I’m Confused Again
I remember as a young boy being confused by one television show that I watched fairly regularly. I loved the show that began with “faster than a speeding bullet – more powerful than a locomotive – able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” It was that last part that confused me.
You see, I grew up just outside of the small town of Metropolis, Illinois. The tallest building there was maybe four or five stories tall. I couldn’t figure out where all those tall buildings were in the Metropolis I saw on my parents’ black and white television.
I hope you know that I was being more than a little facetious as I typed those words. Even at a young age, most of us recognize the difference between fictional characters and real people. However, that didn’t keep me from using something I could find laying around our house as a “cape” and pretending to be Superman! Probably the closest I ever came to emulating the guy I saw on television and read about in comic books was jumping off of our back porch which was only a couple of feet off the ground. (That was back in the dark ages when children actually had imaginations and weren’t glued to electronic devices.)
I remember hearing about an incident in which fiction and reality kind of collided. About a year or so after Superman went off of the air, George Reeves, the actor who portrayed him, died of a gunshot wound. While it was reported at the time that Mr. Reeves took his own life, I have learned since then that there are conflicting reports about that. (Did you know that George Reeves also had a minor part in Gone With the Wind?)
Regardless of the circumstances of his death, I remember being confused then. I was about eleven years old when this occurred. I had enough of the understanding of the difference between fiction and reality to know that bullets would not bounce off of the chest of the actor who played Superman. At the same time, I wondered how a person who was so famous could be so despondent as to take his own life (or put himself into a situation in which somebody else would want him dead).
To say that I haven’t kept up with “the adventures of Superman” over the years would be a huge understatement. I’ve been a lot more involved in “real life” than comic books, movies, etc.
Something caught my attention recently, though, that has me confused all over again. While my confusion has to do with another fictional character, that fictional character has caused me to do some serious thinking about reality.
I’ve recently learned about Jon Kent. According to what I’ve read and heard, there have been some changes in “the Superman world” in the past fifty years or so. Apparently, somewhere along the line, Clark Kent and Lois Lane married and had a son – Jon Kent. It seems (though I could be wrong) that Jon also has superpowers like his dad (Clark Kent – Superman). I’m not sure how all of this is supposed to work since his mother apparently does not have super powers, but we are talking about fiction after all.
According to what I’m reading/hearing, it is now going to be revealed that Jon Kent has a love interest. Unlike his father who also had a love interest, Jon’s love interest is not a woman, but another man.
I’m confused again. I’m confused about a lot of things.
I’m confused about how we got from the world of my youth to the world in which my grandchildren are growing up. I’m confused about why anybody would even want to go from that world to our present world. I’m confused about how we’ve gone from admiring a fictional character who stood for “truth, justice, and the American way” to admiring real people with little or no character and who fight for situation ethics and political correctness while they demean, disrespect, and attempt to destroy the people, institutions, and moral fiber that made our nation the envy of the world.
In part because I’ve been accused of equating being a citizen of God’s kingdom and being a citizen of The United States, I think I need to make something clear. Along with enough maturity to recognize the difference between fiction and reality, I believe that I also have enough maturity to know the difference between being a Christian and being an American. Kneeling to pray and standing for our national anthem are not the same thing.
If I know the difference between fiction and reality as well as the difference between being a Christian and an American, why am I spending so much time on this? A big part of the answer to that has to do less with the fact that I’m confused and more to do with the fact that I’m concerned.
The reason for that concern goes all the way back to that chubby little boy running around with a “make believe cape” pretending to be Superman. While I knew that I had no super powers and that Metropolis, Illinois was not the “Metropolis” I saw on the television, I guess I thought that it was pretty cool to pretend to be what I saw on television and read about in comic books.
I’m concerned that there may be another young person or a bunch of people of varying ages who might think that what Jon Kent is doing is cool and who might decide to emulate that. I’m concerned that I’m going to be even more confused as our society increasingly ceases to be what it once was.
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AUTHOR: Jim Faughn
