Marvel's Agents of Shield: "God Will Not Forgive You."

Found an old post that never got published...

The TV series Firefly was an immediate cult classic and it is out of a sense of duty and bitter sweet nostalgia that I made a concerted effort to give the current Joss Whedon series "Marvel's Agents of Shield" a solid backing. Last night's was episode 9: "Repairs," and the characters had some very interesting viewpoints on God, too interesting for me not to write about them.

If you've never seen Agent's of Shield or if you are unfamiliar with the Marvel universe then here's the backdrop setting in a nutshell. Superheroes like Spiderman, Ironman, The Hulk, Captain America, and a litany of other characters of varying degrees of power are real. The government has put together a program called S.H.I.E.L.D. to deal with the superheroes / villains in the background, identifying new threats, cleaning up after the heroes and villains break stuff during their fights, locking away artifacts and technology is too dangerous or alien in nature, and keeping society from panicking by covering as much of this up as they can. The series "Agents of Shield" follows a group of agents and their missions / character story arcs in what is truly a cross between CSI, the Avengers, and Mission Impossible.

In this episode S.H.I.E.L.D. has identified some very strange happenings occurring around a young woman (Hannah Hutchins) in a small church town. When she feels threatened or scared things start to fly off the shelf, shelves start toppling onto people, and vehicles start up all by themselves and try to ram whatever (or whoever) is making her feel threatened. Case and point the agents believe that she has somehow acquired telekinetic mind powers that she does not understand and cannot control. The fact that these powers only started manifesting themselves after the woman in question was part of an accident that blew up an experimental generator provides enough circumstantial evidence to bring her in for further investigation.

Here's where the theology gets interesting.

Hannah - Faith Without Understanding

Hannah is a Christian. She attends church, helps run youth group, volunteers at soup kitchens etc. She is a churchy person who is kind and caring and she believes that God is punishing her for her sins. She was the safety inspector at the reactor that blew up and the resulting blast killed four of her co-workers, a devastating accident that has rocked the tiny community. She believes that these happenings aren't the manifestation of mind powers but of demons sent to torment her because God no longer protects her. Hannah is an example of someone with faith but without understanding.

Her perspective is based on her faith and the author of the episode makes sure we know it. She believes in God. She does not understand God though nor does she understand what is happening to her. As agent May points out, "people believe what they need to to make sense of what they experience." This is a sad and foolish type of faith that is based in personal experience alone. She is experiencing guilt and frightening things therefore God must be doing it which means he is punishing her. This is of course contrary to the revelation of the God of Christianity who freely forgives out of love, going so far as to take the penalty for sin upon himself so that he may forgive sinners because he wants to. But Hannah doesn't know this, she understands God as a generic god, the explanation for things you don't understand, not the living God revealed in Jesus and the Scriptures. She is well meaning but simply doesn't understand what is going on.

Sky - Unbelief Without Understanding

Sky is an agnostic. She has a long and complicated past full of hurt, distrust, and trying to help people by doing what's right in the world. There are a lot of things she doesn't understand about herself and a lot of things she does understand about others. She has a natural empathy and a caring personality and so she understands that Hannah is going through a lot right now, having been part of a horrible accident, having strange and sometimes violent things happen around her, being confronted, sedated, and abducted by men in black suits and waking up in a strange place. Sky wants to help her, give her hope that things will be ok and she's going to use the type of language that Hannah best understands; the language of faith.

The problem is that Sky doesn't believe in God and most definitely does not understand him. She does however believe that God is not punishing Hannah for her sins because one thing stuck with her when she went to Sunday School, that God is Love. She says that if she had to choose what to believe about God she would choose that. Oddly enough the unbelieving character has more theological grounding than the believing one. Perhaps even stranger is that they both fall into the same problem of understanding God based on personal experience alone. So Hannah has her own God of judgment and Sky has her own God of love. Taking this stance a bit further we can say that Paul had his own God and Jesus had his own God and Moses had his own God and all of these are projections of the mind based on personal experience, none of them are any more or less valid than any others and all anyone can ever hope to know about God is a personal perspective. It refuses to acknowledge the fact that God makes himself known as a person, the same person regardless of perspective. It also refuses to acknowledge the fact that we can know God through the written testimony of Scripture, the spoken testimony of others, and the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit. But this is only a TV show that is briefly touching on theological issues as a means to tell an interesting story so I suppose I can't be too upset.

Agent May - Unbelief with Understanding

Agent May is a little more complicated. She understands a lot of things about herself and others. She understands the risk of Hannah having telekinetic powers that she cannot control. She understands that Hannah, like so many others, only believe things to make sense of their experiences and that we often skew our perceptions. She knows what it's like to deal with guilt and work through trauma. There are two possible ways we could interpret her understanding of God, either that he doesn't exist or that he doesn't care ("God will not Forgive you.") Either way, her method of coping and her advice to others isn't to draw near to God but to live as though God doesn't exist; taking responsibility for your actions, realizing that you will have to live with the consequences, and growing up and moving on. A bleak piece of 'pull yourself up by your boot straps' theology. Her's is a matured 'realism' that is faithless and seeks to give a person trapped in guilt a solid kick in the pants to get them moving again. I'm sure that many a viewer in this postmodern age will find hers the most attractive. Once again though, this template of faith does not comprehend the revelation of God found in Christ or the Scriptures. She also believes what she must in order to make sense of things.






For myself I am just intrigued at how public television portrays Christianity. In this episode we have the Christian with a shallow and foolish faith, the agnostic who subscribes to 'pick your own religion', and the cynic who chooses her faith based on what gets the job done. Each of which is unhealthy but in different ways. I don't watch a lot of television but I think most would be hard pressed to find a character who is a Christian with good theology and lives an authentic life of discipleship and love.

As far as character building and storytelling is concerned it definitely adds depth to each character. Hannah's simplicity and lack of understanding is central to her character. Sky's aversion to systems and organizations translates makes her loose theology and non-church attendance a natural outworking. May's PTSD and hardened focus on 'the job' makes her stark utilitarian faith also make sense. As always I am impressed by Joss Whedon's knack for building interesting characters with depth.