Guardian of the Galaxy-Theological Review

Guardian of the Galaxy, or GOTG, was a fun, humorous action adventure comic book movie. Marvel has done an excellent job of mixing in different types of movies over their last few and this movie was completely different then the last movie, Captain America, that they brought out. The movie was rated PG-13 because of the language in it but there was very funny parts that were great and never required crude or the language to make it humorous. Overall it was an entertaining 2 hours that was creative and very imaginative. The movie would not fall out of the Philippians 4:8 framework so it can be view and enjoyed without much Christian compromise.

Now onto the theological review.
The biggest theological point that the movie tries to make is that bad people can do good things. The 5 main characters are all thieves, criminals, and some are even murderers. But they must band together to stop a bigger bad guy from destroying the galaxy. The movie tries to show that bad people can do good things and it even ends with the line from the main character, "so what do we want to do, good, bad or a little bit of both? A little bit of both". The movie tries to end with the fact that, in the end they are still bad people sometimes but they can do good things.

The Bible agrees and disagrees with this theological thought. Paul teaches in Romans that as bad people, sinners before Jesus, we can never do any good. We as sinner before Christ are totally depraved in our nature and our sin covers and reaches ever part of our being. We are not as bad as we could be as sinners because we could always be much worse. By the grace of God sin has gotten to our core and that is why we are sinners committing sins. Paul reminds us then in this sinful state we could never do anything good that would please and honor God because even the good we commit will still have sinful and selfish motives and driven by a sinner's core. This theological point from the Bible disagrees with the movie's thoughts about bad people doing good and honorable things.

But Paul in Romans also tells us that after we surrender our lives to Jesus and His control a part of our lives will still deal with sin in the flesh but now when we know Jesus and live in the power of the Spirit we can do good things and honor God. As Christians, still struggling with bad sinful things we can commit a good act that is praise worthy and honoring to God. So I am not sure I would say as Christians and knowing Jesus we are bad people because we have Christ as our identity, but we are a people that still can commit bad things. So with this Biblical thought there might be some agreement with the movie.

Overall we need to be aware of the fact that a sinner before Christ can never do good and a sinner after Jesus can but still struggle with sin.