I remember the week I rooted for the Evil Superman

Have you ever been dogged by bad thoughts? Thoughts you could not let go. I have and it all started with a Superman comic book and a confession.

Confession # 1

I remember the week I rooted for the evil Superman. In 1962 I got my hands on the comic book that introduced the anti-Superman Bizarro. And didn’t let go, for about a week. I reveled in Bizarro’s nastiness and carried my well-worn comic book around as a talisman, even wedging it inside the New Math paper textbook my school handed out when I was in 8th grade. I did and felt all of this in secret, telling no one. Not my friends or brothers and certainly not my parents. This guilty pleasure was mine and I held it close. But the guilt soon overwhelmed the pleasure. “There must be something wrong with me,” I thought, “I am enjoying this bad guy too much.”

When Bizarro entered my life at 13, I had been confessing my sins for six years. Roman Catholic kids made their First Confessions and First Communions at 7. I don’t know where I picked up the phrases “bad thoughts” or “impure thoughts” but they became my go-to sins. I defined my sin repertoire by thoughts more than actions.

It’s not that I didn’t have behaviors to confess. I lied to my parents all the time as in “yeah, I finished my homework.” And at ages 9 and 12, I stole little items from a local drug store as part of the membership requirements of a neighborhood gang. Yikes, but it sounds worse than it was. Friends Vinny and Mark plus me were the gang and as I recall we didn’t do anything other than steal bubble gum or aspirin bottles from Smith Drug.

Then there was that day around this Bizarro-time when I went into four garages in an alley behind our house and knocked or pulled down anything I found. Double yikes, and fortunately, that was a one-off.

But I never confessed to lying, stealing or pillaging. What I did confess were bad thoughts, as in…

Bless me father for I have sinned. This week I keep thinking about all the bad things this Bizarro guy I am reading about does. I can’t stop these thoughts.

For the first time in my confession history, I took what I considered a sin seriously. Did evil thoughts mean I was an evil person? Did evil thoughts mean I could do evil things? I don’t remember what the priest said when I confessed my Bizarro thoughts. However, I do know now what I wish he had said then.

Confession # 2

“My son,

Thoughts are not actions. And they do not define the person. No one really knows where thoughts come from. Some religious traditions, Buddhism, for example, suggest thoughts come from nowhere. Psychologists have learned that thoughts are outside our control. Even Jesus had bad thoughts, temptations. By the way, the same is true for feelings and sensations but let’s stick to thoughts because that is what you have confessed to.

Everyone has 1000s of thoughts everyday. Some of these thoughts are what you might call fringe thoughts. These are weird thoughts, thoughts that have nothing to do with who you are or what you might do. Just this morning as Mrs. Smith was preparing my breakfast she put a sharp knife on the table. My brain sent me this thought, “I could stab Mrs. Smith.” I like Mrs. Smith and have never stabbed anyone in my life so I let the thought pass through my mind.

When you read about Bizarro, Evil Superman, it was natural for your brain to send you thoughts about how nice it would be to do evil things. In fact, I’ll bet you rooted for Bizarro for a week because you were resisting those bad thoughts and so they were sticking around. What we resist, persists.

Remember thoughts do not make the boy. Actions do.

Now, let’s talk about what you have been doing!”

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