To better make sense of Packer and Linne's insights, let us begin in a most unlikely spot, a busted elevator with one of the greatest comic villains of all time, the Joker from Batman lore. Of the twenty-five plus actors who have taken on the Joker role over the last fifty years — including such celebrated talents as Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, and Heath Ledger — there is one particular version of the Joker best suited to shed light on Packer's theological insight into the joy of calling God Father. That is the Joker of Todd Phillips's feature-length film, Joker, starring an emaciated and unhinged Joaquin Phoenix as the caped crusader's rising nemesis, while the Batman gets only a combined twenty-nine seconds of screentime and that as an adolescent.
If we watch Joker from within a closed universe, sealed off from supernatural reality, then our explanations of Arthur Fleck's actions are limited to factors like physical abuse, mental illness, and broken social systems. Such explanations are enlightening but incomplete. What if we watch Joker within an open, theologically charged universe?
As Christians we have the awesome and under-appreciated privilege of adoption, calling the Creator our Abba.
Whether we translate the Aramaic as "Father," "Daddy," or "Papa," the truth it conveys is what J. I. Packer calls "the highest privilege that the gospel offers."4 From this perspective we come to see Arthur more profoundly as a man tragically seeking Abba. Arthur's descent into the Joker offers a chilling exposition of what happens without adoption, that is, when our deep existential need to be chosen, protected, embraced, and heard goes unmet. To grasp this, let us imagine ourselves stuck in a busted elevator with the Joker. Here are five truths we could tell Arthur.
1. You Were Abandoned, but There Is a Father Who Chooses
From the paperwork Arthur steals from the Arkham mental ward, we read, "Child was abandoned." It was not only his biological father who abandoned him. Arthur asks, "What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash?"
Many first-century Christians also knew what it was to be abandoned by their biological fathers and treated like trash by society. Many cities in the Roman Empire had literal human dumps outside their gates, a place where unwanted infants could be tossed away like garbage. They were often taken in by slave masters and exploited. They would have been among the first to read Paul's letter to Ephesus:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ. — Ephesians 1:3–5
Your lowercase f fathers gave you nothing. Your capital F Father has blessed you with every spiritual blessing. Your fathers tossed you on the human dump. Your Father chose you before the world began and deems you unblemished. Your fathers abandoned you. Your Father predestined you for adoption into the divine family.
Dear Arthurs of the world, there is a Father who takes those treated like trash and chooses them to be His beloved sons. Through Christ, you can step into a new identity from abandonment to adoption.
2. You Were Brutalized, but There Is a Father Who Protects
After being abandoned, Arthur is adopted by a woman who subjects him to his next failed father figures. The authorities find young Arthur chained to a radiator, covered in bruises, with a massive head injury. All this trauma came at the hands of his mother's abusive boyfriends. There are lowercase f father. figures who brutalize rather than protect. The doctrine of adoption means that we have a better father, a Father we can count on as "a shield," "a hiding place," and "a refuge" (Psalms 3:3; 32:7; 46:1). Romans 8 tells us,
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!" — Romans 8:15
For all the tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and swords the world throws our way, nothing can separate us from the Father's love (vv. 35–39).
Dear Arthurs of the world, you were brutalized, but through Christ there is a Father who vows to protect and preserve us, and nothing can separate us from His love.
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