Dr. Manhattan and the Benovolence of God
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Quick sidebar: because of my ongoing obsession with pop culture, storytelling, and thematic connections to the Gospel, to Christ, and to myself, I’m going to start a new series emphasizing how I am learning about Christ, about the Bible, about myself, and about how they are all connected through stories I really, really enjoy. Hope y’all like it!
MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE HBO SHOW WATCHMEN. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.
I always come late to parties. Watchmen, the sequel HBO limited series, intrigued me from the jump when it was first announced in 2017-18. Not just because of its diverse focus, but also because the implications it assumed then ran with after the fallout of the original graphic novel’s setting and ending.
I recently finished the series and was quite impressed. Even though many of the plot twists I called, at least, in a way, I have thoroughly enjoyed the deep dive it embraced right off the bat. It not only isn’t afraid to get downright weird (as did the original source material), it also willingly goes controversial. And the white supremacist thread is, well, even more pertinent to now then it was in 2019. Yet, even still, there are quite a lot of haters out there due to the “wokeness” of the content. Truth be told, the hate I’ve read online makes me like and love it all the more.
I have grown tired of trend-chasing prevalent on screen. Whether it be the MCU’s ensemble of decent but never great movies (save for Black Panther), to the sudden rise of Netflix’s open and honest B movie style action flicks, I don’t like how film and tv are now chasing views as opposed to quality. The golden age of tv is dead. Netflix adding “top 10” shows was the needle in the coffin.
Now, unfortunately, I think more and more audiences will pursue media that entertains but doesn’t enlighten. Excites but never illuminates. Offers easy and straightforward answers rather than probes characters and, even more so, the audience, to question their own prejudices and biases.
As said before, on Metacritic Watchmen has an 85 rating. Very high praise for a show about masked vigilantes who beat up other masked thugs. But nearly all of the negative reviews of fans, whose aggregate score is 54, are due to one of two different reasons; the show being overly “woke” and therefore too political in its implications, and/or it didn’t respect the “canon” of the original story because it seemingly “tarnished” the reputation of one of the most beloved characters of the original novel. This frustration reveals a 31 point disparity between the two sets of reviews, which, although not terribly uncommon, is very telling. Even though I’ve defended it to death, both in writing and in passionate discussion with friends, The Last Jedi had a similar disparity.
The two do share a lot in common. They take established characters and storylines and take them in political and even contentious territory, with creative intention. They are designed to question the audience as much as their very characters. They are meant to entertain, yes, but also, to interrogate the audience a bit too. And while formulaic, safe stories can definitely offer comfort, provide hope, and solve plot threads with a neat bow on top, I have never found those stories terribly compelling. In fact, this connects with why it’s been hard, often, to remain a Christian.
Truth be told, the reason why I disliked the Bible for years was because I was taught it with a very specific lens, and taught to see it with specific eyes for that lens, and with a specific mind taught to believe the lens confirmed by the eyes. All of which betrayed my heart and spirit, offering them nothing but trite and cheap answers that left no room for nuance or mystery.
Or God.
But now, well, I think the Bible is a lot more interesting. Like Star Wars, like Watchmen, I now see it with different eyes, a different heart, and maybe even a different self.
The True Self in Christ.
I’ve written about the True and False Self plenty of times before. My fifteen seconds of mild internet fame, being published by Relevant, were two articles both written about the “consciousness” within and how we understand it (or, rather, don’t understand it). It wasn’t about sin or death. Not about how hard dating is as a millennial or why white theology isn’t right theology. Not about Calvinism or Arminianism or infallibility or inerrancy.
It was about how the lies we believe inside affect how we behave, how we think, how we are, on the outside.
Often it’s why, too, I’ve never learned a lot about spirituality through “how to” books. Simply put, while there is definitely a space to understand the ins and outs of, let’s say, praying and the manner in which to “effectively” do it, these books or theories always felt like trying to catch the wind. Or painting a picture without paper.
Or us when we try to encapsulate the mystery of the creator of everything with a few minutes of “I want this and then that and then this and then some more of that.”
In the second to last episode of Watchmen, we finally become reacquainted with Dr. Manhattan. The ordinary man turned God was not left in the best place at the end of the graphic novel (and the movie). Granted with super power beyond the scope of any of his other caped counterparts, Jon suddenly feels immensely isolated. In spite of having a partner who, although broken and human in her own way, loves him and wants to connect with him. Yet, the toll of having to love a woman, contend with a government asserting what he should do with his power, and his newly found incapacity to feel desire for things, Jon essentially turns fully into Dr. Manhattan, leaving the old Jon Osterman behind.
Bereft of his former humanity, we are left at the end of the original story with him seemingly abandoning the world, his lover, and his former life as just another guy. Out on Mars, he simply is doing his own thing, while normal humans, in the tv show adaptational sequel, “call” him to voice their concerns and angsts about life.
This is a striking parallel with how I believe many people view God today. Both outside and unfortunately inside the walls of church. Inherited from our founding fathers of America, as well as fathers of the American church, although the movement to believe “God was dead” eventually faded in the 80s and 90s, it seems to me many people did walk away from it believing it to be true, if indirectly.
This is how, I think, a religion which is summarized in two commandments to love God and love your neighbor with all of you are has millions of followers who frankly don’t believe that, or act like they believe it when you take a nominal look at their lives. When theologies, denominations, answers to life’s mysteries have all been solved and/or understood, conspicuously by almost solely white men, on paper God might still be alive but for many He is dead in their hearts.
But that’s not how the story here ends. Or is even moving forward currently. Watchmen doesn’t end like that either.
Fast forward to several decades later, we see Dr. Manhattan “pick up” our new primary character, Angela Abar, at a bar in near to modern day Vietnam. Having established the country as now a 51st state, Angela herself felt the ramifications of the superhero/god’s “conquest” from the communists as her own parents were murdered by insurrectionist terrorists who felt the American’s presence there as imperialist.
Suffice to say, the two are oddly linked, a clever connection written on purpose, but their conversation only gets more interesting over time. Because Jon’s concept of time is, essentially, unlimited.
Over the course of what seems to be several hours, Jon discusses with Angela how he sees their relationship all at once and one at a time simultaneously. As this unfolds, too, we see the mechanist, clockmaking Dr. Manhattan now desiring to embody a different kind of skin. Not just in pigment (which is important symbolically for the story) but in his humanity too.
Eventually they decide as a couple to have him “forget” his superhuman powers to have him become more and more human again. Having the taste of deity without humanity, Dr. Manhattan decides he’d rather be only human once more. Which, in a strange way, sounds a lot like another guy I’ve spent a lot of time researching about.
And who I’ve beeb “calling” a lot too like the characters in Watchmen do with John.
The comparison between Jon and Jesus is not perfect, obviously. But I was very moved and felt a deeper connection to God while watching this man become god strive to become man again in order for him to experience what is, ultimately, the most divine.
Love.
See to me it seems clear that the greatest expression of divinity, the ultimate striving toward purpose and meaning and longing is found, entirely, through and in and for and because of love. And love can’t exist alone; it is contingent, completely, on another.
This was why when I first taught, in detail and as an emphasis, in God as plurality, as three in one, the full weight and gravity of love landed. Jesus mentions, particularly in John (my favorite gospel, and, coincidentally the same real name as Dr. Manhattan), of His Father, of doing what His Father is doing, of He and His Father being one, all started to make sense. And by make sense, I mean illogical in my head but utterly right and complete in my heart.
In order to center myself in the True Self in Christ, I have to accept Truths which on the surface are paradoxical to my head. Gone are rigid theological assertions or surface literal interpretations of text.
In this moment of social turmoil and chaos, what I see and hope and desire to be a part of with the Bride of Christ in America is the end of our near diabolical obsession with being right. Over and almost always ahead of being loving.
To see the truth of white supremacy in leadership, patriarchal abuses of power in church institutions, and either outright ignoring of LGBT issues or open and assertive claims of certain and morally “reprehensible” sinfulness in divergent sexuality/gender expression, we have to let go of our airtight, fool-proof, and ultimately heartless view of God.
Because we’ve made the good news contingent on a variety of factors which excludes the vast majority of people from receiving it as good unless they first change so much of who they are, and, coincidentally, causing little to no calls for change in ourselves.
It is an egoic interpretation of the Bible, of God, of Jesus, of how we love, that we’ve been given, and the ego is what Jesus calls us to pick up and die daily. No more searching for the boogeyman out there turning a Christian nation into a secular one. Rather, a deeper and more insightful reflection in ourselves, the real boogeyman inside, that needs a thoroughly comprehensive renewal like Paul calls for in Romans 12.
It is a smaller and deeper orthodoxy, I’ve found, which gets me rooted deeper in Christ and therefore deeper in myself. Not a thorough, exclusive, nitpicky, petty, and reactive theological understanding of insiders and outsiders. If the church hopes to survive in America, it needs to put to death the theology of being right and replace it with a theology of being loving.