To the Fantastic Four, you know who you are:

I was lying in bed, staring at the vent that is giving me a perpetual cold, racking my brain for the names of all four members of the Fantastic Four. See, when I was in second grade, I had this crush on a smart kid. He loved comics. He was also going to be an archaeologist. He is happily married and working towards opening his own karate dojo with his wife (God bless you both, J and E). But not that he can receive any of the credit for my sleepless night, or my inner-most desire to become a super-hero.

I have this capacity to imagine. Which, in light of Cervantes before me, I surmise means if I can think it up, it must exist--or at least, be able to exist. I would posit that humanity knows evil exists and desires to be freed from it. We make up superheroes to redeem us from that evil which, literally, so easily besets us.

There is a superhero no one had to make up. No one had to give Jesus tights and a cape. They took his garments and gambled over who would keep them. He didn't have a utility belt or web-shooting hands. He had hands that would touch men with leprosy, feet that would walk on water to a scared sidekick, and a heart so full of love when he pointed it at darkness, it shriveled and disappeared. He enables us to be heroes.

But if we define hero by who Jesus was, what's a hero? A hero is walking in as everyone else evacuates the building. A hero follows the laws of the land, but also follows the higher code of hero honor. A hero lives with a purpose. A hero serves his people. A hero loves his people.

A hero lays down his life, his desires, his needs for those of his friends.