Death Note and Divine Justice 3: God Defeated

“No, you are just a murderer, and this notebook is the worst murder weapon in history ... You’re just a crazy serial killer who has confused himself with a god.”

Death Note E37 ‘New World’ (2007)

More amazing fanart from newgrounds.com! This ace drawing of Near and one of his favourite toys is by Gypsy-Pattie.

If you’ve got a very good memory, you might recall that one of the minor Death Note characters granted a brief mention in my post last week was Teru Mikami, Kira’s biggest fan.¹ Late on in the series, Light Yagami recruits Mikami to help him continue his murderous rampage as Kira without being caught, a development at which Mikami is thrilled beyond thrilled. One memorable episode takes a good deal of time telling Mikami’s backstory: he was always outraged by the injustice in the world and strove to stand up to it regardless of what that cost him, but as he got older and the issues at hand became bigger than mere playground politics, it became harder and harder to achieve any sort of meaningful positive impact. So when some anonymous vigilante started killing criminals by unknown, apparently supernatural means, Mikami was totally behind him. Here we see a striking difference between Mikami and Light. Light only supported Kira whilst he knew he was Kira; he was only content whilst he himself was the one drawing the lines. Mikami, on the other hand, is quite content to let somebody else be judge of all the earth, if only he can offer his loyalty and service. He sees Kira’s power and acknowledges him as his superior. In actual fact, he even goes so far as to describe and address him as ‘God’.

Mikami serves his God wholeheartedly. He does everything Kira tells him without question, even when it’s something weird that he can’t see the point of, like creating and using a fake Death Note. He tries his very hardest to understand how Kira thinks, so that he might make the decision that would best please Kira in circumstances where he has no specific instructions (although it turns out Light was none too happy about Mikami’s decision to use the notebook to kill Kiyomi Takada after she got kidnapped). He considers it an absolute privilege to be able to be of service to Kira. He is in perpetual awe of him.

But of course, in the final episode of the series – skedaddle now if you don’t want to know how it ends – Light loses. His plan to kill the investigatory team dedicated to tracking Kira down – a plan in which Mikami was a key component – fails; he is outed as Kira in their presence by irrefutable evidence including words from his own lips; he is squarely defeated.

Mikami is more kinds of distraught by this development than even the lavish expressiveness of anime can communicate. “Why? Why won’t they die?” he demands, clutching a Death Note he didn’t realise was a fake planted by the investigators. He turns to address Light: “God, I did as you told me!”

The investigators swiftly apprehend him, and their leader, Near, gives a neat summary of the most cogent proof that Light is Kira. Light, at this point, is in almost as much of a state as Mikami, and certainly more of a state than we’ve ever seen his cool and collected self before. Sweating and trembling, he yells, “It’s a trap! Near set the whole thing up to frame me! … This is impossible. This is a setup. I don’t know that man.” This last comment refers to Mikami, whose distress consequently reaches even greater heights. After emitting a kind of strangled scream, he slumps, head bowed, and is silent.

A few minutes and a little more plot explanation later, Light’s colleague Matsuda shoots him a few times to prevent him from writing on a clipping of the Death Note that’s hidden in his watch. Light is left defeated, wounded, thrashing about on the damp floor of an abandoned warehouse in a growing pool of his own blood; it’s a pretty pitiful scene. Mikami looks on in horror as Light struggles to stand up. “Mikami, what are you doing?” Light manages to exclaim. “Write! Kill them!” He crumples back to the floor and lies there gasping. And at this point Mikami sees fit to stab himself to death with a ballpoint pen.

 

Ouch.

Yes, all right, it’s a fair bit grimmer than most of the televised entertainment I enjoy, but I assure you that it’s all very well done indeed. Besides, the fact that Light’s defeat was so grim and pitiful and undignified only really enhances my point.

Mikami thought Light was God. He really did. He would have followed him anywhere. And then he saw him overpowered by mere human beings, and his world completely collapsed. I don’t think it’s inappropriate to say that I imagine it’s quite similar to how Jesus’ disciples felt when they saw their Lord on the cross. They thought he was the Christ, the Son of the living God;² they would have followed him anywhere; and then they saw him overpowered by mere human beings, and it was grim and pitiful and undignified, and surely, surely their worlds must have completely collapsed. They had left everything to follow this man,³ and here he was defeated.

Or so it seemed. Because while Light was not really God, and really was defeated, Jesus was (and is) really God, and consequently was not really defeated. Anyone who can be overpowered by mere human beings against his will, is nothing greater than a mere human being himself, and so is most certainly not worth worshipping. It was because Mikami understood this that he was so profoundly distressed by Light’s defeat. When Jesus allowed himself to be overpowered, humiliated, and killed by mere human beings, on the other hand, it was exactly that; he was allowing it to happen.

Light had run out of options; he had no cards left to play, nobody to call upon except Mikami, whom he’d claimed he didn’t even know just minutes ago and who clearly no longer saw any reason to do the bidding of his defeated God. Jesus wasn’t out of options at all. At any moment he chose, he could have summoned thousands upon thousands of heaven’s soldiers to utterly destroy anyone to dared try to lay a hand on him.⁴ And yet, that entire time, while he was subjected to one grim and pitiful and undignified affliction after another, he allowed it.

Light panicked and said whatever he thought might save his own skin; he flat-out denied and betrayed a man who’d been utterly faithful to him and done everything he asked. Jesus, on the other hand, was so utterly faithful to those he had called that he suffered the death of the cross so that he might save them. As the onlookers taunted that he saved others but couldn’t save himself,⁵ he deliberately refused to save himself, even though he could have done, in order that he might save the very same others who had, panicking, not only failed to do what he asked, but flat-out denied and betrayed him. Panic and betrayal are human things; anyone who does them, again, is not worth worshipping.

Light’s plan didn’t turn out how he intended; it was scuppered by developments he hadn’t foreseen. What made his defeat real was that it wasn’t part of the plan. In Jesus’ case, on the other hand, that he should be overpowered and humiliated and killed was the very lynchpin of the plan, making all of that no real defeat at all. The cross was not only foreseen but foreordained; the Lamb has been slain since the foundation of the world.⁶ God is almighty and all-knowing and so nothing can ever scupper his plans; anyone whose plans can be scuppered by unforeseen developments is, yet again, not worth worshipping.

To be fair, Mikami should really have seen it coming that his God would turn out to be a bit rubbish. Right from when Light first contacted him, it was clear that it was because he needed something from him; Mikami himself twigged straight away that Light couldn’t move or speak freely, and that that was why he asked Mikami to act on his behalf. Anyone who has to rely on the cooperation and competence of human beings to bring about what they desire and intend is not worth worshipping. God doesn’t involve us in the fulfilment of his plans because he needs us in order to make them work, but because he is gracious.

And indeed, God is gracious: he’s more than just just. When Light set himself up as the god of the new world he tried to create, just was the only trait he was interested in displaying. He wasn’t trying to be gracious or merciful or loving or holy or patient or faithful or any of that – and, as I’ve discussed over the past couple of weeks, he wasn’t even successful at being just. He was a mere human being and, like all mere human beings, he wasn’t worth worshipping. When he tried to play God he wound up defeated.

The true God is never defeated. Jesus suffered what he did on the cross because God is gracious and merciful and loving and holy and patient and faithful and, yes, just; far from proving him fallible, as Light’s defeat did him, that suffering displayed the perfection of the divine attributes to a fuller extent than anything else. When we look on the cross – as grim and pitiful and undignified as it might seem – we are not, like Mikami, looking on our God defeated. On the contrary, we are looking on the greatest victory ever won.

Footnotes

¹ Box on the right for the first two-thirds of this little series, and for Death Note itself, Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/browse?jbv=70204970&jbp=0&jbr=1.

² Or at least Simon Peter did: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+16&version=ESVUK.

³ Again, as Simon Peter said: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+19&version=ESVUK.

⁴ As he said himself: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+26&version=ESVUK. Twelve legions, incidentally, was more than half the military might of the whole Roman Empire at the time. (And obviously angelic soldiers are a little bit better than human ones.)

⁵ As recorded here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+27&version=ESVUK. I’ve been consistently giving you the Matthew reference for facts that show up in more than one gospel, by the way. Do feel free to go on a hunt for the equivalent bits in the others.

⁶ This is the reference, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+13&version=ESVUK, but you’ll notice that the ESV’s sentence structure doesn’t corroborate my assertion. For my commentary on that point, see footnote 10 in my post ‘Plan B’, which I wrote in January 2018. Ugh, look at me referencing myself…