4/27/2020 - Mindful Light (Righteousness Stone)
“When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 8:12
If you had the Infinity Gauntlet, what would happen when you snapped your fingers?
“From the dawn of the universe, there was nothing. Then…boom. The Big Bang sent six elemental crystals hurtling across the virgin universe. These Infinity Stones each control an essential aspect of existence.” – Wong (a very underappreciated character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe)
I spent several hours continually studying and going back and forth with this Christian Infinity Gauntlet and its Infinity Stones and with the Infinity Gauntlet and its Infinity Stones. I chose the colors and tried matching up all the Infinity Stones the best that I could. I think I did a pretty good job, too. There were some that could have gone in a couple different directions, but it is all one in the same. However, if you disagree with any of this, feel free to speak up. I would love to hear your thoughts.
“But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.” 1 Timothy 6:11
When Paul wrote out 1 Timothy 6:11, he had order in mind. If he had order in mind, I think it is only right that I go through each of these Infinity Stones with order in mind. With that saying, we will start off with the Righteousness Stone. In accordance with the Righteousness Stone I paired it with the Mind Stone.
I chose the Mind Stone for a couple of reasons. The first thing I did with all the Infinity Stones, I wrote down all the colors that coincide with each of the original MCU Infinity Stones. Then I wrote down how the color of those stones match up metaphorically with the Bible. Throughout the Bible, the color yellow is portrayed as: faith and glory of God, anointing, joy, glory, divinity, Kingship, Eternal Deity, foundation, altar, beauty, precious, holiness, Light of God, and righteousness.
Then I went and saw what the color of the original MCU Infinity Stone was. The yellow Infinity Stone was the Mind Stone. The Mind Stone could do a lot, but its main attributes are that it allows the holder telepathy and gives the holder extreme intelligence (we will talk about more of what it really could do later).
William Barclay wrote, “The virtues and noble qualities set before Timothy are not just heaped haphazardly together. There is an order in them. First, there comes "righteousness," dikaiosune. This is defined as "giving both to men and to God their due." It is the most comprehensive of the virtues; the righteous man is he who does his duty to God and to his fellow-men.”
Righteousness, to me, is doing the right thing (being right). We all have our own definition of what right is, but there is actually only one true way of what right is and that is defined by the Bible. Righteousness, is living, acting and doing what God wants us to do; that is living like Jesus would.
Righteousness is one of the biggest attributes of Jesus. He lived and reflected righteousness; he was righteousness. Like I said before, it is said that yellow in the Bible metaphorically represents the Light of God. And also, like I said, one of the easiest ways to be righteous is to act like Jesus did. John 8:12 says, “When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’” Here, Jesus is calling himself the light of the world, the ultimate light, and whoever follows him will be in his righteousness and never be in darkness. Jesus’s light is a powerful light that darkness will never overcome (John 1:5). John 14:6 says, “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. no one comes to the Father except through me.’” This simply saying, walk like me, act like me, and live like me.
In order for us to live in righteousness we have to have the right mind, we have to set our mind on the way that Jesus would live. We have to run towards the ultimate light. Colossians 3:2 says, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” I am going to educate you on the MCU for a second or two, but don’t skip it because it is necessary for the full explanation and the full experience.
After the whole universe came to be, the four immensely powerful Cosmic Entities created the 6 Infinity Stones out of 6 singularities. The Mind Stone was to govern over the fabric of Mind. The Mind Stone made its MCU debut through Loki and his Scepter. The Infinity Stone granted the Scepter to accomplish numerous of things, such as blasts, manipulate minds, enable teleportation, astral projection, and allow mental communication. The Stone was under Thanos’s possession until he entrusted the Scepter to Loki in order to invade Earth and obtain the Tesseract. After a numerous of events (just watch the first Avengers movie) the Scepter and the Mind Stone got in the hands of HYDRA (who were an evil organization that corrupted S.H.I.E.L.D). HYDRA did a number or experiments on the Scepter, giving powers to two subjects, Pietro and Wanda. During the Avengers movie, both Tony Stark and Bruce Banner had the Scepter and were experimenting on it and trying to learn about the Scepter and the Mind Stone. They were devising a plan to create the Ultron Program. After invading the HYDRA base, they retrieved the Scepter back. This is where they sent it with Thor to Asgard for further study and this is where they found out what they Mind Stone was and what it could do. They also figured out how to use it to create the Ultron Program. This program then went to backfire, because Ultron became corrupt and went on to break the Scepter and steal the Mind Stone. There he forced Helen Cho to create him a body in a Cradle using the Mind Stone as a sort of base. But this plan failed when the Avengers stole the Cradle and took the body for themselves; which in birthed Vision. Vision used the Mind Stone which was embedded in his head to defeat Ultron. After that, the Civil War happens because of the Battle of Sokovia, he was Team Ironman. Then boom Infinity War, Vision and Wanda were attacked by Thanos’s people who tried to remove the Mind Stone from Vision’s head, which failed. They went back “home” to America, where they then went to Wakanda to try and surgically remove the Stone thanks to the GOAT, Shuri. They were successful, but also at the same time not successful since Thanos had the Time Stone. Thanos reversed time and ripped the Mind Stone out of Vision’s head, this cause Vision to die and then we all know what happens next…SNAP (If you had the Infinity Gauntlet, what would happen when you snapped your fingers?)
Vision is a pretty cool character if you ask me, another very underrated character in the MCU. Thanks to the Mind Stone he has numerous powers and abilities. The Mind Stone helped create his synthetic (android) body. He has superhuman strength and durability. He is able to manipulate density, fly, create and use energy blasts, has synthetic skin constructs, and computer interaction (hacking). The Mind Stone also gives Vision genius-level intellect and makes him an expert combatant. The Mind Stone represents and governs the fabric of the mind, it grants whoever holds it complete control over the hearts and minds of everyone. It has a super advanced intelligent framework with a powerful supercomputer operating it.
We do not literally have the Mind Stone or any of the other Infinity Stones, but we have Jesus. He is our Vision; he is our Mind Stone. He is the one that is the Ultimate Light, the true guiding star. There is no one greater, smarter, and more righteous than Jesus himself. Putting the definition of righteousness together is really hard, but the simplest way is by just pointing at Jesus. When we act in righteousness people follow, they wonder. They wonder how someone can act like that; it is sort of like they are under a telepathic spell. They just want to know more. While I worked at Nike, some of my coworkers constantly asked me: How are you always so happy? How do you have so much energy? How are you always willing to help? How are you able to stay so calm? The answer that I always gave and boasted was “Jesus and coffee.” Sometimes the best way to minister and evangelize isn’t by smacking someone with the Bible and scripture, but by living and loving like Jesus did. Be an example of the best example.
When we have the Light of Jesus in our life it is easier to handle the difficult things in life. They are still difficult, but it is easier. You find a sense of purpose in yourself and the situation. For me, I was able to not only expect the bad (in a good way, being watchful), but also to appreciate it (the growth that it brought).
To simply put wrap this up; yellow throughout the Bible represents divinity, the Glory of God, righteousness, and the Light of God. The Mind Stone gives great power to its holder and that includes great intelligence (to know right from wrong, and to do the right thing). Jesus was the embodiment of righteousness (knowing right from wrong and doing the right thing), there is no one that represent righteousness more than he did. We are called to be righteous, use the power of the Mind Stone and change the world by acting like Jesus would.
If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him. 1 John 2:29
If you had the Infinity Gauntlet, what would happen when you snapped your fingers?