The Wolverine is the sixth film in the X-Men franchise—and sadly, it’s the least redeeming of the series. In it, we see the evils that come from an Eastern, Buddhist worldview, including the weak moral code that comes with it.
Wolverine, whose real name is Logan, struggles with the fact that his physical body keeps healing itself, making his body virtually immortal. Already having lived for more than 150 years, Logan has seen loved ones come and go, including the latest love of his life, Jean Grey. All he wishes now is that he could live a normal life.
This aspect of Logan’s immortality is the main theme of the movie The Wolverine. Yashida, a wealthy Japanese capitalist who’s dying, offers to give Logan the opportunity to transfer his immortality to him.
Why is it that humans have the desire to live forever? In The Wolverine, the answer is clear. According to Yashida’s Buddhist worldview, he has no eternal soul that will live on after he dies. To avoid reincarnating as a different person, his greed drives him to seek eternal life on earth. His earthly body is all he has to live for, and he has dedicated his whole life to living forever.
What he fails to understand or chooses to reject is that everyone will already live forever.
Thus, the real question Logan and Yashida should be asking is, Will people live happily ever after in heaven or painfully forever in hell?
In The Wolverine movie, it is said that eternity is a curse. This is one of the movie’s truest statements. These characters that live a life apart from Jesus are living an eternal curse. Thankfully, however, Jesus Christ has broken the curse—if we choose to believe and trust in Him and Him alone. Then we can live immortally and eternally with Him in heaven.
Non-Christians often challenge believers to tell them why a loving God would send people to hell. What they fail to consider, however, is that the only people who go to hell are those who truly want to be there, those who reject Jesus and those refuse to go to the heaven that Jesus Christ created for them.
Living with an immortal physical body without any fellowship with the Son of God who created that body for you and died for your sins can indeed be a kind of living hell. What the characters in The Wolverine truly need and truly want is fellowship with the one true God. Without that, we have nothing.
“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” (Rev. 21:4, KJV).
This article originally appeared on Movieguide.org.
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