Is Jack Bauer a Christ-Figure?

Joe Carter's skin is crawling. J-Mac Fanboy, the artist blogger formerly known as Thor at the Thinklings is hoping this is all just a bad joke.  What are itching and wondering about?  Mark Driscoll's latest post on his blog.  Yep, it's Driscoll again.  The man who can't open his mouth without creating a controversy.

Joe says:

From what I’ve heard about Driscoll, he sounds like a gifted preacher who has a unique ability to reach the lost. So it is painful to see him make such an idiotic blunder by making a comparison that is indeed not only blasphemous but downright stupid. (It will be equally painful to watch the fanboys come out of the woodwork to defend this nonsense.) The Savior of the World is irreverently compared to the Savior of Los Angeles.

J-Mac says:

Here’s more dumbing down of Christianity and another prime example of the modern pastor trying to make Jesus cool, relevant, and appealing. I fear we won’t have to wait long before Christianity is relegated to the shelves of pop theology and irrelevance.

I think they are both right and they are both wrong.  Hey, with an ability to talk and type out of both sides of my mouth/keyboard like that I'd make a good poiitician.

In my humble opinion Joe and J-Mac are a little too harsh on those who would use pop-culture references to illustrate Biblical truth and/or make a connection with those outside the church.  On the other hand, Driscoll really did a lousy job in this post of illustrating and connecting.

I think are are too harsh in their condemnations of those who would try to be relevant. In effect, Driscoll was offering a simile here between Jack Bauer and Jesus.  One of Joe's commenters named Dana points out where Driscoll went sort of right and then went wrong:

As an English teacher, let me point out that a simile is a comparison between two things that are not alike to highlight one or a few particular points of similarity. A thorough analysis of a simile should look both at what common traits are shared as well as where the commonality breaks down. Driscoll's blog post clearly does not thoroughly analyze the comparison.

Jesus Himself used such similes all the time.  He is like a shephered, He is like a door, etc.. In his first century setting to compare Himself to a  shepherd could have had negative overtones in the religious community.  Shepherds were on the lowest rung of the ladder of social acceptability.  They couldn't keep the laws of ceremonial cleanliness. They were dirty, filthy, stinky people who lived away from polite society and were considered so untrustworthy that their testimony was not allowed in court.  Can you imagine how offended the religious people of the day must have been at Jesus for comparing Himself to a shepherd?  Can you imagine how it must have seemed to them that Jesus was really stretching it to be relevant to the culture, and a segment of the culture which was not too well thought of.

Jack Bauer is a stock character, he is kind of the archetypal comic book superhero, only he is on prime time TV, not a magazine.   Many times these superheroes like Superman and Batman are self-consciously portrayed as Christ-figures (see this article for some examples).  And even when they are not, this whole "one man who gives his life to save the world" is a common theme that has Christological tie ins.  And there is a real sense in which Jack Bauer and 24 exemplify some of these archetypal characters and plots.

So, just as in the comic books, it's not that there is a one to one correspondence between Jesus and the Superhero, it is often just the case that the superhero story picks up on themes from THE STORY of redemption.  Even though an unbelieving world rejects the story of redemption in Jesus, it can't help but long for that story of redemption and that comes out in it's art.

I have done similar things here on the blog and have never been the subject of much outrcy.  Of course that's understandable - I'm not Mark Driscoll and don't have the audience he has, so I'm not noticed like he is and I'm not as controversial as he is.  However, I wonder if anyone who objects to Driscoll's post would want to read some of my earlier posts and weigh in as to whether or not my own attempts to relate fictional characters to Jesus were as egregious as Driscoll's.  Here's one I did on the Count of Monte Christo arguing that Edmond is a type of Christ and here is one I did arguing that Superman is a type of Christ.

Jared, who may be the most famous of the Thinklings, once pointed out, on his Mysterium Tremendum blog, the legitimacy of using pop culture, it's not a mere mindless stab at "relevance."  Some of the things he said answers the concerns of Joe and J-Mac:

Good friend Eric, of the fine Texas blog The Fire Ant Gazette, writes recently about a San Francisco church that posts film reviews on their web site. In the post, he writes: “It’s a pretty sad commentary on our society when we start looking for our spiritual anchors in purely cultural media, but it’s tragic when the church gives credence to the practice, if only implicitly.”

Of course, I disagree with this, if only because there is no evidence that this church, or any film-reviewing church, finds its “spiritual anchors” in “purely cultural media.” What we Christian reviewers interested in exploiting postmodern culture for the Gospel hope to do is use our spiritual anchor to steer the wayward ships of cultural media toward the Light.

In the comments thread, Eric writes, “I think it’s inappropriate for the church to legitimize such fare by attempting to spiritualize it when the film maker had no such intent . . . But the world has plenty of examples of evil or immoral behavior against which we can compare and contrast Christ-like behavior and attitudes, without having to resort to movie reviews to make the point.”

This would be true if this is all the church (or The Church) did to make their points. But the world has no Scriptural reference point. Their common language is the “artistic” artifacts of the culture. It is a valid engagement of the culture to take these bits and pieces and build them into signposts toward the God of the Universe. It’s a bit like Paul referencing the statue of the unknown god in his preaching at the Areopagus (as mentioned by one of the thread’s dissenting voices).

Having said all of that, I will admit  that I groaned when I read Driscoll's post.  It would have been sufficient for him to say something along the lines of "I think the popularity of 24 can be tied, at least in part, to its resonance with some important redemptive themes."  But, he went on and tried to make a bunch of particular tie-ins between Jack Bauer and Jesus that pushed the simile too far.  Because of that I think he gave a reason for reaction like the ones he got from Joe and J-Mac.  Driscoll is brilliant and I love him, but I do think there are times when he tries to be too clever and too cute. 

With that in mind though, let's make sure there are no babies in the bathwater here.  Jesus Himself is our example of relevance in comparing Himself to some of the cultural elements of the day.  Every time a preacher gives an illustration that is not drawn directly from the Bible he is attempting to be relevant.  There is a highbrow sensibility in some of us that will allow for the use of certain more refined similes and metaphors and frowns on those who use more common and popular similes and metaphors.  The one may think they are just illustrating the truth, while they think the other is caving in to the idol of relevance.  In fact, both may be acting in an idolatrous fashion and both may be simply trying to make the truth understandable to a modern audience.