Did You Just Call the Christian God a Mary Sue

“While the four officers languished in the Sick Bay, Lt. Mary Sue ran the ship, and ran it so well she received the Nobel Peace Prize, the Vulcan Order of Gallantry and the Tralfamadorian Order of Good Guyhood. However the disease finally got to her and she fell fatally ill. In the Sick Bay as she breathed her last, she was surrounded by Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and Mr. Scott, all weeping unashamedly at the loss of her beautiful youth and youthful beauty, intelligence, capability and all around niceness. Even to this day her birthday is a national holiday of the Enterprise.”

Paula Smith, ‘A Trekkie’s Tale’, The Menagerie (1974)

 

A handy chart of Starfleet insignia for ignoramuses like myself who know next to nothing about Star Trek. Thanks to m1kclark at newgrounds.com.

So I was scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed the other day and stumbled across a screenshot of a post that went as follows (well, with a few adjustments for the sake of keeping things polite):¹

Greek myths are great because their gods are so human. They argue, they mess up at things, they make fun of each other, they tick each other off, it’s great, there’s so much human interaction and then Christianity comes in like that guy and is all like “oh my god is infallible and knows everything and immortal and everywhere at once and you can’t see it but its [sic] totally there and stronger than everything” shut up Christianity go take a writing class

Below this, another user had added a comment:

did you just call the Christian god a Mary Sue

I laughed. And then I thought, huh, what an interesting proposition. Might a bit of a compare-and-contrast exercise between the God I worship and the fictional character type known as Mary Sue help me reflect on his attributes in a fresh way?²

If you’ve not come across the term Mary Sue before, here’s a quick introduction. Our story begins in the 1970s, when the literary genre known as fanfiction was taking its first wobbly steps. A Star Trek fan called Paula Smith noticed that one common but lamentable pattern in fanfiction written about the series was the centring of stories around a prodigiously capable and extraordinarily attractive young female protagonist, who would quickly worm her way into the affections and usurp the roles of the established cast, save the day by exercising a vast range of skills that it defied all logic for her to have ever acquired, and then usually die in some splendidly heroic fashion and be deeply mourned from all quarters. Smith wrote a four-paragraph story parodying this tendency, ‘A Trekkie’s Tale’,³ and dubbed its main character Mary Sue, a name which subsequently came to be derogatorily used to refer to any original character who displayed similar sorts of attributes. There isn’t a definitive list of the attributes required to qualify as a Mary Sue,⁴ and the already blurry edges of the term are made even blurrier by the way that people sometimes toss it about merely as a generic insult for (usually female) protagonists they don’t like or think are poorly written, but the following constitute some of the characteristics most heavily associated with the type.

A Mary Sue is best at everything. She has phenomenal talent in just about any field one cares to name. She has no flaws; if she does, they’re endearing, or actually strengths in disguise. This, as you can tell, is the heart of the accusation outlined in the first post quoted above, and it’s not at all an inaccurate one when applied to God. The LORD is best at everything: he wields ultimate power over every single entity in existence; morally, he’s entirely inscrutable; he does everything perfectly; he has no flaws. This aspect of Mary-Sue-ism is indeed something he exhibits to the extreme.

Concomitant with that first aspect, though, comes another: a Mary Sue is best at everything compared to the preestablished cast. It’s in these terms that the accusation made in the above-mentioned post is framed, and here the accuracy falls apart. Granted, the author of the post is completely right to observe that the LORD in his supreme power and righteousness is on a totally different level to the highly anthropomorphic deities that populated the panthea of pagan societies; but it’s incorrect to treat said pagan deities as the preestablished cast whom the LORD, as Mary Sue, subsequently usurps. For starters, the author of the post talks as if the concept of this almighty, flawless, omnipresent, invisible God sprang into existence together with Christianity, which is patently not true whatever your religious persuasion: the character of the LORD had been described in literature for centuries before Christ trod the earth. (So blame the Jews for that particular bit of Mary-Sue-ism, why don’t you; people have tried to blame them for virtually everything else they dislike about the world, after all.) Moreover – and at this point religious persuasion does become relevant – it isn’t merely that the character of the LORD was invented earlier on than the author of the post gives him credit for, but that he isn’t an invented character at all. On the contrary, he invented everything else, and indeed that’s the reason behind the comprehensive omnipotence for which the author of the post has so little patience. The idea that the LORD usurps pagan gods couldn’t be further from the truth: they make pathetic attempts to usurp him. And pathetic attempts they are, because, as we’ve already established, the LORD is inexpressibly greater than any other power in existence. He made every other power in existence.

At this point, though, another significant aspect of the Mary Sue type becomes relevant: a Mary Sue is to be identified with the creator of the story in which she appears. An author who writes a Mary Sue is writing herself into the story – and I think it’s fair to say that she may be validly characterised as the God of her own fictional world. Nonetheless, she doesn’t write herself into the story as she actually is in real life: the character is an idealised version, more attractive, more accomplished, more adept, and more admired than her real-world counterpart. The author fashions a plotline around this improved fictional version of herself for the sake of her own personal wish-fulfilment. The Mary Sue character is remarkable and flawless because she represents what the author wishes she could be like; God is remarkable and flawless, on the other hand, because that’s just what he’s like. In the case of a Mary Sue, then, an imperfect author inserts an idealised version of herself into the world she created. In God’s case, he’s already a perfect author; he couldn’t idealise himself any further. He did insert himself into the world he created, though. The eternal Word, the one without whom there would be no story at all,⁵ gave up the privilege of experiencing the universe as its author, and became just another character living through the plotline day by day. He kept the flawlessness that comes with being God, but aside from that flawlessness, his experience was, it must be said, pretty different to that of your typical Mary Sue.

 

And this represents an idealised version of the start of the process of writing something.

A Mary Sue is beloved by the established cast, but Jesus was rejected by the world. What makes this difference particularly striking is that, with your average Mary Sue, even though she is best at everything – and best at everything compared to the established cast, moreover – there’s still always a bit of a question mark over whether she really deserves all the attention and adoration she gets. Why should every other character’s storyline get swept aside in favour of an overwhelming focus on hers? The only person worthy of that kind of extreme elevation is – well, God. And yet when God showed up as a human character in the grand story of history, the rest of the cast was unimpressed with him. The rest of the cast actually ended up having him killed. When your average Mary Sue has died her splendidly heroic death, everyone rallies round and mourns for her; when Jesus faced a death more heroic than any other ever could be, the subjection of himself to the wrathful judgement of the almighty and perfect Author of the universe, on behalf of other characters who hadn’t even properly recognised him for the authorial self-insertion he was, let alone given him the attention and adoration he deserved – when Jesus faced that, his closest friends abandoned and disowned him.

In that respect, then, Jesus couldn’t be much further from your average Mary Sue. But then again, take another look at the first two Mary Sue attributes I mentioned above: previously I was applying them to God more generally (probably principally the Father? I’m not much good at Trinitarian theology), but try applying them to Jesus in particular. A Mary Sue is best at everything, specifically when compared to the preestablished cast; and Jesus is best at everything, specifically when compared to the preestablished systems whereby humans might relate to God. The book of Hebrews is literally all about this jazz: it’s like a giant list of things Jesus is better than.⁶ He’s better than angels; he’s better than Moses; he’s better than the Levitical priests; he’s better than the tabernacle; he’s better than the sacrifices required by the Law; he’s better than anything that previous generations encountered. And why? Because he’s not just another character; he’s God. Of course he’s best at everything. That’s not the surprising thing. The surprising thing is that the almighty and perfect Author wrote himself into the story at all.

When a fanfiction writer inserts herself into the world she creates as a Mary Sue, this remarkable and flawless and unilaterally beloved character, she does it to elevate herself. When God inserted himself into the world he had created in the form of the Lord Jesus Christ, he was doing the opposite. He’s already remarkable and flawless and worthy of being unilaterally beloved; in stepping into the human story, the Word humbled himself to an unbelievable degree.⁷ God’s the ultimate universal Author, he could have told any story he liked with human history, and yet he chose to tell one whose fundamental plot point is his own Son’s willing sacrifice of himself so that we might have life. And so even the most flawless, capable, heroic Mary Sue who ever saved the day is, like everything else, nothing special at all compared to Jesus.

Footnotes

¹ Though I didn’t have the presence of mind to save or bookmark the post when I saw it, I did fortunately manage to track it down elsewhere, so here it is for your consultation: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/366339750935374696/.

² In case you hadn’t twigged, this kind of thing is basically the entire premise of my blog at its most typical: I wander around fictional media going ‘God is like this in such-and-such a way’ and ‘God is not like that in such-and-such a way’ with the aim of moving myself to worship – and if I can bring any of you lovely readers along with me, so much the better.

³ Full text available here: http://web.archive.org/web/20100830041159/http://www.fortunecity.com/rivendell/dark/1000/marysue.htm.

⁴ Although for a fuller discussion of how the term is used, check out this very helpful article on TV Tropes: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue.

⁵ Because everything that has been made was made through him: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+1&version=ESVUK.

⁶ Check it out: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+1&version=ESVUK.

⁷ I mean, I couldn’t not link to Philippains 2 here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=philippians+2&version=ESVUK.

The Last Jedi as Commentary on Itself

Luke:    I'm ending all of this: the tree, the texts, the Jedi. I'm going to burn it all down.

Yoda:    Ah, Skywalker, missed you have I.

Luke:    So it is time for the Jedi Order to end.

Yoda:    Time it is for you to look past a pile of old books, hmm?

Luke:    The sacred Jedi texts?

Yoda:    Oh, read them, have you? Page-turners they were not. Yes, yes, yes, wisdom they held, but that library contained nothing that the girl Rey does not already possess.

The Last Jedi (2017)

All right, I'm going to say it: The Last Jedi is my favourite Star Wars film.¹

 

Crikey, just look at how awesome this Last Jedi fanart is! Thanks to the talented HugoVRB at newgrounds.com.

By that I don't mean that I believe it’s objectively the best one, only that it was the one I enjoyed the most when I saw it, but I gather that that’s still something of a controversial opinion to hold. And I gather also - forgive me for the impending sweeping generalisation - that a primary reason why that’s something of a controversial opinion to hold, is that an awful lot of die-hard fans felt that The Last Jedi was simply too dissimilar to its predecessors. It did too many unexpected things. It didn’t feel like a ‘proper’ Star Wars film. “This is not going to go the way you think,” promised Luke in the trailer, and that promise was certainly kept.²

Well, it's actually exactly that characteristic that’s also a primary reason why I like it so much, but it was only recently that it occurred to me quite how that followed. Here’s what I think: it's possible to read (or ‘watch’?) The Last Jedi as commenting on its own nonconformity within the Star Wars canon. The film itself kind of anticipates fans’ negative reaction to that nonconformity, confronts them, and articulates its defence of what it does. I think it does this primarily through the portrayals of Rey, Luke, and Kylo Ren: each of them can be read as illustrating a particular possible fan mindset or reaction.

First off, consider Rey. Rey’s quite a lot like me: she’s a new fan, with little to no background in the Star Wars fandom. For her, things basically began with The Force Awakens, and though she’s familiar enough with the stories that came before to not be totally clueless about what’s going on now, her knowledge of the finer points of lore is shaky at best. Ask her for a definition of the Force, and she’ll come out with something like, “It’s a power that Jedi have that lets them control people and make things float.” Still, she loves the story, she does, and she’s thrilled that she can now be there and involved, as she wasn’t before, while new chapters are unfolding.

Next, consider Luke. Luke’s old guard: he grew up with the original trilogy and, in a way, those films made him. He knows the canon better than anybody: to him, it’s close enough to sacred, and he devotes himself to knowing and preserving it just as it is. This is the kind of guy who can recite every line of dialogue, name every minor character, and outline the pros and cons of a dozen possible solutions to any plot hole you think you might have found - and he’s the kind of guy who makes liking Star Wars intimidating. He is witheringly condescending about Rey’s admittedly poor attempt to describe the Force, for example: “Impressive. Every word in that sentence was wrong.” He loves the story, but specifically he loves the canon that already exists, and doesn’t see room for any new and different manifestations of the Star Wars story. The analogy breaks apart slightly in that this kind of fan probably does want new films to come out, whereas Luke doesn’t want any new Jedi to be trained, but functionally, the result is the same: the only new film the Luke-type fan will be happy with is one that deliberately panders to his fondness for the originals - one that’s hopelessly derivative and crammed full of obscure references - which would sentence the kind of love of Star Wars he had, where the story was his as it happened, to die with his generation.

Finally, consider Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren’s a bit different in that he doesn’t stand for the fan reaction such as what the fans think they’re reacting against. He’s a foil, a representative of what some might accuse The Last Jedi of doing, namely showing no proper regard for its heritage in the form of the previous films. “The Empire, your parents, the Resistance, the Sith, the Jedi,” he says. “Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you are meant to be.” In portraying this attitude as an unambiguously Bad Thing, The Last Jedi declares that that’s not what it’s trying to do itself. Its subverting certain conventions of how one would expect a Star Wars film to go is not to be interpreted as a tearing down of what Star Wars fundamentally is. At the same time, though, there’s an acknowledgement that it’s probably time to put some of the clichés to bed. The brilliantly dramatic moment when Kylo Ren killed Snoke instead of Rey is symbolic of this:³ it’s exactly the sort of unexpected happening that so characterised the film, but you know, haven’t we had rather enough of slimy-looking supreme villains sitting robed on thrones and ordering their subordinates about in an archaically grand and condescending fashion? That particular death was laudable not just morally within the world of the story, but also from an external storywriting point of view. Kylo Ren’s subsequent desire to send everything else from the first Star Wars films the same way as Snoke, though – “It’s time to let old things die: Snoke, Skywalker, the Sith, the Jedi, the rebels” – is abhorrent, again, not just morally within the world of the story, but also from an external storywriting point of view: those are the foundations on which the thing was built and it can’t be severed from them. What The Last Jedi is advocating here, then, is discernment; it’s advocating keeping what’s good and shedding what isn’t. That’s the attitude it takes to its predecessors, and it’s also, therefore, the attitude it permits its audience to take towards it. One ought not to feel obliged to like every single aspect of the film: pointing out bits you think ought to be got rid of is allowed, or commendable, even, because if the fans were to just unconditionally endorse every directorial decision, there’d be nothing to hold the filmmakers to account, and stop them churning out an endless procession of increasingly awful episodes. Equally, there’s no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater: just because a few aspects of The Last Jedi may have annoyed you, that’s no reason to condemn the whole thing to the scrapheap.

So that’s what we learn about how to handle canon from Kylo Ren. What we learn from Luke, meanwhile, is the importance of being willing to accept the new and different. The crucial thing is not that the sacred texts should be preserved - inert, untouched, and never reapplied or reinterpreted - but that the essence of what they’re about should continue to live and thrive.⁴ That’s why it doesn’t matter that they get comprehensively frazzled to a crisp late on in the film, as per my opening quotation: not because their contents isn’t valuable, but because the way its value takes effect is by being employed by people like Rey to fight evil in the real world. Luke isn’t killing the past, the way Kylo Ren wanted to; he’s only killing relics of it, and what really matters is thus set free to live on. Star Wars won’t stay dynamic and brilliant if it only ever tells the exact same story over and over again. And yes, with new blood and new ideas comes the risk of making some pretty hefty mistakes, but it’s that or let the thing die out altogether, so it seems fair to say the risk is worth it.

Finally, from Rey, we learn the value of learning and appreciating preexisting lore as well as focussing on present developments, and that participation in all these aspects of Star Wars culture is open to anyone. Rey’s lack of relevant background is no obstacle to her playing a vital role in the story, but she has to be trained before she can play that role to the fullest extent. Likewise, new fans like myself will get more out of the films that we’re watching as they come out, if we take the trouble to properly familiarise ourselves with the lore that’s already been written. The Last Jedi knows that what it’s doing is weird and unexpected, but it doesn’t do that in order to kill the past: it does it to put the same old heart into a new tale, and so allow a new generation of fans to have the same joy of owning the story that their predecessors did with the originals. That’s a massive gift to a newbie like me, a massive reassurance that Star Wars has room for the new: room for future episodes that don't overrely on previous ones, and room for fans without a background in the fandom. It's an encouragement that the previous canon is something I can meaningfully engage with - I'm not doomed to never really get it just because I wasn’t there the first time around - but at the same time, it's OK that my heart's really in the new stuff, the now stuff.

And so, I suggest, The Last Jedi kind of functions as a commentary on itself. It recognises its own nonconformity, and it makes its apology: look, it says, I’m not trying to burn down everything that went before - I condemn any attempt to do that - and in fact I have massive respect for the preexisting canon and I think we should learn and appreciate it, but equally, it’s no good being so set on preserving it exactly as it is that we lock newcomers out of properly engaging with the story and end up producing stuff that’s simply boring - whatever the cinematic equivalent of ‘not a page-turner’ is. You’ve got to strike the balance, you know? After all, this is Star Wars we’re talking about: balance is kind of a pretty big deal.

Footnotes

¹ I also wrote about the film shortly after it came out – see ‘Plan B’ under January of this year in the box on the right – but apparently the bit of my subconscious that devises blog posts took a whole year to get this one well-formed enough for it to be successfully pitched to my conscious.

² I.e. this trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0CbN8sfihY.

³ I absolutely love this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyIPvIjVMYo.

⁴ There’s also an analogy here about how to treat the scriptures, as in, don’t just read the word, do what it says: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=james+1&version=ESVUK. Or similarly, think of the scribes and Pharisees, who knew their Law and Prophets inside out, but were neglecting the weighty matters thereof, to the point where they didn’t recognise the very Word of God when he was standing right in front of them.