Real-life Heroes?

Well I suppose that I should start giving plugs to certain links on my page here, seeing as how I am cluttering this page up with advertising. But believe me, it's all quality clutter. Well, to me anyways.

My first plug will be for the amazing new tv show: Heroes. This is its first season, and it's a hit. Very similar to LOST's debut season, the ratings and reviews are through the roof.

I'll provide a brief summary of the season so far. An old geneticist dude living in New York City develops a theory: that a certain few human beings are involved in some type of genetic evolution. Well it turns out that he is right and is murdered because of it. We then begin to jump into the lives of normal people across the globe who have extraordinary abilities: A teenager who can heal from pretty much any type of wound in a matter of seconds, a police officer who can read peoples' thoughts, a Japanese twenty-something who can control time and space, a man who can fly, an artist who can paint the future, among others. Seeing these normal people learning and using their abilities is by far the most entertaining part of the show for me. So anyway, this dude from Japan ends up transporting himself into the future to see a huge explosion ripping apart New York City. He quickly goes back to his present time (a few weeks earlier) determined to be a hero by preventing the city's destruction. Along the way, he meets other people in the show with other abilities, learns that there are others out there that do not use their abilities for goodness, and discovers that being a hero is not all that it's cracked up to be.

Tonight at 9pm PST on NBC, the show moves into the final chapter of the season, ultimately making its way to revealing whether or not New York will, in fact, be destroyed. Will our heroes save the city?

Looking a little deeper, it seems pretty clear to me why this show is so popular. Not only does this show have an all-age audience spectrum, I believe that viewers are also drawn to the extraordinary. Isn't this what we love about Hollywood? May it be science fiction thrillers, fairy tale love stories, or from horror to swashbuckling adventure... human beings love being sucked into that which is NOT the normal, every day ho-hum life. Why is that? What attracts us to characters like those in Heroes who can do things that an average person cannot? Why do we need heroes in our own lives?

Simple. We are human. We fail. This attraction is deep within every human being because we were created in the image of God. He is the ultimate hero. He can do anything we can think of that is extraordinary. He controls time and space, He can fly (or walk on water), He can heal (or raise people from death), He knows the future, and He can read peoples' thoughts. The reason that I'm so attracted to a show like this is because I have a deep need for a hero in my life. Now, I know that deep need is fulfilled through Jesus, but Hollywood often enjoys attributing the powers of God to human beings so that we can identify with them easier. However, Hollywood is most certainly copying God's idea because He already thought about sending Jesus down to Earth so that we can identify with a real hero. The hero over sin and death.

I don't know how this season of Heroes will end, but I'm quite positive that it's going to be a happy ending. After all, the entertainment industry likes to use a good story... because the good story of Jesus has already been written and there's no ending better than that.

Image taken from nbc.com