"The Dark Knight" offers several themes that could be elaborated on, but I'm focusing on the characters of the Joker and Harvey Dent. As I said in yesterday's post, the Joker gives us a pattern of some of Satan's schemes.
Applying the struggles of Dent's character to the Christian experience, Satan wars against men and women -- made righteous by the blood sacrifice of Jesus -- who seek to repair the causes of inner brokenness instead of burying them behind glamourous facades. As God's enemy, and as the enemy of the souls of the redeemed, Satan relishes in having followers of Christ wallow in pretense. He hates authencity. He likes Dent's outward glow -- golden but shallow!
In "The Dark Night," the Joker presses his crazed fingers into Dent's inner wounds, the places Dent didn't get healed before he became Gotham's righteous crusader. Had Dent possessed the world view that God ultimately wields all justice and corrects all injustice, and then found rest in that world view, he would not have sought his own revenge when the pain of losing his girlfriend -- and losing the war against crime -- was more than he could bear.
Dent's story is a well-told cautionary tale within a larger, complex story about Batman. (Isn't it funny where we can learn a truth of God?) As Dent shows us, outward change without the constant inward working of the Holy Spirit falls short of the authencity God desires and plays into the religious pretense Satan loves to produce. Satan knows that when the Christian is real, self-aware of his weaknesses and focused on the complete strength of God, the Christian is formidable.
I love this quote from one of my favorite preachers, Charles Spurgeon, about Joel 2:13. The passage refers to rending our hearts, not our garments, and turning to God. Spurgen is quoted on the site, www.gracegems.org, as saying:
"Men will attend to the most multiplied and minute ceremonial regulations; for such things are pleasing to the flesh; but true religion is too humbling, too heart-searching, too thorough for the tastes of the carnal men; they prefer something more ostentatious, flimsy, and worldly. Outward observances are comfortable; eye and ear are pleased; self-conceit is fed, and self-righteousness is puffed up: but they are ultimately delusive, for in the time of death, and at the day of judgment, the soul needs something more substantial than ceremonies and rituals to lean upon. Apart from vital godliness all religion is utterly vain; offered without a sincere heart, every form of worship is a solemn sham and an impudent mockery of the majesty of heaven."
Judy Howard Ellis
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