I first heard about this a week ago.  Not being a massive comics buff, it seemed curious but potentially a minor thing.  But it's gaining traction as more and more people attempt to make sense of this fictional decision by a fictional character and it's impact on a not-so-fictional country and world.  There is a fair amount of finger-pointing and irritation from both red and blue commentators, each feeling that this is somehow to blame on the other side.

But really, Superman is just aligning himself more with many of his fans under the age of 50.  He's becoming more relative.

The issue of citizenship and its pros and cons is not primarily a political one, but rather one of a larger world-view.  Values that once were common-place in our country are now questioned at the very least, and completely tossed out as irrelevant, antiquated, and just plain wrong at worst.  Bravery, loyalty to country (or God, or family, or spouse, or anything else for that matter), self-sacrifice - these seem to be fading in concrete terms.  Larger scale ideas about Truth and justice are also losing their tangibility.  Most people would profess to still believe in them at some level, but when pressed to demonstrate how these concepts are expressed in their daily life, there's little evidence.

And shrinking reason to expect there to be.

Postmodernism places the individual as the ultimate arbiter of truth.  Truth may exist, but it holds no relevance to the individual unless they perceive it and agree with it.  This trickles down in a lot of different ways.  We've seen it in relationship to church membership and attendance.  People maintain that they are religious or Christian, but deny the necessity of regular worship or more concrete relationship with a single congregation or even denomination.  It is more permissible and even lauded as spiritually mature to assume that the Holy Spirit will guide me to where He wants me to go.  What this often means is that there isn't regular attendance, and that attendance is shuffled between any number of different congregations based on what the person feels they will receive there, style, friends who may go there, or any other number of factors.  The breakdown is that the individual is above the congregation.  Spirituality and even religiosity places the individual not just outside but above predefined congregational or denominational affiliations.  The individual doesn't wish to be restricted or limited or defined by such affiliations - they are greater than that.

The same holds true of nationalism and patriotism.  While people are quick at a baseline level to claim love of country, this love is predicated in part on not being asked for anything in return.  Love of country sounds great until you get the jury summons.  Love of country is great until there's a draft.  Love of country is great until you have to spend an afternoon at the DMV.  Granted, any of these individual things is open to discussion or a desire for greater efficiency or friendliness or cleanliness or what have you.  But the net result is that we want to be left alone to do our own thing.  That's what we ultimately love.  

Patriotism is becoming unpatriotic.  Patriotism implies a lack of love or respect for another country or people - or at least this is what is asserted.  To think one's own country best demonstrates a limited understanding of global relationships and cultures.  It asserts one way of doing or being or thinking over a myriad of others.  It positions one indirectly or directly in opposition to those ways of doing or being or thinking that run contrary to one's own national methods.  More and more we are being told that this is an improper way of thinking.  It demonstrates intolerance.  It asserts a reality or truth that there could be a good or even best way of doing or being, and that others might have something to learn.  It flies in the face of the ramifications of relativism which insists that there is no best, only different.  There is no right, only options.  

We may teach our children the pledge of allegiance in school, but in reality, they are taught constantly to treat every idea, every way of being as effectively equally right.  Patriotism can't stand in that flux for very long.  Not even if you're Superman.  Superman himself is simply acknowledging what many people say in great seriousness - that the idea of nationalistic bonds and associations is too restricting, too limiting, too defining.  He's bigger than that.  He is the sum expression of truth, justice, and his way.  There is no need for any greater definition of the self because the self is expected to define everything else.

As Christians, we struggle with this as well, and part of it is faith-based.  We are in the world but not of the world.  We are citizens of both a temporal culture and society and world, but also an eternal, heavenly kingdom that does indeed transcend the limited notions of self and community that we have to get by with for the time being.   I find myself often thinking in terms that I define as Christian, but that in many ways sound very similar to postmodernism.  Of course, Christianity and postmodernism start from different places and lead to different places.  But along the way there are times when there appears to be overlap, and we find ourselves briefly or in isolated ways being able to concur with the postmodernist on a particular issue or opinion, even though we ultimately disagree with how they reached that point and where they will be led beyond it.

I am led by my faith to recognize that all people in all places are God's creations, God's children, and that He loves them all equally and calls me to do the same.  This de-emphasizes nationalistic zealousness and tempers it.  At the same time, He has placed me in a particular culture and society at a particular point in history and geography.  Part of my work as His creation is determining my proper relationship to my culture and society.  But to pretend that I'm not part of a culture or society, or that I'm somehow able to separate myself from it and maintain a superiority to it is flawed.  The influences run too deep.  The formation is too deep.  And the deeper sinfulness that I bear with me links in to these things in ways that I can't extricate myself from, even if I knew what they were.  I remain a part of my culture and society.

So we shouldn't be surprised that Superman is evidencing the philosophical nuances of our time.  And he has even greater reason to, even greater temptation to follow those lines.  If we are capable of feeling ourselves - with all our foibles and flaws and limitations and problems - as inherently greater than anything else, as the ultimate arbiters of truth and reason and morality and ethics, how much more so for the literal Man of Steel?   Imagine the greater heights (or depths) we would aspire towards if we were unbreakable, unstoppable, physically and bodily as great and powerful as we imagine ourselves to be in our hearts and minds?

We might wind up vying for control of things with another character who decided he was a better judge of reality and truth and goodness and rightness than the Creator of the Universe.  The original light-bearer, Lucifer.