In Darkest Night

"They told me this tale. A story about a creature that was born at the beginning of sentience. A yellow entity that was made of living fear. It created terror into anything it came in contact with. Caused entire civilizations to destroy themselves out of paranoia. Their fear was eaten by this creature....

[It] threatened to consume the entire universe. It wanted to infect every living creature with fear, and fear leads to violence. Violence leads to fear. Like an endless loop of death and destruction."
-from Green Lantern: Rebirth #3 by Geoff Johns

Stories are one of the best ways to reframe how you look at something in the world. They crawl into your imagination and get under your skin. I believe a well-told story, whether it "really" happened or a work of fiction, can move us in ways that facts and figures cannot. I know that's true in my own life. I think that's why Jesus probably told so many stories.

It doesn't matter where this good story comes from. Some people will poo-poo the value of a comic book or a science fiction tale, but a good story is a good story no matter its package. I found myself a few days ago reading Green Lantern: Rebirth because my oldest son had some questions about the superhero that I could not satisfactorily answer (I was also looking for an excuse to getting around to it).

It was a story about fear; about its destructive, awful power, but also about how it can be defeated. That story resonated considering the present state of affairs in the world.

Hal Jordan was the greatest of the Green Lanterns. Yet fear via the yellow entity mentioned above creeped into him through the ring he used to protect others. When an unspeakable tragedy annihilated Hal's hometown of Coast City, this embodiment of fear had its foothold. Hal gave into the fear. He was afraid that he wouldn't be able to stop another catastrophe from happening. He needed more power and ultimately destroyed all the rest of the Green Lanterns in his quest to obtain it. The fear twisted Hal into a villain and he destroyed the very thing he stood for. Rebirth is the story of how Hal found his way back after 10 years in the wilderness.

Sometimes I feel like fear is this living entity that feeds off people. It is not a stretch to see civilizations destroy themselves out of paranoia. We have all witnessed fear leading to violence and violence leading to fear. And I have seen smaller, less cosmic variations of Hal's story play out in frightened people burning down the things they love in the name of fear. I have watched too many in the American Evangelical church culture of my youth align themselves with political power out of fear and then betray the values they preached in a quest for further power.

And it all makes me afraid as well. I fear for the good people in those churches, for there are many still. I fear for the Christian faith as a whole in this country as some continue to conflate the cross, the flag, and the elephant (or the donkey, though that seems less frequent). And honestly, I fear having a president who, just using yesterday as an example, will turn a speech in front of the Boy Scouts into an opportunity to boost his ego, demean political opponents, make allusions to unsavory behavior, and demand loyalty. That's just the most recent tip of a frightening iceberg.

Fear seems like a living entity. People on the left and right are afraid. Rich and poor are afraid. African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, the LGBTQ community are afraid. And a lot of these fears are legitimate. The country seems like a powder keg of fear and nature teaches us when we are afraid then it's fight or flight. We either give into the fear fully and hurt those around us. Or we retreat to the places where we think we have nothing to fear, where everyone is the same. But that doesn't solve anything, it just keeps the fear underneath the surface at a low hum until it's ready to roar back when the time is right. It feels sometimes like we're approaching the onramp to an endless loop of fear and violence.

So what do we do? Hal ultimately learned that you cannot just push fear out of the way. You have to face it, acknowledge it, and then overcome it. On the surface, that lesson seems trite. But it requires an honesty and a vulnerability that most people would rather not indulge. I'm a peacemaker by nature so I would rather keep myself and everyone else happy. Facing fear means speaking unpleasant truths about yourself and the world around you. It requires the dirty work of being honest yet in a way that is not antagonistic.

I would argue that even more for Hal, he was able to rid himself of the fear through the help of others. Kyle Rayner, the Green Lantern who succeeded Hal, was the one that set the wheels in motion for his predecessor's redemption. When it came to the big comic book battle in which the evil yellow embodiment of fear was sent back to his cosmic prison, Hal was joined by other Lanterns: Kyle, Guy Gardener, John Stewart, and Kilowog. The text of the story even points out how different all of these Lanterns are and how those differences in concert ultimately defeat Fear.

I harp on it again and again but we need community. We need each other to face down the fear that spreads like a virus. 1 John 4:18 tells us that perfect love casts out all fear. Not many people would see love in a bunch of dudes shooting green light and a yellow space fear entity, but I see an implicit love and trust there. Compassion and love are the only things that are going to banish fear. And I would be remiss to say that, for me, that love and community is grounded in the God who is our light and salvation. After all, Psalm 27 opens declaring that God is our light and salvation and therefore of what should we be afraid. God is, to put it nerdily, our Central Power Batter on Oa.

But I am not going to demand that you get on board with my faith to work at pushing back against the fear that consumes us. I would love it if you did and I won't deny its vital importance in my life. Yet I will not force you into my lane. That is the difficult and messy thing about living in this diverse world. We are going to disagree. But the night is too dark for us to let disagreements give fear permission to run wild.

At the end of Rebirth, Hal is back as a Green Lantern and working his way to redemption. What he did while possessed by fear hasn't disappeared. It happened and it still matters, but he is moving forward. The story closes with the Guardians, who created the Green Lanterns, stating that it was time to rebuild. That's the note of hope on which I want to end. I don't want to let fear possess me. I want to rebuild. I want to be a part of a community that wants to rebuild.

Nerd Note on the Title: I realize that the Green Lantern oath is "In brightest day, in blackest night..." but I didn't feel right about titling this post "In Blackest Night."