To Me My Church: X-Men '97 and Unity

To Me My X-Men! Now you may have likely heard this phrase come up fairly frequently over the past month or so as the new series X-Men ‘97 has been coming out. And for me as a 90’s kid who watched the original X-Men series; I'm not gonna lie, I was super amped to be watching this. I was going to be able to finally see my favorite superheroes like Gambit, Wolverine, Rogue, and let's be honest, Nightcrawler! We're desperately hoping for Nightcrawler. It brought back some awesome nostalgic moments to the point where I started rewatching old episodes just so I could feel like I was catching up. As X-Men ‘97 was going to be continuing on where the original X-Men series was ending.

Here's the thing though, as we are approaching in X-Men ‘97, there is a sad reality that's hitting all of us nerds. There would be no Professor X, because in the original series Professor X has passed away after an assassination attempt on his life and was unable to make it after much needed medical help. And so the X-Men are left wondering, what do we do? What's the next step? And you get that in the very first episode. (By the way, this is no spoilers. You can totally see all this even within the trailer.) You have Cyclops who is a guy who is used to following the lead of the amazing, idealistic, Professor X. And man, those are big shoes to fill! He is the one who is upholding the very idea of humanity can coexist with mutants, that there can be peace. To that ideal, the X-Men have paid heavy prices time and time again for that. But now we have a weird situation where Magneto pops in out of nowhere holding the last will and testament of Professor X. This feels weird because if you know anything about X-Men, Magneto is one of their major villains.

Yeah, like one of the big baddies. And the group are just supposed to be taking it that he's right in Xavier's old office and seeming to want to take charge or be part of the team.  It just doesn't sit right. Even me watching I was like, “Oh man! This is not good, not good at all!” But here's the thing, that's the drive of what Charles wanted in the first place because Professor X and Magneto were once friends. They were tied together that they wanted mutants to be able to live in peace. It's just how they accomplish that are two very different means.

Now you may be wondering how does this connect at all to the Bible? How does this at all fit in? It's no different for us today in our connection of how Christians interact in peace with each other. Yeah, I said it, I called it out. But we as Christians who say we follow Jesus, we sometimes have a hard time getting this unity thing together here. I've brought this up in the past at different points, but the main thing is we need to operate and remember who are we supposed to be united under.  Because we tend to split hairs, don't we? We tend to get hyper focused on some details that are really not core to salvation, but more on preference and how we are engaging with Christ. And it's not bad because Christ meets us individually, but he also meets us corporately on a bigger scale. This actually came out of a conversation that I was having with some students of ours on our Nerdy Bible Study. In 1 Corinthians 1:10 Paul says, “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, to live in harmony with each other. Let there be no divisions in the church. Rather, be of one mind, united in thought and purpose.” We are united under Christ. He is the one who brings us in harmony. By focusing on him, we actually start working on breaking down any kind of divisions. We meet together and love together. Paul echoes this later in Ephesians 4:3-6. “Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all.”

It's as simple as that! It's as simple as acknowledging that we may have differences on how we would like to have our vantage point in practicing our faith, but really it comes down to what would Jesus do? How do we take Jesus in every moment and everything that we do to share that with people outside of the church, but also people inside the church? We should be working in peace together, not in disharmony. We should be working together in love. And maybe we can take a lesson from X-Men ‘97 here. That people who were once enemies can actually be united under one cause. For X-Men ‘97, that one cause or one person is Professor X's dream. For us as Christians, that unity is that we are all tied under Christ. Remember, John 15 where Jesus says He is the vine and we are the branches. We need to be connected to Him and hold on to Him. That's where we find our unity together!

How are you going to unite together with other believers instead of fighting over differences?

To Me My Church!