Daredevil Commentary #3: Christian logic, sin, and the act of killing.
(As ever, cutting for spoilers and length. SORRY FOR CLUTTERING UP YALL’S DASHES I JUST HAVE A LOT TO SAY.)
The difference between Karen and Matt is in motivation.
(Cut for spoilers.)
To take a life that is engaged in directly threatening the lives of others–that’s one thing. That’s what Karen does.
What Matt does, though… Later on, Foggy asks whether Matt went after Fisk because he wanted to or because he thought he had to. And Matt doesn’t answer. He really doesn’t seem to know. (Much like he doesn’t seem sure whether he believes what he said about liking to hurt criminals.)
So at the very least, Matt’s afraid that he might have a desire to commit murder–to kill not because killing is the only available option, but because he wants to.
And a thing that, from a Christian standpoint, is very important here is that in the end, it turns out that killing Fisk was not the only possible solution. They do bring him down with the law, like Foggy insists.
But it’s a close call. Until we get there, it really seems like an increasingly likely option. And frankly, the lead on Hoffman pretty much materializes from nowhere for them.
Almost like a miracle.
A big part of Christianity is hope and faith. The belief that yeah, things often suck, and there’s a lot of bad in the world, but it’s worth continuing to work for a better tomorrow. And also that every life–even when the person isn’t making very good use of it–is sacred and irreplaceable and worth fighting for.
So the reason Matt killing Fisk would have been a sin is not so much because it would have been murder–although it would have been. But equally importantly, especially since we see that in the end it did work out, it would also have been an act of despair.
On a social level, that’s sketchy. After all, when bad stuff is going down, how long do you wait before you take action based on a hope that something else will come along? But we’re not talking a social level. We’re talking about Matt’s own very personal morality and motivations. And the reason he went to try to kill the Kingpin was because he was losing hope.
Hope vs. despair seems to be the real crux of Matt’s conflict between himself as lawyer vs. Daredevil. Matt’s life hasn’t exactly been full of reasons to fill up on hope or faith in humanity. He became Daredevil because he saw that the law cannot always prevent evil. But by stepping outside the law, he can.
And this is the argument he has with Foggy. Foggy keeps telling him, “The law, Matt. We’ll bring him down with the law.” But Matt has to struggle very hard–and not without reason, because the situation looks pretty dire–to make that decision.
On another note, while I find septembriseur‘s question of taking on the burden of sin from another would-be killer intellectually an interesting argument, I also find it morally a very alarming one. Killing is never a way to prevent suffering. It only spreads it to different places. It can sometimes prevent immediate loss of life, but killing when there is the hope of any other option doesn’t do violence only to the victim, or even to the killer (as we can see it marks Karen), but also to everyone around them. This is why Matt is shaken when he meets Vanessa. Fisk has people who love him. Killing him would not end suffering. It would just transfer it to other people–and not only Matt.
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