Stage 3: “I can’t change the world”: experiencing frustration at our own limitations



In the previous scene mentioned from The Dark Knight there is an important conversation between Bruce Wayne and Alfred.  Examining Bruce’s scars, Alfred warns him,
Alfred: “Know your limits.” 
Bruce: “Batman has no limits.”
Alfred: “But you do.”

 

 

​

Much of this movie is centered around Bruce coming to know his limits.  He realizes that in many ways Batman really is limited.  The mask serves an important role, but ultimately the salvation of Gotham should depend on a white knight, not a dark one.  He sees in Harvey Dent, Gotham’s new District Attorney, the promise of such a white knight.  Here is someone who can confront evil seemingly without the aid of a mask.

Throughout the movie, Batman and Dent work in tandem to dismantle the system of organized crime that has ruled Gotham for years.  Bruce sees that Batman has a role to play, but that he cannot singlehandedly rid Gotham of evil.  It takes more than Harvey Dent too.  It takes Commissioner Gordon, and Rachel Dawes, and the money and influence of the wealthy; and in a very revealing scene with two boats that the Joker says are rigged with bombs, one boat of regular citizens and one boat of prisoners, each must decide if they are willing to kill the people in the other boat to save themselves.  Neither boat pushes the button.  We find that it takes the moral fortitude of the common people - and even criminals! - to make Gotham what it should be.



In a sense, Batman’s greatest strength is his ability to give hope and courage to the rest of us.



This has been the case with the greatest of people in all times and places.  Mahatma Gandhi inspired the people of India to stand up for their rights in the face of imperial forces.  Martin Luther King inspired the people of America to live into their higher selves.  Mother Theresa inspired others to care for people everyone else had left for dead.  Chen Guangcheng inspires the people of China to stand up for their human dignity.  Aung San Suu Kyi inspires the people of Burma to work towards democracy.  One remarkable common thread throughout all of these people is that they resist evil not with evil but with good, and specifically non-violent good.



Batman, however, is a violent figure.  He refuses to kill.  He refuses to use guns.  But he’s not above cracking a few heads.  So he is at his most powerful when he inspires others to resist evil too, not as vigilante wannabes, but as good people making good choices.



The most significant threat to the power of this worldview is a person who has no regard whatsoever for the value of human life.  As Alfred says, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

​

The Joker is one of these men.  And although Batman is able to overcome the Joker with physical force, he is not able to stop every evil thing the Joker would do.  In the end, the Joker succeeds in corrupting Gotham’s greatest hope, Harvey Dent, and killing Bruce’s greatest love, Rachel Dawes.  Has he also killed Batman’s spirit?

Having lost both of these lights in his life, Bruce/Batman does the only thing he is able to do to keep hope alive: he takes the blame for Harvey’s crimes in order to preserve Harvey’s power as a symbol of hope, if not hope itself.  The movie ends with Batman riding off into the darkness a hunted and haunted man.

This plunges Bruce into what, in Christian mysticism, is known as the dark night of the soul. Others might simply call it severe depression, but the dark night goes beyond depression to naming the terror of a loss of the sense of the presence of God while on the path of seeking unity with God. 



The idea of the dark night of the soul comes from a poem called The Dark Night written by St. John of the Cross, a 16th century Spanish mystic and priest while he was imprisoned by his own fellow monastic brothers.  His poem begins,

One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
- ah, the sheer grace! -
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.

In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
- ah, the sheer grace! -
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.

On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.

This guided me
more surely than the light of noon . . .



In the dark knight, “the individual is stripped (in the dark night of the senses) of the spiritual ecstasy associated with acts of virtue.” Wikipedia: The Dark Night of the Soul.  We find at the beginning of The Dark Knight Rises, that Bruce has been entrapped within the dark night for eight years.  Having lost all passion for being Batman, he has imprisoned himself within the rebuilt walls of his own home.  He has given up being Batman, thinking that Batman is no longer needed and secretly questioning the wisdom of ever becoming Batman in the first place.



Many people hit this point further into their adult life.  We oftentimes call it a mid-life crisis.  Call it what you will, there comes a time when we are faced with the hard consequences of the limitations of our own power to affect the change we wish to see in the world. It is at times such as these that we begin to question the wisdom of ever choosing to care in the first place, of ever choosing to become who we had worked so hard to be.



The dark night rightly feels like the end of something.  It is not, however, the end of life, but rather the end of life as we knew it.  It is a second loss of innocence: this time not a loss of innocence of the world, but a loss of our innocence of ourselves.  We are not so valiant as we once imagined ourselves to be and we can begin to hate ourselves for it.  We can even begin to hate God for it, wondering why God ever tricked us into fighting the good fight when it would end in such spectacular defeat. 



As Harvey Dent put it, “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”  Dent lived just that long, and now Bruce has too. 























​



 

In Islam, the prophet Muhammad addresses people who have fallen into this state of separation from God, saying in the Qur’an:

By the morning hours and by the night when it is stillest, thy Lord hath not forsaken thee nor doth He hate thee; and verily the latter portion will be better for thee than the former, and verily thy Lord will give unto thee so that thou wilt be content. Did He not find thee an orphan and protect (thee)? Did He not find thee wandering and direct (thee)? Did He not find thee destitute and enrich (thee)? Therefore the orphan oppress not; therefore the beggar drive not away; therefore of the bounty of thy Lord be thy discourse.   Sura 93



God has found Bruce an orphan before and protected him.  God is doing so again though, as is the case with the dark night, it does not feel like it.  But in this stage the absence of the feeling of God’s presence leads to a deeper desire to find it.  The purpose of being the Batman is being transformed for Bruce from a personal vendetta against the initial loss of innocence into a unitive transformation of the whole of society.  As actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt said, The Dark Knight Rises is intended to tell the story not of one particular person but of the whole city. (Interview on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.)



Stage 3: experiencing our own limitation, is such a difficult stage that most people deny it at its onset.  They will do any number of things to attempt to recapture some sense of their “glory days.”  People who do not have the will to sit through this stage may even spend the rest of their lives fighting it.  But for those who are willing to sit through it, for those who are willing to face the difficult truth of their own limitations and mortality, it has the ability to transform them and their worldview beyond anything possible before.  Author Richard Rohr has written a profound book on this transition called, of all things, Falling Upward.  If I would recommend any one book on the spiritual journey that would bring additional insight into the underlying mythos of the hero and the self, it would be this one.  The front flap of the book summarizes his message well:

"In the first half of life, we are naturally and rightly preoccupied with establishing our identity – climbing, achieving, and performing.  But those concerns will not serve us as we grow older and begin to embark on a further journey, one that involves challenges, mistakes, loss of control, broader horizons, and necessary suffering that actually shocks us out of our prior comfort zone.  Eventually, we need to see ourselves in a different and more life-giving way.  This message of 'falling down' – that is in fact moving upward – is the most resisted and counterintuitive of messages in the world’s religions, including and most especially Christianity.​"



“Why do we fall, Bruce?  So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”



If you are sitting through your own dark night, take heart.  This stage is painful.  Like Bruce Wayne at the beginning of The Dark Knight Rises, you will walk with a limp.  But ultimately it is that limp that holds within it the promise of your own strength.  It does not make logical sense at the outset.  But if you allow it to sit with you it can transform you and show you your true power.



In the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible we meet a man named Jacob who has made some serious mistakes in his life, the greatest of which was tricking his dying father into giving him the blessing that rightly belonged to his older brother.  After many years of being a lost soul in a foreign land, Jacob decides to return to his homeland and face his brother again.  On the way home, Jacob has a fateful night when he wrestles with an unknown being he cannot see.  Some interpret this being as another man, or an angel or even God.  Jacob doesn’t know.  Maybe what he wrestled with all night was himself.  Whatever it is he prevails and survives his dark night.  He is not overcome.

He walks away at daybreak with four new gifts:
1. A real blessing, not one that he stole from his father.
2. A limp, a battle wound from his struggle.
3. A sense that he had met God in his struggle.
4. A new name, Israel, which means “one who struggled with God.”  He would go on to be the father of the people of Israel who would have their own struggles.
Read Jacob’s story, found in Genesis 32



Jacob becomes Israel and Israel becomes the name for us all.  We are a people who struggled but were not overcome. 



Walking out of our dark night leads us into . . . Stage 4: realizing our true power to affect change.



Discuss: What personal limitations are frustrating to you?​