A Really Dark Night

I had a horrible nightmare last night.. It was all due to my unfortunate viewing a month ago of The Dark Knight, the new Batman movie. It was really horrible... Well, the movie was done well, but the evil in it was truly horrible. If it were not for Christ, I don't know that I could live in a world with the kind of evil that they portrayed in that movie.. There was one theme, though, that has been stirring up my mind and heart so much that I had to sit down and write about it--that is the formation and foundation of character.

The new Attorney General in Gotham, Harvey Dent, was a handsome, virtuous, strong man. Bruce (aka Batman) believed very strongly that this courageous man had the strength of character to really make a difference for Gotham. So when the choice came to save his beloved Rachael (who was engaged to Harvey) or Harvey, he made the unbelievable sacrifice of choosing the attorney general, the man who won the love of his life away from him.

In the midst of the rescue, there was a great explosion and Harvey was burned so terribly that one side of his face was completely burned off. He had wanted to sacrifice his life, but instead he was saved and Rachael's life was sacrificed. Harvey's bitterness and anger was so great that he wanted to kill anyone who had a part in Rachael's death and even Batman.

It was a study in tragedy and in reaction and response. Grief in this case destroyed Harvey Dent, who became the infamous "Two-Face." Although a man of great valor and heroism prior to Rachael's death, his determination to do the right thing could not withstand the apparent victory of evil over good. Harvey allowed the tragedy of Rachael's death to not only destroy whatever good he could have done, but also to turn his own heart to evil.

Bruce, on the other hand, faced the grief of losing Rachael AND Harvey--making his unselfish sacrifice of Rachael even more painful. Yet, he used the tragedies in his life in a markedly different way than Harvey. The pain he suffered, including the tragic murder of his parents in front of his eyes, served to develop his character on a strong foundation (go see Batman Begins). This created a real and lasting heroism that made him capable of sacrificing everything, culminating in The Dark Knight with the humiliation and sacrifice of his own good name when he took the blame for Harvey's vigilante justice so that Harvey could be celebrated as Gotham's hero and martyr.

It seems to me the greatest unspoken lesson of this movie is that we must set our hearts on something higher than ourselves and those that we love if we hope to survive evil times. Tragedy is like an earthquake that tests the foundation of our character. If our motivation and character is laid upon a shifting foundation, even small disappointments will prove too much and the edifice of our personalities will come crashing down.

The defining difference between Harvey's destruction and Bruce Wayne's perseverance was not the magnitude of tragedy, but that Batman's character was built on a foundation that did not rely on circumstances. His foundation was the ideal of Right and Truth. I pray that in difficult times we may learn from this example and build our houses, and our characters, on a foundation that will not fail.

"Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined." Matthew 7:24-27