Saturday 10 December 2005

Pic of the day: Fictional character Winterlord with his trusty sidekick, Princess Floe. Wouldn't it be exciting if you could be sidekick to a superhero in real life? Someone who could, you know, defeat evil and raise the dead and stuff like that?

Jesus' sidekicks

OK, this is really mixed up, but only I could mix up things like these...

Lately I have remembered a song that was used by "Smith's Friends", the Christian mystics who introduced me to a personal life with God. Actually the song was not much used even then; it is kind of confrontational... the verse that I particularly remember now basically says "We don't just look to Jesus, like unfaithful hypocrites have as their habit. No, we are looking toward the army of the enemies, and that's where we expect our victory."

This expectation may look overly optimistic, considering that they also claim to battle not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual powers and principalities. But of course the secret ingredient is who they are fighting alongside with.

***

In the online multiplayer game City of Heroes, there is a feature called sidekicking. As long as the sidekick stays close to his mentor, he is fighting on the level just below that mentor. So it doesn't matter all that much what your original fighting level is: It is the level of the mentor that is important. As long as you stay close, that is.

I think that's pretty much how these Christians feel. "It doesn't matter that the enemies used to use me as a doormat, because now I am Jesus' sidekick and he is much stronger than them. It doesn't matter that I am weak and inexperienced, I am not fighting at my own level anymore. As long as I stay close to Jesus and don't do anything stupid on my own, there is no doubt about the victory."

Of course, whether in City of Heroes or in the War against Sin, newbies are likely to do stupid things and run off on their own, and suffer embarrassing defeat. Occasionally this topic would come up among "Smith's Friends" too, but it wasn't something one talked much about. Then again, there must be hundreds of congregations in which one talks very little about victory and a whole lot about defeat, so I guess those who wanted could go over there and listen.

I've met various shades of Christians in my lifetime, but very few who considered themselves Jesus' sidekicks. It certainly brings excitement into one's life.