Back when walking around malls was still a thing, and they were well-populated with a variety of stores and people, one of the things you could count on was seeing an eclectic swath of graphic T-shirts. The ones that stood out to me then were those with the clever pun or sarcastic comment, maybe with an obscure reference that I happened to recognize. One example that I still remember was able to incorporate all of these elements, which is likely why it still stands in my mind today. The shirt contained a still from the original, classic film King Kong after he has been captured and put on display in New York. He is standing and his arms outstretched horizontally as they are tied to a crossbar. You can probably predict where I am going with this. The shirt read “King Kong died for our sins.”
Fiction—whether in novel, TV, or movie form—is filled with similarly unexpected, almost scandalous, Christ figures.
On the surface, this reads as simply yet another mockery of Jesus and the Christian faith. This, however, would be a superficial misunderstanding of the image and perhaps the filmmakers, even if it was not conscious to the T-shirt designer. While Kong is “the monster” in the film, he proves to be the victim of human greed and exploitation. Also, part of Kong’s downfall is his captivation with Ann, which inspired the famous final line, “It was beauty that killed the beast.” No, Kong was not the heroic Christ figure one expected, but that is what made him a thought-provoking one.
Fiction—whether in novel, TV, or movie form—is filled with similarly unexpected, almost scandalous, Christ figures. Fans of Breaking Bad may have noticed Walter White’s cruciform pose that followed the death that saved his downtrodden former partner. While the bear-man Beorn from The Hobbit fights for good in the end, his chaotic unpredictability coupled with his hypostatic union of bear and human natures point to Christ’s unpredictable actions throughout the Gospels.
One final example from fiction I remember: Having to write a paper on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in high school, I was struck by one prompt proposing Randall McMurphy as a Christ figure. He is an outsider to the mental health facility who operates beyond the level of the inhabitants. He continually upends the status quo and frustrates the established authorities. He seeks to emotionally free the imprisoned and it is his death that contextualizes Chief Bromden’s escape (being the narrator, he is also a stand-in for us, so it is our freedom that is instantiated too).
This concept of the unexpected and provocative hero is not just new to story-telling, it is biblical and even Christ-like. Not only is every hero of the Old Testament shown to be flawed, but some, even the progenitors of Jesus, would make for villains in another story.
Jacob, later Israel, was the usurper, the heel-grabber. Remember it was the serpent in Genesis 3 who struck at the heel; now this other one will continue God’s covenant.
Samson may be the most provocative precursor of Christ because of his selfishness. However, his angelic annunciation (Judg. 13:3), his use of riddles (Judg. 14:14), his love of a woman who is a Philistine and enemy of Israel (Judg. 16:4), and his sacrificial death to destroy God’s enemies (Judg. 16:29-30) all provide obscure shadows of what Christ would reveal in himself generations later.
Briefly, there is Cyrus, who was given the title of “christ” in Isaiah 45:1 despite being a non-priest and non-Israelite. He is indirectly responsible for Israel’s temporary, imperfect return from exile and their rebuilding of the temporary, imperfect temple, both expectations for the Jewish Messiah that Jesus would ultimately fulfill.
Our expectations for God, for honor, and for strength must be upended to truly understand Christ.
Finally, there is the most unexpected Christ figure in biblical history, St. Paul, who went from persecuting Christians to becoming more responsible for the expansion of the Church than anyone other than Christ himself. It is from St. Paul that we get two of the most important lines for understanding the unexpected workings of grace. First, his subversion of the Old Testament “curse” of Deuteronomy 21:23 through Christ’s death in Galatians 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.” This is why St. Paul could call the cross “folly” and “scandal” by the expectations of the world (1 Cor. 1:23), and again, when God tells him his “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). Both of these show that our expectations for God, for honor, and for strength must be upended to truly understand Christ.
These models are all meant to condition us to recognize the unexpected, even scandalous nature of Christ himself. Every struggle to accept Jesus’s claims to his identity or his teaching was rooted in misplaced expectations for who the Messiah should be or what the Messiah should say. We find this especially in his cleansing of the temple (John 2:19-21; Matt. 26:59-61), his ascetical practices and associations (Matt. 11:18-19), and the fact that he was treated like a criminal (Luke 22:37).
In cleansing the temple, Jesus surprises the money-changers as well as readers whose piety has calcified to complacence. When encouraging the feasting of his disciples, he upends expectations that spirituality is sorrowful. In dying with criminals, as a criminal, he affirms that he would even die for criminals.
Why does the unexpected nature of biblical heroes, and Christ himself, matter? The same reason the unexpected Christ-likeness of Kong, Walter White, Beorn, and Randall McMurphy matters. Christians are not just called to see Christ in those whom it is easy to see, and we only know the true Christ when we allow him to challenge our assumptions and upend our expectations. This is not just the role of well-rounded characters in fiction, it is what happens when we try to understand people more thoroughly.
As the previous biblical examples show, this subversion of expectations is how God operates in revealing Himself. Whether directly or indirectly, purposefully or accidentally, it is also how a Christian and post-Christian culture presents humanity in its heroes. Developing a lens by which we can recognize Christ in these unexpected heroes of our stories—stories both ancient and contemporary, “pagan” and Christian—will help us develop a lens by which we can recognize Christ in the unexpected people we encounter in life. When we can recognize Christ more clearly in others, especially in the unexpected parties, we will make Christ more recognizable in us.