For many of us, Spider-Man is the ultimate superhero. There have been times where one of the authors of this book (you’ll have to guess which one) has extended a hand toward the remote control, lying on the table across the room, and, with an imaginary “thwip!” sent a make-believe bit of webbing from our wrist to retrieve it.
It didn’t work, of course. But it’s nice to pretend.
We love Spider-Man. We won’t deny it.
We also love Jesus. We won’t deny that, either. (In fact, we love Jesus more, but Spidey is the ultimate in superheroes.)
As authors, we’ve conditioned ourselves to look for the spiritual in everything. Especially modern stories. We love to try to figure out what the story is telling us about spirituality, eternity, good and evil. We even try to catch a glimpse of Jesus in the script and see if it says anything at all about the way He wants us to live our lives.
We do this because Jesus often used stories to illustrate His sermons. To make His points palatable. To demonstrate the way we should live. And if Jesus used stories, then we feel like we’re on solid ground when we look into stories to find spiritual truths. We could even call them superhero parables! And believe us, we feel like there’s a lot of spiritual truth in the Spider-Man mythology.
So here’s the big question: What are we, as a culture, learning when we watch Peter Parker pull that mask over his head and go to work against the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, the Sandman, Venom and the parade of other small-time thieves and crooks he creams throughout the movie trilogy?* Are we just seeing entertainment, a bunch of flashing lights on a screen, or are we peering behind the curtain of society and seeing something else altogether?
Is it possible to find God in the lumbering belly of this two-and-a-half billion-dollar beast?
We think so. We see spiritual insights all through the Spider-Man trilogy. And that’s why this book exists. To let you see what we see. To encourage you to look beyond the crazy-good special effects, the heart-stopping action, the sharp dialogue and Tobey Maguire’s terrible crying, and touch the heart of God.
To find the hero within you.
Because it’s in there. And it isn’t waiting for any crazy, one-in-a-million shot in a science lab to unlock it, either. The hero within you is just waiting for you to learn the truth about yourself, about God and about the world around you.
Like Spider-Man, you’ll find it amazing.
* In compiling this book, we made a deliberate decision very early on to stick to discussing only the Spider-Man films of 2002, 2004 and 2007. While the comics, the early campy movies with Nicolas Hammond as Peter and the various television incarnations of our favorite web-slinger are rich with spiritual material to mine, we didn’t want to let our focus get too thin. So keep in mind, as we move ahead, that we’re only talking about what we see in the first three films of the Spider-Man saga. Now get your DVDs ready, find a comfortable chair, pour yourself a soda and get ready to travel through the films with us to discover the soul of Spider-Man.