Why is Gamora?

“To ensure that whoever possesses it understands its power, the stone demands a sacrifice … In order to take the stone, you must lose that which you love.”

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

It was, perhaps, an ill-advised decision of mine to see Avengers: Infinity War, not long at all after its cinematic release back in April this year, at a screening whose advertised start time was after 11pm on a Monday evening. Allowing time for advertisements and trailers in addition to the two-and-a-half-hour runtime of the feature presentation itself – and of course there wasn’t the slightest question of leaving before the very end of the credits – it was gone two in the morning by the time I stumbled, suitably awed and traumatised, back out into the real world. And I was perfectly sensible that I stood no chance of getting a wink of sleep for a good while after that. My mind was buzzing.

 

An amazing digital painting of Thanos, undoubtedly our favourite MCU villain, by the extremely talented timehollowx at newgrounds.com.

When my mind is buzzing like that, two options are afforded me: talk incessantly at whichever unfortunate audience happens to be nearby, or write and write until something of my raw thought processes has been satisfactorily wrestled in orderly poetry or prose. In the circumstances, I had an accessible audience in the form of my four cinemagoing companions. I talked.

“Well, I am somewhat consoled by the fact that Captain Marvel’s going to show up,” I said in the auditorium soon after the lights came back on.¹

“Gosh, I am so furious with Star Lord,” I said in the cinema foyer. “And also I’m furious with Doctor Strange for giving up the time stone after he specifically said he wasn’t going to.” (I hadn’t, at this stage, twigged that his doing so was clearly part of a Bigger Plan.²) “Although maybe I should just be furious with Thanos instead,” I added thoughtfully.

“But we know that they’re not really dead,” I said as we walked to where my housemate had parked his car, “because we’ve been promised more Guardians of the Galaxy, and another Spider-Man film too,³ and it’s not as if they’re suddenly going to jump straight from there to having Miles Morales as Spider-Man or something.⁴”

“And another thing,” I said as we sat in the car on the way home, “whose clever idea was it that in order to get the soul stone, you should have to give up what you love? I mean, who’s there thinking that someone who’s prepared to let the person he loves more than anything die for the sake of achieving some other goal, is the absolute best candidate for the right to wield unlimited power over all aspects of existence? That’s crazy!”

Ahem. Oops.

My brain, perhaps too well-trained by the past few years of bloggery at hunting for spiritual analogies in any and every piece of media it should encounter, had unintentionally happened upon a feasible fictional Christ-type – so unintentionally, in fact, that it totally failed to recognise what it had found until some time later. Having eventually recognised it, though, I felt a need to address the question my initial reaction clearly begged: what makes God the Father’s sacrifice of Jesus at Calvary different from Thanos’ sacrifice of Gamora on Vormir – and so substantially different, moreover, that the latter may be counted a cruel and contemptible act of a power-hungry villain, and the former the most profoundly, perfectly loving thing that will ever, could ever, be done?

Well, as good a place as any to start is the fact that Jesus went to the cross willingly, whereas Gamora had to be pushed off that cliff literally kicking and screaming. It wasn’t that Gamora was afraid to die, mind you: she’d made Star Lord promise to kill her if she fell into Thanos’ hands, and then tried her own last-ditch suicide attempt as well (only to be thwarted on both counts by Thanos’ reality-stone-fuelled bubble powers). No, what Gamora shrank from was the result that her being sacrificed would achieve: she opposed Thanos’ end-goal of obtaining the soul stone – and thereby progressing one step closer to being able to wipe out half the population of the universe with a single click of his fingers – with absolutely everything in her. Compare Jesus, who endured the cross for the joy set before him; who prayed to his Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.⁵ In other words, if there’s really no way for your wrath against these sinners to be removed from them except that I should shoulder it instead of them, then shoulder it I will. Jesus was so totally and completely on board with the end-goal that God purposed to obtain by sacrificing him, that he agreed not merely to die, but to endure the full force of his Father’s righteous anger. You can see from the way he prayed in Gethsemane how appalling a prospect that was to him – and think about it: Jesus was the one human being who successfully carried out that first and greatest commandment to love God with everything in him, who actually treasured his Father’s love and favour to an appropriate degree. We, sin-marred as we are, can sort of get how horrendous a thing it is to have as an enemy the God whose perfection we ceaselessly underappreciate – and he gives us a lot of illustrations that hit us on a vital, visceral sort of level in order that we might understand better⁶ – but we don’t comprehend the full and true horror of the thing the way Jesus did. Yet he was ready to endure the dreaded means for the sake of the end-goal. For Gamora, meanwhile, it was the end-goal, and not the means, that held the dread.

 

Gamora, as according to the prodigious speedpainting skills of Rennis5 at newgrounds.com.

And of course it did, because Thanos’ end-goal was to wipe out half of all life. Granted, the guy kind of has a point about resources being stretched too thin, but his proposed solution is unquestionably an evil one. He willed that Gamora should die in order that more – many, many more – might die also. God’s end-goal, by contrast, was the exact opposite: not to kill the living but to bring the dead to life. He willed that Jesus should die, and then, crucially, be raised from death, in order that more – many, many more – might be raised from death too.⁷ He was willing that his Son should be sacrificed, though he loved him dearly, because of how much he also loved us – you and me, O Gospel-Believing Reader, rebels and miscreants that we are. God looked out on the mess of the universe and sought to save those on whose account it was such a mess; Thanos looked out on the mess of the universe and sought to destroy them. Remember Gamora’s little speech of misplaced triumph just before Thanos throws her to her death? “The universe has judged you. You asked it for a prize, and it told you no. You failed, and do you want to know why? Because you love nothing, no one.”⁸ Well, it turned out there was an exception to that, but we’ve got no reason to think there was anything more than one exception: Thanos loved Gamora and nothing else. He sacrificed the one solitary person he loved, so that he might destroy others. God, on the other hand, sacrificed one he loved so that he might not destroy others, much as we deserve it.

Indeed, Thanos needed to sacrifice Gamora, because he didn’t yet have the power he needed to achieve his murderous aims. God, conversely, doesn’t need to go chasing power: a full Infinity Gauntlet couldn’t add anything to the power he already wields. It isn’t lack of power that’s stayed his hand from destroying humanity all this time, but depth of mercy, the same depth of mercy that’s behind Jesus’ sacrifice. Where Thanos made his sacrifice in spite of his love, God made his because of his love – and that contrast of motives is, I suppose, the real heart of the difference. What’s done out of love (proper love, you know, agape or whatever you want to call it⁹) is righteous; what’s done in contradiction of it is not. Granted, you wouldn’t want somebody who’s prepared to let his beloved die, for the sake of achieving some other goal, to be wielding supreme power over everything; but with God, it wasn’t really for the sake of achieving some other goal. It was for the sake of extending the very same love he had for his Son to millions of undeserving humans. That being so, who better to be wielding supreme power over everything?

Oh, and just to cap things off, the result that Thanos’ sacrifice of Gamora achieved is, as we all know for reasons alluded to above, not going to have permanent effect. The characters who dissolved into dust at the end of Infinity War are bound to be back, if only because Marvel wouldn’t cheat itself out of the box-office profits to be made from their future adventures; though he seems victorious right now, Thanos’ purposes will yet be thwarted. The result that God the Father’s sacrifice of Jesus achieved, however, will never be overturned in this age or the next. God is, after all, all-powerful, so that nothing in all creation can hinder the fulfilment of his purposes; and he’s unchanging, so that what he has purposed once he will never renege on.

“You will never be a god,” Loki managed to berate Thanos with his dying breath. Well said, Loki. Well said.

Footnotes

¹ I am so excited for the Captain Marvel film, but we haven’t been told much about what to expect. The MCU wiki is probably as comprehensive as anything: http://marvelcinematicuniverse.wikia.com/wiki/Captain_Marvel.

² SuperCarlinBrothers explain the reasoning for that as part of a broader theory about the significance of 14,000,605 possible outcomes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woiBsYv1qDs.

³ And some other cool things too, actually: https://screenrant.com/marvel-upcoming-movies-list-release-dates/.

⁴ No, Miles Morales is going to get his first cinematic outing in Into the Spider-Verse, to be released towards the end of this year. And it’s going to be animated. And not part of the MCU. I love Miles Morales, and I love animation, so I really hope it turns out to be good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Hbz2jLxvQ.  

⁵ Check Hebrews 12:2 and Matthew 26:42. Here’s the Matthew: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt+26&version=ESVUK. I’m not crying, you’re crying.

⁶ I’m thinking of, say, the curses in Deuteronomy 28:  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=deut+28&version=ESVUK. This stuff is properly horrible, but it’s still only a present-age picture of what it’s ultimately like to be under God’s wrath. Preach the gospel, adelphoi; the world needs it.

⁷ Excuse to link to Romans 5: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=rom+5&version=ESVUK.

⁸ Thanks to Springfield!Springfield! for the transcript I consulted: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=avengers-infinity-war.

⁹ I rather like C. S. Lewis’ delineation of the Four Loves, which has been compellingly illustrated by the talented CSLewisDoodle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4hI638mskQ&list=PL9boiLqIabFjljx2sUeqOz_0QDlYL_Hoi.