Thoughts on Doctor Strange 2: The World Through a Keyhole

The Ancient One:     You’re a man looking at the world through a keyhole, and you’ve spent your whole life trying to widen that keyhole, to see more, to know more, and now, on hearing that it can be widened, in ways you can’t imagine, you reject the possibility.

Dr Strange:                No, I reject it because I do not believe in fairy tales about chakras or energy or the power of belief. There is no such thing as spirit. We are made of matter and nothing more. We’re just another tiny, momentary speck within an indifferent universe.

Doctor Strange (2016)

 

Not an awful lot visible through this keyhole, is there?

Let’s play a game. You have, I’m assuming, a rough idea of the way my blog tends to work. I’ve given you an opening quotation. Now you try to guess where I’m going with the rest of this post. I’m not trying to catch you out; mainly I’m curious as to the extent to which your brain works the way mine does.

To pick up the story from where we left it last post, Dr Stephen Strange’s desperate quest to reverse the damage to his hands ends up with him spending his last dollar on a one-way ticket to Kathmandu, and eventually tracking down the place of healing he was tipped off about. There he meets a woman known as the Ancient One, who offers him a cup of tea and an insight into the way she thinks the world works. The lines quoted above constitute part of that encounter,¹ and I have to admit that when I heard them, they did a very effective job of pushing certain buttons in my brain. Stephen’s materialism, his refusal to acknowledge the possibility of anything existing beyond the physical, scientifically-demonstrable realm, his insistence that the universe must operate according to blind, purposeless happenstance – these ideas are familiar territory for anyone who’s ever entertained even a mild interest in Christian apologetics. Even the use of the term ‘fairy tales’ felt reminiscent of the kinds of accusations that seem to be often levelled at a Christian worldview: replace the subject-matter of such fairy tales as Dr Strange gives it with something a bit more Jesus-y, and this chunk of scripting wouldn’t sound out of place in, I don’t know, God’s Not Dead or something.² You see the buttons, right?

And then the Ancient One shoves Stephen’s ‘astral form’ out of his ‘physical form’, and introduces him to mirror realities and a vast compendium of mind-boggling alternative universes, and altogether indisputably proves to him that there really is far more out there than an indifferent material realm. And of course I’m there internally cheering something along the lines of, “That showed him!” Dr Strange denied the existence of a spiritual reality, and his presumptions were shattered to dust before his eyes. He was arrogant enough to limit his understanding of the cosmos merely to things he was personally able to grasp, and he was soundly taken down a peg. He thought he was so clever, and he was wrong. Yes, it’s only a story, and yes, the spiritual reality I believe in doesn’t much resemble the mystical multiverse of the MCU, but I still felt pleasingly vindicated. You were wrong, Stephen Strange. Your worldview has joined battle and been thoroughly trounced. So there.

Clearly, the Christian thing to do in these kinds of situations is to sit there feeling smug for having been clever enough to figure out that there really is a supernatural reality beyond the material realm – unlike narrow-minded, scientistic, arrogant morons like Dr Strange. Right, guys? Right?

Ahem. Or, um, maybe not.

For one thing, avoiding the trap of believing that an indifferent, material universe is all there is has nothing to do with being clever, or insightful, or virtuous, or superior to one’s fellow humans in any other manner one cares to name. Regardless of the sort of people we are, we all of us stumble along our own dark little paths, groping for understanding, trying to widen the keyhole, but we are spiritually blind and spiritually deaf and the truth, should we encounter it, comes across to us exactly as ridiculous as the Ancient One’s words did to Dr Strange. Like him, we need something on a different level; we need to actually encounter the super-material for us to acknowledge its existence. Now, I don’t mean by that that everyone has to have some kind of seismic, miraculous, road-to-Damascus experience³ in order to be truly counted a believer – I never had one – but I do mean that nobody ever comes to believe in Jesus unless God is already working in that person by his Spirit.⁴

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. – 1 Corinthians 2: 12-14

None of us figures out the truth of the gospel. To us as we naturally are, it sounds ludicrous. We need to be transformed from natural people to spiritual people – the process known as ‘being born again’⁵  – if spiritual truths are to make any sense to us. So there is no occasion to pat ourselves on the back for being cleverer than Dr Strange. Left to our own devices, we settle ourselves in our own erroneous worldviews exactly as resolutely as he settled himself in his, until supernatural reality comes and gives us a shake round the shoulders. We look at the world through a keyhole until the Spirit comes and opens the door.

And on top of that, I think we’re awfully prone to responding to the door having been opened by building another door, setting it up not ten yards beyond the first, outfitting it with a slightly larger keyhole, and settling back down in the same position we’re used to in order to look through it – by which I mean that we fail to behave like spiritual people when it comes to discerning spiritual things. We look at scripture and assess it according to a slight variation on the same worldview we had when we were looking through the first keyhole. A particular passage comes across as a bit harsh, a bit discriminatory, a bit unlikely, a bit reminiscent of this or that denomination or tradition, a bit naïve, a bit unachievable, a bit petty, a bit weird. We are seeing with the spiritually-blind eyes and hearing with the spiritually-deaf ears of our old, natural selves, exalting human wisdom, instead of relying on the Spirit who teaches us interpretation of spiritual truths.

On this front, we have something to learn from Dr Strange. Once his experience of the multiverse has been concluded, his response is to beg the Ancient One, “Teach me!” He sees now the folly that was everything he thought he knew; he throws it aside and pleads to be taught about the way things really are. He is so determined in this that even when she denies his request and throws him out of the building, he refuses to leave until he is let back in again. His understanding of life, the universe, and everything has been so thoroughly revolutionised that his only conceivable option is to press the one who so revolutionised it to enlighten him further; to go back to the way he used to think is, well, unthinkable.

Should the same not be true of us who have been enlightened of real spiritual realities? Should we not be ready to fling aside our old preconceptions and embrace the teaching of the Spirit – who both inspired the writing of God’s word and enables us to interpret it? And yet how often do I allow my natural, unspiritual understanding to cloud my ability to discern spiritual truths?

And so it turns out Dr Strange might be rather cleverer than me in the application of his worldview after all…

Footnotes

¹ If you’d like a clip of the scene, some kind human has uploaded one to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgM4JE7agIs.

² Don’t watch the film; watch SayGoodnightKevn’s review of it: https://vimeo.com/139840667.

³ The allusion is to the conversion of Saul/Paul, in case you didn’t know: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+9&version=ESVUK.

⁴ Do get some context on this one: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians+2&version=ESVUK.

⁵ Jesus explains this jazz in John 3: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+3&version=ESVUK.

Thoughts on Doctor Strange 1: A Not-So-Secret Identity

Dr Strange:          You said that losing my hands didn’t have to be the end.

Christine:             Yep. Because there are other ways to save lives.

Doctor Strange (2016)

 

Doctor Strange, of course, unlike many Marvel heroes, has no secret identity. One probably feels less need for one when one has a name like Doctor Strange.

So last weekend, I finally got round to seeing the latest addition to the ever-ballooning Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Strange (just in case you hadn’t already twigged that that’s what this post was about).¹ Honestly, when the elaborate new Marvel Studios sequence initially splashed itself across the screen, all I could think about was how dully disappointing it was that the film I was about to view was something other than Spider-man: Homecoming,² but that feeling was quickly dispelled by my interest in the story, and I started thinking about a few other things – like how utterly odd Benedict Cumberbatch sounds with an American accent, and how good computerised special effects have got, and how Marvel might be diversifying its secondary cast a bit, but has yet to release a film whose protagonist isn’t a white, American man.³ Hmm. In any case, the story and script also lent itself extraordinarily well to the kinds of spiritual analogies I like to explore on this blog, so well, in fact, that the concepts for five separate posts presented themselves even while I sat in the cinema. Seriously, these analogies are really quite excessively obvious: I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re all over the Internet already, particularly since I was so late to the party in terms of actually seeing the film. Nevertheless, I’m afraid, O Unfortunate Reader, that I have a desire to write them down properly, and so they’re what I’m going to be subjecting you to for the next five weeks. Terribly sorry. Couldn’t resist.

We’ll follow the plotline from start to finish. There will be many, many spoilers. Let’s go.

So when we first meet our hero, Dr Stephen Strange (because a good half of the population of the Marvel universe seems to have an alliterative forename and surname⁴), he is having a simply lovely time being a top neurosurgeon, and when I say top, I mean top. The guy has never lost a single patient; he’s constantly being invited to give speeches at posh events; he even has an entire display cabinet in his stupendously classy apartment devoted to all the prestigious awards he’s won for being so darn good at his job. Then he decides, on the way to speak at one of those posh events I mentioned, that it would be a sensible idea to use his smartphone while driving at high speed,⁵ and the resultant crash leaves his hands – his oh-so-special, superiorly-steady, trained-to-perfection, neurosurgeon’s hands – in a very sorry state indeed. Momentous nerve damage has been dealt with by the implantation of numerous metal pins; the precious hands are left feeble and clumsy and beset by uncontrollable shaking. Stephen is beyond distraught; he is destroyed. His job was what made him who he was; excelling at it was the purpose that consumed his whole life, the sole source of his sense of his own value. And he will never be able to excel at it again.

His colleague and ex-girlfriend Christine is eager to reassure him that life can go on, that there are other ways to save lives, other things that can give life meaning. “Like you?” he spits poisonously when she raises this last suggestion, clearly not thinking too highly of that option. Stephen tries treatment after treatment, not caring how expensive or experimental they are, because he simply refuses to entertain the possibility of giving up, of accepting that his hands will never be restored to their former glory. He ends up spending every penny he has left on travelling to Kathmandu and trekking about trying to track down a place of healing that a former paralytic tipped him off about – and even when he finds it and stuff gets a little more multiversey and fantastical, regaining the use of his hands remains his overwhelming aspiration for the majority of the film.

Stephen’s situation may have played out in particularly dramatic fashion, but his ultimate problem was one common to the whole of fallen humanity: he was grounding his identity in something finite, fragile, and fallible. In his case, it was how good he was at his job. And in actual fact, even before the fateful car crash, hints that this wasn’t exactly the solidest ground he could stand on were bleeding through the apparent perfection of his shinily prestigious life. For instance, someone suggests a patient that might interest him, and he scoffs at the offer on the grounds that it might ruin his flawless record. He says it with arrogance, and yet there lies beneath that an awareness that he has to be careful about what he agrees to take on if he is to maintain the shiny, prestigious perfection he so enjoys.⁶ He essentially decides whom to help based on what will enhance his professional reputation – because that’s where his identity is.

When I ground my identity in something, every decision I make is consequently, subtly or less subtly, geared towards maintaining that something, whatever else I have to compromise to make that happen, because if that something falls apart, so will my whole self, insofar as I understand myself to exist. The trouble is, all earthly things are hopelessly bound to fall apart sooner or later – so whichever one of them I choose as the basis for my identity, it is going to require some very concerted maintenance, and even then there’s nothing to stop it collapsing at a moment’s notice should there occur the merest alteration of circumstance.

The alternative, of course, is to ground my identity in something that isn’t earthly, that isn’t finite or fragile or fallible. Now, where could I possibly find such a thing?⁷

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” – Hebrews 13:8

“And it is God who established us with you in Christ, and has anointed us.” – 2 Corinthians 1:21

If, by the grace of God, I am established in Christ, if he is where I am rooting my identity, then I am rooting it in something that is the same yesterday, today, and forever, something that will not, that cannot ever change. I know exactly who I am, and there is no threat, not even the remotest possibility that that can be taken away from me. Suddenly I’m free from the need to endlessly prop up some earthly thing in order to preserve the identity I have built for myself. Suddenly it doesn’t matter what circumstances I find myself in on this earth, because who I am is anchored in something that is resolutely unchanging in any and every circumstance.

If Stephen Strange had known this, it wouldn’t have destroyed him to lose the use of his hands. Granted, he would have been upset, as would anyone, but he would have understood that his excellence in his field – like all finite, fragile, fallible things – was not the keystone of who he was. He would consequently never have gone to Kathmandu, and it would probably have been a far less entertaining film. Pros and cons, eh?

Footnotes

¹ It was well good. I highly recommend it. Trailer? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSzx-zryEgM

² I am so excited for this film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wNgphPi5VM.

³ There are a couple in the pipeline, but they won’t be released for a while: according to Den of Geek, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wNgphPi5VM, Black Panther is coming in February 2018 and Captain Marvel in March 2019.

⁴ Raj from The Big Bang Theory has a few examples to offer. Fast-forward this video to 1:52: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXDdv-fehmk.

⁵ Did anyone else notice the little disclaimer at the end of the credits warning against the dangers of driving while distracted? And if you didn’t stay until the end of the credits, you clearly aren’t familiar with the way Marvel films work, you poor soul. Let OnlyLeigh at HISHE give you the lowdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvjMJEqkDqA.

⁶ Arrogance is necessarily insecure; I had a muse about that in ‘Please Don’t Feed the Ego’, under ‘2015’ then ‘September’ in the box on the right. Dear oh dear, I suppose I’m only going to end up pretentiously referencing myself more and more often as I write more and more posts.

⁷ I decided to put the footnote with the links to the whole-chapter contexts of the verses I pulled out there because putting it straight after the references might have caused some numerical confusion; I understand that superscript is an alternative way of indicating verse numbers. So here’s the Hebrews, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+13&version=ESVUK, and the 2 Corinthians, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Corinthians+1&version=ESVUK.