Super, Human Abilities

This morning, I was asked what I would be dressing up as for Halloween. My costume, which I designed several months ago, would consist of a red T-shirt with yellow duct tape on it in the shape of a large letter "A" inside of a Superman-style, gem-shaped shield-thing. I'd also be wearing a yellow towel as a cape.

Some people believe that I spend too much of my time thinking about fantasy stuff, including magic and superheroes. I'll admit that I should probably spend more time in reality than I do. But in my defense, some magic and super-powers, especially many of my favorites, can be seen as being exaggerations of powers that many of us already have, and my thinking about super-powers inspires me to use my own powers for good.

Some super-powers admit to being exaggerations of standard, human abilities. These include super-strength, super-speed, and super-senses. The funny thing is that human beings are already pretty strong and fast, and we can become stronger and faster by exercising. And most of us already have decent senses, and we can sharpen our senses by paying attention to them. It's amazing how much you can hear when you listen carefully.

Some of the more supernatural super-powers involve travel, like flight or teleportation. While humans haven't invented teleportation yet, we have created flying machines in which we can travel all over the world in a matter of hours rather than spending months at sea. That's pretty fantastic compared to what we had a few centuries ago.

While we're on the subject of technology, two of the most popular superheroes aren't actually "super" at all. Neither Batman nor Iron Man have any super-powers beyond what their gadgets can do, but their gadgets enable them to do some incredible things. The same is true for us. Modern technology is amazing! With our gadgets, we can do all sorts of things, and one of the things technology is the best at is communication.

The best communication-related super-power I can think of is telepathy, which allows people to transmit their thoughts and possibly read the minds of others. We don't have actual telepathy, but through the internet, we can easily broadcast our thoughts out to all the world, if we want to. We don't have the ability to read minds, but we can read people's blogs and Facebook posts to get a look into their minds. And even in person, we can usually tell what other people are thinking (and more importantly, how they're feeling) by paying attention to their body language and facial expressions as we as by trying to see things from their point of view.

From there, super-powers get even more magical. Abilities like telekinesis, elemental control, and the ability to shoot energy beams from our hands or eyes might be fun to have, but we don't really need them. Considering the abilities we already have, we don't usually need any more powers than that. We are already super humans. We can already do incredible things. So the question is, do we? To quote a popular line from a super-hero movie, with great power comes great responsibility. We have great power, or at least some power. We have the responsibility to use our powers for good.

Personally, when I really think about it, I don't actually want super-powers. I have a hard enough time controlling the powers I already have. Certain super-powers would be really useful from time to time, but I don't want to stand out like superheroes tend to do, and I can barely handle my own responsibilities, so I'd rather not take on any more. We don't need super-powers. In fact, if we can't handle that kind of responsibility, we may need not to have them. God is going to judge us based on what we do with the gifts He has given us. The more He gives us, the more He expects us to do with them. We might be lucky that we don't have actual super-powers. For most of us, it might be enough of a responsibility to use the super, human abilities we already have.