Let’s assume for a moment that Otto Octavius’s experiments are going to work. Obviously, he’s done some research, probably some initial experimentation, just to be able to work those super-cool smart arms. And he knows enough to put that Inhibitor Chip in there, right? So surely he’s done this experiment tons of times, the one where he puts the “precious tridium” into that big claw that lights up.
You remember the scene, right? It’s where we’re first introduced to Otto’s smart arms, with that great shot of them locking around his abdomen. So nifty.
Okay, so we’re just going to assume that Otto has done this a thousand times already—he’s just never done it for an audience of press people and his bosses. So he puts the tridium, which has to be crazy expensive, since there are only 25 pounds of it “on the whole planet” (you may point out the inconsistency in Otto proposing a “cheap” source of energy that relies on crazy-expensive tridium, but we’re just going to file that knowledge away so we don’t have to think about it, okay?) into the big claw, and the different parts of the claw light up and shoot the tridium with little beams of light.
Poof! There’s suddenly a miniature sun! We have a successful fusion reaction, everyone, and it is so hot, it’s cool. Now, the actual heat radiating from that sun has to be intense (1000 megawatts of surplus energy sounds like a whole lot), which is the whole purpose of Otto’s smart arms in the first place. They’re the only things that can withstand the heat of the fusion reaction, and they’re as much an extension of him as his real arms; at one point he caresses the sun with the open pincer of one of his smart arms and marvels, “The power of the sun in the palm of my hand.”
And then the experiment goes haywire and the claw starts sucking in all the metal stuff and there’s a containment breach and everyone freaks out and Otto’s inhibitor chip gets damaged and a new villain is created and Spider-Man shows up to save the day. Okay, right. We got that part.
But let’s back up to the point before the experiment goes hay-wire. Because up until then, it is a success. It is Otto’s hubris that causes it to go belly-up; he won’t shut it down when it starts to get out of his control, and that’s what allows it to get out of hand and cause all that damage. So it isn’t the experiment’s fault—it’s Otto’s.
The experiment was working. Everyone there was witnessing fusion, the power of the sun in the palm of Otto’s hand, for real. There’s an interesting line delivered by some random Oscorp guy, whispered to Harry Osborn, Norman’s son, “This is a breakthrough beyond your father’s dreams.”
We limit ourselves so often in this life. We come up with our own devices. We formulate our own plans for the way our life will unfold. We structure ourselves quite literally to death, laying out our preconceived notions of how we’ll live until the inevitable moment when we cease to.
But our vision is so small. In Ephesians 3:20, the apostle Paul made this point in what is almost an aside to his readers:
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
He wasn’t really trying to make a point; he was just praising God … but that didn’t stop him from laying the “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” on us.
God is so much bigger than us. And he has such bigger plans for us than we have for ourselves. Think of it like this: Often-times, we look at our lives as if surveying our surroundings by the light of a candle. In a concrete bunker.
There’s an image to run with. Think of a concrete bunker, or any room with no windows. And the room is filled with all sorts of cool stuff—maybe money or Aztec gold or genetically modified spiders. Now, imagine yourself in the middle of that room, holding a single candle. What would you be able to see? Not much. Maybe you could move around to try to glimpse some definition, but by and large, you’d be hard-pressed to take a specific survey of the room with that one candle.
This is how we look at our lives. Our view is dim, so our overall vision is lacking.
Now imagine that same room, but this time with no roof, in the midday sun. That candle suddenly seems pretty pathetic and pointless, doesn’t it? In fact, you may not even be able to see the light from it, because it’s so drowned out by the intense light of the shining sun.
Here’s an interesting factoid about the sun. Since the 1960s, there’s been talk of stashing a bunch of solar panels in space that would beam unfiltered solar energy down to earth for clean, constantly renewable electricity. Why? Because, according to a report from the Pentagon’s National Security Space Office, “A single kilometer-wide band of geosynchronous Earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today.”1
That’s some serious power.
But it pales in comparison to the power of God.
The truth is that, as Christians, we do have the power of the figurative sun in the metaphorical palms of our hands. We have God on our side, taking an active interest in our lives, seeking to guide us and direct us in the way we should live. Why, if we have a choice between the power of the sun or a shoddy little candle, would we toss away the solar light for something so much dimmer?
Well, if we get selfish and start to think we’re in control of the whole game, as Otto did, we can wind up making a big mess out of our intentions. We can’t see the whole picture—so we need to quit looking with our own eyes and give our lives over to God’s purposes.
Note
1. Lara Farmer, “How to Harvest Solar Power? Beam It Down from Space!” CNN.com Technology, June 1, 2008. http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/05/30/space.solar/index.html (accessed January 2010).