Logan is a Christian Fable Disguised as a Superhero Story

Logan is a Christian Fable Disguised as a Superhero Story March 6, 2017

Dafne Keen and Hugh Jackman in Logan, photo courtesy 20th Century Fox
Dafne Keen and Hugh Jackman in Logan, photo courtesy 20th Century Fox

 

There’s more spirituality in Logan. Quite a bit more. I haven’t even touched on the movie’s obsession with the old movie Shane or the Christian family that Logan, Charles and Laura fall in with for a spell or the use of Johnny Cash’s deeply spiritual “When the Man Comes Around” as the credits roll.

But it seems to me that a Bible verse sits at the heart of Logan, from Paul’s famous “love” passage in 1 Corinthians 13. “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

When the movie begins, Logan is a man without any of those things. He has watched as Charles’ great mind has been atrophied by dementia. He’s watched his own formidable physical gifts wither. He has no faith in either of them. No love for either. His only hope is in a bullet of adamantium—a bullet he plans to use on himself. It’s a resonant symbol, given what we’ve already talked about: The only hope we have in our own devices, in our own sin, is self-annihilation.

But  then he meets a little girl who changes his life.

“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children,” Jesus tells us, “you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” This child, Laura, seeks Eden, a paradise. She has faith that she’ll find it. That faith gives her hope.

And slowly—so slowly—Logan finds that faith and hope, too. He finds it because he finds that, much to his own surprise, he loves the girl. He loves his daughter. And he winds up doing all that he can to make sure that Laura’s own faith, hope and love go on.

“Don’t be what they made you,” Logan says. Don’t give in to the sins you’ve been saddled with, the anger, the despair. Be better.

Logan doesn’t say the Sinner’s Prayer at the end of all things. Again, this is not a Christian movie. But in the end, he’s given a sense of understanding, that there’s something important, something wonderful, that surpasses all human understanding. Suddenly, the wonders of hope and love are unveiled to him like a tapestry. “Oh, so this is what it feels like,” he says.

And in those words, I hear an echo back to 1 Corinthians 13: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part,; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”


Browse Our Archives

Follow Us!