Stage 4 “I have changed the world”: realizing our true power to affect change

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“Far better to live your own path imperfectly than to live another’s perfectly.”
From the Hindu scriptures of the Bhagavad Gita: 3:35 and 18:47



In The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce is awakened out of his dark night by Selina Kyle, a “cat burglar.”  She helps him find the joy of living life again while also challenging him to see the world from a very different perspective than his own. 

Selina Kyle: There is a storm coming Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits you’re all gonna wonder how you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.
Bruce Wayne: You sound like you’re looking forward to it.
Selina: I’m adaptable.



And Bruce realizes he must adapt too.  If he and Gotham are to survive, they all must be able to adapt.

Another conversation with Commissioner Gordon helps to shake Bruce awake again. Gordon is lying in a hospital bed and says:
Jim Gordon: We were in this together, and then you were gone.  Now this evil . . . rises.  The Batman has to come back.
Bruce Wayne: What if he doesn’t exist any more?
Gordon:  He must . . . he must . . .



Bruce Wayne created Batman because he needed to.  Now, having gone through the dark night of the soul, he no longer needs Batman.  Now, others need Batman.  Will Bruce be Batman for them?  Is he willing to give up his own needs to assume the needs of others?  At one point, Selina tries to convince Bruce that he has already given enough:
Selina: You don’t owe these people any more!  You’ve given them everything!
Batman: Not everything.  Not yet. 



As Christian Bale says in the production notes for The Dark Knight Rises, "“In ‘Batman Begins,’ you

see the tragedy and the pain that motivates this angry young man, who feels useless and is searching for a path—who wants to find out who he is and what he can become.  Then in ‘The Dark Knight,’ he’s discovered that path. He is useful; he is doing what he imagines is the best thing for him to be doing in his life. Now, we are eight years on and he has lost the one thing that gave him a purpose…until he is forced to deal with a newthreat to the city and to himself.”



 

In the end, the question for us all to face is, “Am I willing to die for this?”  For some that might mean a physical death for a cause.  But for most of us the question has more to do with a death of our ego.  Am I willing to let my previous hopes or expectations (usually self-centered) die in order that I might help others live?



Our answer to this question has profound implications for every aspect of our life:
• How will I invest my time?
• How, and on whom, will I spend my money?
• Am I in this to make myself look good and feel better?  Or do those things not matter so much anymore?
• What really is the most important thing for me?
• What responsibility do I feel to God for all I have been given and how will I respond to that?



The greatest of our heroes often die for the cause in the end.  They willingly give their life so that we might have a better life.  Jesus.  Gandhi.  King.  Romero. 



And Batman.  At the end of The Dark Knight Rises, Batman hooks onto an atomic bomb and flies out over the ocean with it, sparing Gotham.  Much debate has happened since the release of the film about what happens next.  In the moment of the film, it appears that Batman dies in the explosion, sacrificing himself to save everyone in Gotham.  Many have pointed out that given the few seconds left on the bomb the last time we see Batman, there is no way he could have escaped it.  And yet, . . .



At the very end of the film Alfred is sitting at a café.  He looks up and across the way sees Bruce and Selina, happily enjoying their meal.  Batman may have died, but somehow Bruce is resurrected.  His sacrifice was not in vain, not even for himself.  And this is the greatest wisdom every spiritual master has to teach us:



It is by suffering that we are made free.  It is in dying that we are born to new life.



This is counterintuitive to nearly every other message about success and happiness we ever receive.  The conventional message of the world is that it is only through the accumulation of power, influence, success, comfort, and material possessions (and through the avoidance of weakness, vulnerability, failure, pain, and poverty) that we will find happiness.  The spiritual life leads us to a very different conclusion however.  The fourth stage of the spiritual life reveals to us that it is in weakness we find our true strength.  It is in vulnerability that we find real security.  It is in failure that we realize the truest of success.  It is in pain that we come to appreciate pleasure.  It is in poverty that we gain the whole world.



Jesus called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”   Mark 8:34-36



Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, writes some challenging words along these lines in his book Being Peace.  He writes that following the Vietnam war, many people were fleeing Vietnam in boats.  Many of these people were being attacked by pirates.  One day he received a letter that told the story of a 12 year old girl who had been raped by one of these pirates.  After being raped,

she jumped into the ocean and drowned herself.  When you first learn of something like that, you get angry at the pirate.  You naturally take the side of the girl.  As you look more deeply you will see it differently.  If you take the side of the little girl, then it is easy.  You only have to take a gun and shoot the pirate.  But we can’t do that.  In my meditation, I saw that if I had been born in the village of the pirate and raised in the same conditions as he was, I would now be the pirate.” Being Peace, p.65-66.



At the end of The Dark Knight Rises, Batman is finally able to confront Miranda Tate and Bane and ask them why they are doing this.  Why do they want to destroy Gotham?  Their response is a poignant one and demonstrates the kind of honesty offered by too few stories.  Miranda/Talia is doing this out of a sense of duty to her father, Ducard/Ra’s al Ghul, and his mission.  In that sense, her life is not much different at all from Bruce’s.  They are both driven to accomplish the vision for Gotham that their fathers had each held.  The only difference is that one father sought to redeem Gotham while the other sought to destroy it.

Bane is doing this because he loves Miranda, having been her protector since she was a little girl.  Both Bane and Miranda were born in the world’s worst prison.  They were “born in darkness” as Bane puts it at one point.  But even in that darkest of places, he felt love for her and she loved him in return.  As Miranda, retells this story Bane does a completely unexpected thing.  He cries. 

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It is at this moment that we realize that behind the easy label of “evil” we place so easily on our enemies, there is a certain kind of logic (however faulted it may be) that strangely enough can be based in love.  Perhaps it is because of this awareness that Batman refuses to kill people.  When Batman is about to be killed by Bane, Selina comes from out of nowhere and blows Bane away with the guns of the Batpod.  Her explanation to Batman is, “About the whole no guns thing . . . Turns out I’m not as committed to it as you are.”  When that happened, in the theatre I was in, people cheered.  But they were missing the point. 

Selina could still see the world in black and white while Bruce now only see the many, many shades of grey.  Both viewpoints have their strengths and their weaknesses.  But at some point, refusing to acknowledge the shades of grey means refusing to grow as a human being.



And if you are to make it to Stage 4, then you must learn to see and live with the grey.



The Tao Te Ching, another deep spiritual resource, has this to offer:

Weapons are the tools of violence;
all decent men detest them.

Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.
Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?
Hs enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
He doesn’t wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory. 
  from Chapter 31



The surest, and most tragic, way to know this truth is to have watched someone you love die from a gun’s bullet, as Bruce had.  That is why he is against killing and the use of guns.  The hatred he felt for his parent’s killer at one point in his life led him to wanting to kill in retaliation.  Much of the story of Batman is his struggle with realizing that this is not the way.  His search for another way led him to become Batman . . . and eventually led him to let Batman go.



In the end of The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce is resurrected, either literally or figuratively depending on your interpretation of events.  In either case, the truth of his story, and the story of each one of us, is encapsulated in the last 10 minutes of that film:



Out of death - willing, compassionate, self-sacrificial death – comes new life.  There is nothing evil that can happen out of which God cannot make good grow.



This is of course a sad truth.  But it is also the most joyful of all truths.  Because once we come to know this truth at the core of our being, we realize we have nothing to fear. 

 

This is the place we all seek to find.  This is the destination we all wish to reach.  But it is a destination that is mostly stumbled upon along the way, not usually reached completely. 



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

Into everyone’s life drops a bomb.  The reverberations of that impact are felt our whole lives long. 
• We are blessed when we have people who help us pick up the pieces and rebuild our life. 
• We are blessed when we find a way to turn our scars into healing for others. 
• We are blessed when we realize the limits of our own power. 
• We are blessed when we have a chance to be the one who absorbs the bombs so that others may more fully live.



This is the four-fold path of the spiritual life.  It leads to death, which in the end is the only valiant act there is.  On the night before Jesus laid down his life for his friends, he said to them, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friend.”  (John 15:12-13).  In what way is God calling you to lay down your life for a friend, not physically but spiritually?  In what way might you be called to sacrifice your own wants and even needs for the good of others?  Can you trust that this is worth the cost?  Is the price of peace one you are willing to pay?

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It is not an easy way to live.  There are many other more appealing and initially gratifying paths to take.  But in the end, I can attest, that true riches can only come from giving things away.  Sometimes when I introduce myself to other people, I say, “Hi, I’m Rich.” and they chuckle.  Some even are so bold to ask me for a loan if I’m so rich!  But it’s an opportunity to explain that I am rich in many, many things.  I am rich in family.  I am rich in friend.  I am rich in love.  And these kinds of riches are worth more than a billionaire playboy’s treasure.



Thanks to Batman, and our many other heroes, for teaching us this way to live.



Thanks be to God,

Rev. Rich Nelson



One final postscript



Discuss: In what ways do you feel called to lay down your life for your friends?​