This past weekend, made over 10 million people went to see Marvel’s newest superhero movie, Thor: Love and Thunder. Most of those people were probably fans of Marvel movies, maybe even fans of the comic books that inspired them. More than a few of those people were undoubtably Christians. I wonder what they thought of the “gods” portrayed in the film.
Spoiler Alert!
The villain in Thor: Love and Thunder is Gorr the God Butcher. Gorr has an ax to grind with all the gods of the universe because Gorr’s “god” allowed Gorr’s daughter (and everyone else in the land) to die without trying to help them. In a short montage, Thor sees multiple gods on different planets who have already been struck down by Gorr’s blade.
Thor knows he’ll need help stopping this bad guy. He travels to Omnipotence City to convince Zeus and other gods to help. If you’re into cultural mythology at all (or Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and other demigod series), you probably recognized some of the gods assembled to watch Zeus’ big entrance. With such a large collection of powerful deities, surely anything could be accomplished.
But Zeus makes it clear that the role of the gods is not to team-up and help each other solve serious problems. After listening to Zeus, one might wonder if these gods did anything useful at all.
What use are the gods?
Gorr the God Butcher sums up his hatred in one sentence: “The only ones who gods care about is themselves.” The god Gorr had pleaded with to save his daughter was proof of that. Zeus’ response to Thor was proof of that. The inaction of the other gods was proof of that. They had no love for their followers. They wanted to be worshipped and obeyed, but they felt little responsibility for the people who prayed to them.
Of course, all the gods in the Thor movie are the stuff of myths and legends. They’re not real, and they never were. But what they represent is very real, and the movie does a good job of showing us just how useless some “gods” are.
We all have false gods in our lives. Idols. Things we look to for answers to our problems. Things we serve with our time and attention because we expect our love and devotion to be returned. They can be actual things, or other people, or goals like being rich, or famous, or loved. They can be good things God has placed in our lives, like our families, homes, and political freedoms. They can be big things we think God has promised us but we haven’t achieved yet.
What use are our false gods?
False gods take many shapes and forms. None of them loves us the way God loves us. None of them has the power to help us the way God helps us. None of them should be more important in our lives than God is. No matter how much time, effort, and love you pour into serving the false gods in your life, you will find, sooner or later, that they take much more than they give.
I did think of one use for a false god.
I really thought the portrayal of Zeus in Thor: Love and Thunder was unnecessarily callous and cold-hearted. But he makes a great visual reminder anytime I’m tempted to rely on something other than the one true God to solve my problems. God won’t give me everything I want or wish for. But his love and his promises guarantee he will always provide what he knows I need.
I hope you enjoyed this look at Thor: Love and Thunder through a Christian worldview lens. Check out other movie reviews on my site here.