Spider-Man 2 deals with the duality of mankind—our ability to be bad or good, based on the choices we make: either to stand up to the inevitable evil that we encounter in this world or to let it rage unchecked.
The filmmakers illustrate this in a long scene between Peter and Aunt May. She’s being forced out of her home for monetary reasons, and does a whole lot of packing while Peter just stands there. She has hired the nine-year-old boy from across the street to help with the task (something he does much better than Peter), and they’ve been discussing the curious lack of Spider-Man in the city. What’s he been up to?
Peter has been experiencing doubts about his calling to be super, and has chucked his Spidey suit in the trash. But now the crime rate in the city is appallingly high—where in the world is Spider-Man? Henry, the neighbor kid, asks Peter this very question, and Peter lamely replies that Spider-Man quit to try other things.
Fortunately, Henry doesn’t press the issue with a well-placed “what other things?” Instead, his hopeful response is just: “He’ll be back, right?”
“I don’t know.”
Peter really doesn’t know. His life has been crazy, with all the trying to be a college student, a photographer and a superhero.
And make no mistake: Spider-Man is a hero. But while it’s easy to focus on the cool stuff—the sticking to walls, the webbing that shoots from his wrists, the super strength, the ability to take a punch that would send the rest of us to the ER—Aunt May rightfully points out that those things aren’t what make Spidey a hero.
Nope. As Aunt May puts it, heroes are “courageous, self-sacrificing people, setting examples for all of us.” According to her, heroes are people who tell the rest of us “to hold on one second longer.”
Then Aunt May holds forth on heroes in everyday life, and delivers what may be the most truth-packed line in the entire Spider-Man series: “I believe there’s a hero in all of us.” This theoretical hero “keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble and finally allows us to die with pride.”
Ah, but there’s a hitch that comes with being a hero—because heroism inevitably involves self-sacrifice, giving up something (or someone) we really care for in order to serve the greater good.
Can you be a hero? Yes! Maybe not in the sense that Aunt May means, when she says that “there’s a hero in all of us.” Taken one way, that can be a remarkably humanistic statement, one that propagates the notion that we are all inherently good. The apostle Paul wrote in Romans 8 that we all have a sinful nature that does its best to waylay our good intentions (“the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so … those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God” [vv. 7-8]). Our sinful minds are the antithesis of a “hero in all of us.”
But Paul then wrote this, in the very next verse: “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you” (v. 9). There you go! You can shake off that sinful nature with God’s help. And the heroism part comes later on, in Romans 8:12-17:
Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
Think of that. “We share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.” It’s the very idea of self-sacrifice as a necessary part of heroism, isn’t it?
So there is a hero in all of us—if we have given up our sinful nature and become sons of God, that is. We all have the capacity to be nice to each other, yes, and the ability to show compassion to our fellow man. But if we want to be truly heroic, we have to give up our sinful nature and all that entails—all our own selfish pursuits—and adhere to Romans 6:6-7: “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.”
Letting go of our old selves is the first step to true heroism—making God’s priorities our own. And once we start down that road, we can truly give way to the “hero in all of us.”