Finding God in "Venom"

Yes, you heard me. Finding God and themes of redemption and forgiveness in Venom, one of Spiderman's greatest foes.

Before I do that, for those of you who don't know Venom and his importance to Marvel Comics, let me give you a brief history of Venom...

You may remember Topher Grace (That 70's Show, Traffic) playing Venom in Spiderman 3. Before Venom became, well, Venom - he was Eddie Brock. Eddie Brock was raised in a Roman Catholic household in San Francisco. His mother died due to complications of his birth and so, Eddie was raised by his devastated father. As is the case with a distant father, Eddie grows up trying desperately to win his father's love and approval by overachieving. He was an athlete but decided to switch majors in college to journalism after being inspired by the Watergate scandal. Keep in mind, this backstory is a fictional one... for a comic book character. Eventually, Eddie lands a job with the Daily Globe and marries Anne Weying.

Once Eddie buries himself in his work, things really start to go wrong. He becomes convinced that he has heard the confessions of a serial-killer named, Sin Eater and writes an exclusive article revealing this fact for the Globe. Unfortunately, it turns out that the man who confessed to these murders is a compulsive confessor and Spiderman captures the real Sin Eater. Eddie's professional life is destroyed and he is promptly fired from the Globe and is forced to work for sleazy tabloid magazines. Brock blames Spiderman for all of this.

To make matters worse, Brock has cancer and it will be killing him. Eddie decides to get back into athletics and weightlifting to reduce stress and his body grows to Olympic size as he packs on tons of muscle. Anger and depression remain though and he and his wife, Anne, divorce.

Suicidal, Brock heads to a nearby church to pray for forgiveness and this is where the alien symbiote that Spiderman has discarded finds Eddie and bonds with him. It feeds off his cancer and his hatred and fear and now Eddie possesses similar powers to Spiderman. Like everything in Eddie Brock's life, he plays second fiddle to Peter Parker's Spiderman as the symbiote sees Brock as a second rate host and really wants to attach itself to Spiderman. Brock names himself, Venom because he sees himself as poison to Peter Parker/Spiderman.

As violent and malicious as Venom is, he still can't bring himself to kill innocent people (not always) and over the years, Spiderman actually asks Venom for help. Venom has become the anti-hero and fanboys love him.

Spiritually, this figure is an amazing representative of us. We sin. We mess up. We make poor choices and sometimes, we revel in those choices. Forgiveness and forgiving others is a big part of following Christ and the character Venom seems to seek forgiveness quite often. He looks to be absolved of some of the heinous deeds that he has done and even his lawyer, Matt Murdoch (Daredevil) believes that he is an innocent who is not responsible for his actions as a result of the symbiote's attachment. Still, despite all of this, Eddie Brock struggles and often wonders if God can forgive him for the "devil inside". It is pretty compelling stuff. I believe Venom is the visible and ugly junk that manifests itself in all of us when we decide to follow our own way instead of God's. Just a thought. See? I told you all truth is God's truth.

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Greg