In the hands of comic book writer and genre director Joss Whedon, all these disparate elements come together as if they were destined to be, with Loki as the antagonist with a team level threat that requires everyone bring their gifts to the table. While I thought the film would simply be another inadvertent expression of Romans chapter 12, or 1 Corinthians 12– about how we as a people need to bring our unique gifts to the table and each contribute our part, not disparaging or elevating one or the other but recognizing the importance of all– the movie had a surprising slice of insight by Loki, when he makes an assembled group of people bow before him.
Were we made to kneel?
Let’s examine this, shall we? It’s not a particularly American sentiment, certainly. Even Optimus Prime would argue that “Freedom is the right of all sentient beings”. We don’t generally think of bowing to an Emperor or pledging our subservience to be in line with freedom (whereas other cultures have and do). Our first response to Loki’s statement is one that looks less like bended knee and more like a particularly raised finger. I suspect there will be rowdy cries of “hell, no!” in the theaters in response to Loki’s assertion.
The problem is, there’s truth in his words.
Even a lot of professing Christians live life as if God exists as accompaniment to their self-centered universe, a force that exists to serve their needs, and although they’d never dare say it, the way they actually picture the relationship looks more like he’s kneeling to serve them. We forget a basic part of who we are and how we were made:
“Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!” – Psalm 95:6
Loki is right, and it doesn’t get any clearer than in the psalmist King David’s words: we were made to kneel.
Do we crave subjugation?
What of this statement then? Do we willingly shackle ourselves and lose our joy? Scripture is clear that the proper posture before the true creator brings joy, not the other way around. Still, that same scripture tells us exactly how we enslave ourselves to oppressive people and things:
“… they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator…” – Romans 1:25
We lose our joy in a mad scramble for identity by attaching it to something lesser, binding our hopes and dreams to a celebrity, a politician, a spouse, a fictional universe or hero, a national identity, a career, a co-dependent relationship, or vicarious achievements through our children. We “freely” soil our knees on these shifting foundations hoping these things will satisfy, give us purpose and worth. Worst, we effectively see ourselves as “god”, the center of our own life and universe, and find ourselves kneeling to an identity that is certain to let us down, shackled to our own fallibility and finitude.
Loki is right again: we crave subjugation and lose our joy, chasing a “freedom” (that is actually enslavement) and declaring it as our identity.
What is our identity?
It’s not just about dusting off our knees and rejecting the wrong identities, we need to know our actual identity. Scripture suggests we all – and each – have a job description:
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” – Ephesians 2:10
That job description for all mankind makes us subject to the one true God, but with an amazing freedom and responsibility. We’re not meant to be subjugated by anything else. We have a dominion to wisely oversee and steward (and protect):
“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion… over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” - Genesis 1:26-28
Loki is right: we don’t need to scramble for identity, we just need to submit to and embrace the one declared by God.
We were made to bow before our God and Maker, yet we shackle ourselves to lesser “gods” – created people and things. We race around “freely” putting our identity in things that ultimately rule us. It’s obvious that in many ways, Loki is absolutely right. However, there IS one worldview that offers perfect relationship held in tension, that offers both freedom and servitude. The creator and God we obey humbly and bow before utters this unique command:
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” - Galatians 5:1
Loki is wrong: we were made to be free. “Do not submit again to slavery”, the true God says. The power-hungry, adopted Asgardian son in the Avengers movie offers a subjugation without freedom, a cruel rule of oppression and tyranny. He is no benevolent dictator. Conversely, the God of the Bible proclaims that we receive true freedom through Jesus, that our subjugation to lesser things is broken forever, as we give our lives to a life-giving God.
This seems dichotomous, right? We’re “free” only by becoming God’s “bondservants”? It runs counter to our notion of freedom which– if we stop and think about it– often seems nebulous and undefined. What is freedom, anyway? Simply to do whatever we want? What if our own “wants” are corrupted? What if you and I are flawed creatures that even deceive ourselves, slaves to bad programming and predispositions? How can we truly transcend and experience REAL freedom?
Consider: if we were created and crafted to have a most glorious function, and things exist that inhibit that function (including our own hearts and minds) then true freedom would be objective release from the shackles that restrict, both our external direction and our internal desires truly freed to be as intended. In other words, we’re freed from all the other things that enslave in this life – including our own passions – by becoming a servant to the one who truly knows us better than we know ourselves.
“Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.” – 1 Peter 2:16
Loki is wrong: freedom is not a “disease” to which servitude is the “cure”. Rather, placing our lives under the truly all-knowing, all-powerful rule of our Maker brings us freedom to know ourselves and the empowerment to live freely.
In the end, we WILL kneel… but not to a Loki.
Loki is wrong, because he knows the outcome but believes he’s the answer. When the term god is used to describe Loki and Thor, Captain America has an earnest reply: “Ma’am, there’s only one God, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.” Steve Rogers knows full well that this tyrant is not someone he or anyone should bow to. As a man growing up 70 years ago and likely raised in a Christian home, he was probably taught the message of the gospel, in which God’s good news to all men culminates with those bended knees being loved, exalted as siblings and co-heirs with Jesus. Freedom in Christ is rooted in the reality that God doesn’t treat his bondservants as slaves… he treats us as his own children.
“So you are no longer a slave, but a son… an heir through God. Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.” - Galatians 4:6-8
As the Hulk so aptly puts it (in the crowning moment of the film) Loki is indeed a “puny god” (by nature, NOT god at all) and only offers the rule of a tyrant… whereas the God of the bible offers adoption, family, inheritance, and eternity. Would you not kneel for the savior who sacrificed for you? In the Lord of the Rings, Middle Earth kneels to honor even the little hobbits, and they willingly submit themselves to the rule of Aragorn. It’s not that we weren’t created to kneel, we should just bend our knee to the one who deserves it.
“God has highly exalted him and… at the name of Jesus every knee should bow… and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”- Philippians 2:8-11
We all will stand someday before our heavenly father. If we don’t give up our own poisonous dreams, if we don’t turn from our bitter rebellion, scripture tells us it will look like a courtroom. If we accept the saving shadow of the Son, it looks like home: devoid of strife and woe, and brighter than Asgard.
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