I can still smell the wet buttery popcorn as we usher ourselves down dim lit aisles and settle into a nook of four empty seats. I barely weigh enough to keep my chair from collapsing in on me. An unfortunate circumstance that will last throughout most of my preteen years. I can hear the sound of Dr. Pepper being sucked down to the ice through cheap straws. We settle in just as the room fades into darkness and music lights up the screen. Little do I know, this moment will begin a years long girly teenage obsession with Orlando Bloom.

As one scene fades into the next in a fascinating flow of events, my mind works quickly to sort out the plot. Townspeople good, pirates bad. No wait…maybe it is the other way around? Is Jack Sparrow the protagonist or the antagonist?

Every movie has a hero and a villain. Good guys and bad guys. The protagonist and the antagonist. As a culture who has grown up on Blockbuster and movie theatres turned Netflix and live streaming, it makes sense how we might begin to confuse reality from fantasy. It’s almost as if we’ve been programmed to do so. After all, many movies aren’t as far removed as ghost pirates and cursed treasure. Some of my favorite films are stories I can identify with—ones where I can envision myself as the main character.

The harm in this seemingly innocuous mentality is that we have been subconsciously trained to categorize humanity into two groups: the good guys and the bad guys. Of course, in these scenarios, we are always the good guy. Sure, we aren’t perfect, but even the hero has some junk to overcome, right? That’s what makes him so relatable and human. Unfortunately we aren’t so quick to extend the same grace to the villains in our stories. You disagree with my politics? Bad guy. You don’t believe the same as me? Villain. You just can’t seem to get your crap together? Antagonist.

Maybe we don’t think in such blatantly black and white terms, but if we are honest with ourselves, we’ve all been guilty of the “us verse them” mentality. Maybe your “us” is a specific denomination or political party. Maybe it’s a moral standing or accolade you’ve acquired. A degree or profession that sets you above your peers. The “them” being the morons, the uneducated, the heartless humans who would deign to hold a different viewpoint or have ideas of their own.

I’m going to tell you something that might sting a little bit. You are not the protagonist in this story. Heck, you’re not even the protagonist in your own story. As believers, we know that there is only one hero in this film, and we hung Him on a cross. I wonder if the religious people who fought so hard to kill this man thought they were the good guys in the story? You can see how detrimental their mistake was.

Thank God we have been given another chance to get it right. My fear is that we have continued with the same faulty mentality as the Pharisees. We are quick to categorize and draw lines in the sand. We have esteemed ourselves above anyone who looks or thinks or acts differently. We are threatened by the things we don’t necessarily understand or agree with. So we demonize each other. But if we know that God is the real hero in this story, where does that leave humanity? Surely there must be some distinction of good and bad…right?

Real life stories aren’t always about the protagonist and the antagonist.

I am learning that people are typically not as good or as bad as we think they are. They are often somewhere in the middle. And when I waste too much time trying to figure out if someone’s good mostly outweighs their bad or vice versa, I’m missing out on this incredible opportunity to simply love like Jesus.

In my most recent post, 40 Rules to Live By, rule number eight stated:

Don’t demonize those you disagree with. Real life stories aren’t always about the protagonist and the antagonist. Just sinners called to love like Jesus.

What if we stopped seeing each other as the good guys and the bad guys? What if we recognized that the real bad guy, satan, makes no distinction. He hates us all and maybe, just maybe, the most effective tactic in taking us down is by pitting us against each other. Maybe our real fight is not against flesh and blood but against angels and demons, light and darkness. And what if the real protagonist already won? What if he already took away every power of the enemy and all we had to do was trust him?

It may not be epic sword fights and skeletons, but it holds all the hope of having the happiest ending of any story ever told.

Cover Photo by Vincentas Liskauskas on Unsplash

What Hollywood Got Wrong

Real life stories aren’t always about the protagonist and the antagonist.