Of Comic Books, Terrorists and Inflight Entertainment

On my return flight from Singapore to Perth a month back I brought into the cabin a Captain America graphic novel, which I wanted to read on the plane. Unfortunately I had a great difficulty when it came to opening the plastic wrapping around the book because Borders, the store where I had bought it from, had obviously made sure that the wrapping could not be ripped open easily. It was bound with layers of thick plastic covering. Obviously, post-9/11 they don't allow knives in cabin baggages, so I had to call for help. I asked the stewardess if I could borrow a knife. She was rather confused about what to do and called somebody else, who ended up opening the wrapping for me.

It would have been an ordinary event if not for the irony that it bears. The reason that I could not borrow a knife was because knives were the weapon of choice of the September 11 terrorists. Ironically, the very Captain America book that I asked them to unwrap deals with how Cap deals with terrorism post September 11. In fact, the opening scene has him in civvies helping rescue workers at Ground Zero. How apt that the impact of that infamous event was felt right when I was going to open the comic book that deals with that very tragedy.

But that was not the end of my reflection that night (it was a five-hour flight). For my inflight entertainment I chose channel-2, featuring perhaps one of the very few fully subtitled films that ever made it to the first two channels of Singapore Airlines' (God bless their souls) Krisworld movies. The film, of course, was The Passion of the Christ. If the thing with the Captain America TPB was a picture of what the world looks like today, then this movie, I believe, is a picture of the answer. In a world where the endless cycle of bloody violence seems to never end, the only solution is Grace. The Passion portrays the ultimate expression of this Grace. It shows how God, by way of a very expensive sacrifice, chose to end the war between humanity and Himself.

Perhaps we can do very well to learn from this. Perhaps we can even learn to end the war on terror not with an uncompromising vengeance for every pain that our human enemies have caused us, for which they will in turn get their revenge on us, but with Grace. How can this practically be done? I am sure there are many people out there who think the idea that we should turn the other cheek to people who killed thousands of innocent people for a sick, twisted ideology is nothing but an empty, naive (and probably even dangerous) idealism in itself, which will probably only end up with more innocent deaths. I am not saying that it will not. Grace is an expensive affair. After all, it cost God the life of His Son (John 3:16). And I'm not saying that our enemies will not step on our battered bodies after we make such a costly sacrifice. Yet if God was willing to risk it all for our sakes, are we?

But I will not lie to you. Am I prepared to make such a costly sacrifice myself? Am I prepared to lose my family, my friends and even my life for the sake of Grace? I can't say that I am at this moment, but I am willing to at least explore the idea. After all, if Martin Luther King, Gandhi and -of course- Jesus Christ are to be believed, it was an idea that has been proven to have changed the world over and over again for two thousand years.