Beneath Batman’s Cape: Finding the Hero in All of Us

Normal? Hardly

Many words could be used to describe Batman: Strong. Smart. Snappy dresser. But the world “normal?” It probably wouldn’t come up. Batman is about as normal as a seven-legged cow, as humdrum as Lady Gaga bungee jumping. This is a guy who buys corporations before lunch and fights crime after dinner—a man who wears Kevlar body armor and battles nefarious supervillians as a hobby. “A guy who dresses up like a bat clearly has issues,” Bruce Wayne says in Batman Begins. But yet as different as Batman may seem from us on the outside, we actually have a lot in common. And as we read in Paul Asay’s book God on the Streets of Gotham, the Dark Knight has some lessons he can teach us—about life, faith and what it means to be a hero.

He’s Human

Paul Asay writes:

For a superhero, Batman’s kinda wimpy (though I wouldn’t say that to his face). After all, he doesn’t lift cars or turn green or fly. Granted, he’s the toughest multi-billionaire out there (sorry, Tony Stark), but would he stand a chance against a fully suited-up Iron Man if the two tangled? Not likely. What truly makes Batman different is his call—his desire to set aside his own wants and needs to help the good people of Gotham City. In many ways, he resembles many of the heroes we read about in the Bible—normal folks who were called by God for a special purpose. There was nothing superhuman about David or Daniel or Peter. But because they were sincere about following God, they wound up doing some pretty extraordinary things.

He Overcame Tragedy

Bruce Wayne is handsome, powerful and has more money than the New York Yankees. To the outside world, it looks like the guy has it all. But in reality, Bruce hides a longstanding pain: His parents were killed when he was just a boy, and no amount of money could ever heal that particular wound. He has, like we have, suffered heartache and tragedy. Maybe he, like we, wondered how God could let such a horrible thing happen. But instead of allowing this loss to destroy him, Bruce Wayne used that pain to help others. When that little boy lost his parents that terrible night, a bit of Batman was born. We can follow Batman’s lead in this: While no power on earth can fully heal our greatest pains, God—and we—can sometimes use them for good.

He Struggles With Sin

Batman’s no Boy Scout. While some superheroes seem to be as perfect morally as they are physically, the Dark Knight is different. He deals with rage. He bends laws to their breaking point. In the graphic novel Batman: Hush, Batman says of Clark Kent, Superman’s alter-ego, “Deep down, Clark’s essentially a good person … and deep down, I’m not.” As we learn from Asay in God on the Streets of Gotham, many of Batman’s most durable enemies are reflections of the hero’s conflicted soul. Which, in a way, makes him just like us. We too struggle with our own temptations and try to rein in our own unhealthy desires. Being a hero doesn’t mean you live without sin. It just means that, with God’s help, you find ways to overcome it.

He Has His Doubts

For more than 70 years, the Joker has been Batman’s most notorious foe. Why? Because Joker has a way of digging at Batman’s deepest fear: That everything Batman is and what he stands for are meaningless. See, Joker believes the universe itself is one big cosmic prank, and for anyone to believe in goodness or justice is just plain crazy. “See, I’m not a monster,” Joker tells Batman in Christopher Nolan’s movie The Dark Knight. “I’m just ahead of the curve.” Anyone who claims to have faith has likely had these same doubts at times. We wonder whether God’s really out there, whether there’s any meaning to life or purpose in the universe. These are not easy questions to answer. But we, like Batman, find a way to push past them and soldier on.

He Relies on Friends

While Batman sometimes seems like the ultimate loner—hiding behind his cowl and slinking through the shadows—that’s not really true. From nearly the very beginning, Batman’s had his friends as well as his foes. Even in Nolan’s gritty Dark Knight movie trilogy (coming to an end with this year’s The Dark Knight Rises), Batman gets a little help from his friends: Commissioner Gordon, Lucius Fox and Alfred, his ever-faithful man-servant. These people don’t necessarily know everything about Batman. They don’t always agree with him. But they’re always there to stitch him up, give him a much needed antidote and, occasionally, offer a piece of their minds. We should look for friends like these in our own lives—people who support us when we need it, even as they tell us sometimes hard truths and encourage us to be better. It’s through the help of others that we change and grow.

He Follows a Code

Batman, for all his law-abiding acumen, shirks certain rules. He rarely follows the speed limit, for example. He’s been known to engage in assault and battery. And it’s doubtful he ever got a permit for most of the stuff in his utility belt. But in many ways, Batman follows an internal code of conduct as rigid as any of Gotham’s municipal ordinances: He never uses a gun (though it’d make things easier). He never kills anyone (even if it would seem they deserve it). And he always protects those who need protecting—even at the risk of his own life. How much do we follow our own codes and calling? Do we sometimes vow to do one thing, and then find ourselves doing something else? Do we break the promises we’ve made to ourselves or God if they become inconvenient? To follow a code means to embrace it with all of our being—even when our being wants to do something else.

He Chooses His Own Path

It’d be easy to wonder if Bruce Wayne’s path was predetermined—whether the pain in his life pushed him into his rather unusual pastime. Is it possible that Batman’s just a product of his own traumas and tragedies, his predilections and psychoses? In God on the Streets of Gotham, author Paul Asay acknowledges that the Dark Knight is partly driven what happened in his past. But at the same time, Batman chooses his way—just as we all do. He decides to follow his own special calling—just as we call can. Bruce Wayne’s suffering could’ve turned him into the self-absorbed playboy, a self-pitying basketcase or a self-serving villain. But it didn’t. Bruce Wayne chose to be a hero instead. And that choice is open to all of us.

Click here for more about Paul Asay and his book or check it out on Amazon.