God Could Have Given Christians Cool Iron Suits

I want to be invulnerable.

Like Iron Man. I saw that flick this week-end (because I have a son) and while I enjoy the comic book hero genre, what I really liked was the iron suit (which is really a gold-titanium alloy).

Tony Stark, genius and adult orphan owner of Stark industries is captured by terrorists and locked in a lab inside a cave. He’s supposed to be assembling a weapon of mass destruction for use by the enemy BUT instead, in amazingly primitive conditions, he invents an iron suit that makes him invulnerable to any attack.

I liked that suit. I’d invest in a few.

First, I’d get one for each of my kids. It would make them easy to spot in a crowd, keep them safe in traffic jams (the suit gives the wearer the ability to fly) and protect them from bad guys and evil insurgents (should that ever become a problem in Hope Valley).

Then, I’d have my husband fitted for one. It’s a jungle out there and every man trying to support a family and live for Christ has to be a superhero these days. So cool if he could fight crime, too! I’ll bet that’s excellent stress relief.

I’d make each of my parents wear one especially when my dad is fighting fires and when my mother is praying (both spend time on the front lines of some battle).

And, of course, I’d want one, too. People are mean and vulnerability as a lifestyle leaves a lot to be desired.

It occurred to me today that God could have provided Christians with cool iron suits. I mean, God’s a better inventor than Tony Stark, for sure, and I’m thinking it would have all kinds of advantages.

First, obviously, Christians would be remarkably easy to identify ‘cause we would be the ones in amazingly cool, shiny flying suits that shoot fire at will. (And wouldn’t that be a nifty effect for punctuating evangelistic conversations?!).

Then, I think people would be a lot nicer to us because we would be so much bigger and glossier and able to crush them with our fists (I mean, protect them, protect them with our fists, of course).

And, people would certainly listen to us more if we had just saved them from extreme danger or flown in from the sky like rocket men or fought off gangs with the flick of our wrists. Right? Certainly, you can see the upside of this idea, too. Invulnerability would definitely have been the way I would have gone if I were God.

But Noooooooooo, does He give us the excellent, cool, invulnerable iron man suits (which are actually a gold-titanium alloy)? No. The Creator of all things with an infinite imagination comes up with the idea that we should be vulnerable – in a gritty, dark, dangerous world full of mean, insensitive, messy people He thinks we should be as vulnerable as, well, as babes in a manger.

He’s so serious about this that if we HAVE managed to develop some protection – like, say, we harden our hearts to the texture of stone – well, He trades our hearts of stone for hearts of flesh. It’s like He’s obsessed with this whole vulnerable human concept. So that rather than face a hardened, dangerous, evil world with protective armor, God’s church stands equipped with fleshy, bleeding, weeping, open hearts.

What’s up with that?

And then, the God of the Universe does something crazy like puts Himself inside one of these vulnerable human suits and lives life right along beside us – vulnerable, open, weeping, bleeding and real. Hard to argue with a God who’s THAT committed to a concept.

So, vulnerability it is.

I still like the suit.