I'm sorry, but I'm going to stick my neck out even further.
As many of you may know, I was raised in a religious home. All my relatives except my parents believed that every word in the Bible was true, and everything God had ever done was perfectly good.
My problem was that, after I had begun reading the Bible, I couldn't agree that everything God had done according to the Bible was perfectly good. In Samuel 15:3, God's prophet Samuel says this to Saul, King of Israel:
3Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and *** .
Spare them not. Slay them all, man and woman, infant and suckling. Suckling - a small baby still feeding from his mother's breasts. God spoke through his prophet Samuel and ordered King Saul to do this? And I was supposed to think that God was
good for giving Saul this command?
I got the chance to ask two pastors what they thought about God's command to Saul here. Was God really good if he ordered Saul to kill all those little babies?
"But what would have happened to those babies if they hadn't been killed?" one pastor replied.
"What?" I asked, totally confused.
"Well, you had no objections to the idea that Saul was ordered to kill the adults of Amalek. What would have happened to the little babies if they had been left alive when all the adults lay dying around them? Surely you can see that God was merciful when he ordered the babies to be killed too?"
There are two ways to interpret the answer that the pastors gave me. One possibility is that they honestly thought that genocide was acceptable and good if God ordered you to do it, because God is infinitely good, and therefore whatever he commands you to do is perfectly good, too. Therefore genocide, even today, is a good thing if God orders you to do it. Admittedly I don't think it is at all likely that the pastors really believed that. A much more probable interpretation is that the pastors believed that everything God is reported to have done according to the Bible is good, and therefore, ordering Saul to commit genocide around 1,000 B.C. was good. But the pastors almost certainly believe that God has changed the rules since then, so that he would never order anyone to commit genocide anymore, and therefore genocide today is against God's will, and therefore it is bad.
Still, the fact that the pastors would condone God for ordering genocide three thousand years ago was something that deeply, deeply upset me. Bottom line, it is my horror at this impossible moral relativism that motivates me when I keep insisting that a person shouldn't be forgiven for doing bad things just because that person himself is defined as good. I would go so far as to say that you are what you do. And because Superman to me has always been somewhat like "God" - that is, he is superhumanly powerful and he is, supposedly at least, very benevolent - I frankly want to take him to task when he does something which is unacceptable to me. I want to remind him who he is supposed to be, or at least, who
I think he should be! I don't want to be someone who condones him whatever he does, the way those pastors condoned genocide if it was ordered by God! After all, if Superman doesn't hold himself to the highest standards, he could easily turn into a superhumanly powerful tyrant.
Does that mean that Superman/Clark Kent can never be forgiven for doing a bad thing? Of course not. Even though I am not a religious person, I am well aware that most religions talk about mercy and forgiveness. It would be too hard to live if we could never be forgiven for our trespasses, and the forgiveness must extend to the most powerful people as well, like Superman. And I absolutely agree with Arawn that Superman has to be enormously self-disciplined, because ultimately no one but himself can discipline him and stop him from doing bad things. At the same time he is expected to interfere in human affairs and make things better, without putting a foot wrong. The pressure he would be living under would be enormous. Yes indeed, we should cut him some slack when he stumbles and strays, but when he does so, I personally can never deny the fact that he
has stumbled and strayed.
Consider the episode "And the Answer Is", where Superman froze Lois and risked her life in order to get his parents back. What if he hadn't managed to bring her back? Would that have made him guilty of her death? Yes, in my opinion, it would have. If someone else had caused the death of someone by carrying out a highly risky, unathorized expreiment, would they have been punished by the law? Probably. Should Superman, therefore, have been held legally accountable if he had caused Lois Lane's death by freezing her? Yes, I think he should have. Is it all right if a writer says that Clark will miss Lois bitterly for the rest of his life, and that is the only punishment he needs? Yes, of course! Such a story doesn't break any rules of these boards. But is it all right if I post FDK saying that Superman caused the death of Lois Lane, and he should be answerable to the same laws as anybody else? I hope it is.
Ann
