning about drugs important for health?  Doesn't a comic provide a great chance for parents and kids to talk about these issues?

This makes me wonder about how we do things in the Church.  How often do we get so focused on strategies or truth that we actually fail in expressing the grace and love of Christ?  Do we need to call sin by its real name of sin?  Absolutely!  But we also need to do so in a way which is loving and grace filled.  Yet sometimes we go the opposite direction.  We are scared of pointing sin out but keep trying to express a sentimental love around that doesn't challenge people to grow in Christ.

Jesus was never afraid to call people out about sin.  He told the woman caught in adultery to "go and sin no more" and he kicked out the merchants who were taking advantage of travelers to the temple with high prices.  Yet despite this he was called a "friend of sinners".  He never backed down from calling sin what it is but had amazing relationships with everyone around Him.  This sometimes can be a little confusing, but Jesus is always there to help us.  He has thousands of years of experience in doing this so learning from Him is certainly a great idea.