Did Bruce Willis go to hell for committing suicide when he blew himself up?
(just a weird question I thought of yesterday)
Depends on how God interprets the Bible.
I think Bruce Willis went on to be a
Ghost. But only the kid can see him.
Every major Christian sect that I’m aware of makes a distinction between self-sacrifice and suicide. I suspect most non-Christian religions are similar in that regard.
The sin in suicide is despair. Self-sacrifice shows the virtue of love.
Simple answer is “No.”
But let’s pretend to take the question seriously. If Bruce Willis HADN’T sacrificed himself, what would have happened? He, his crewmates, and everyone on Earth would have died anyway.
There WASN’T any scenario in which everybody lived happily ever after. Somebody had to die for everyone else to survive.
Well, they kinda have to allow for a human sacrifice to be a noble thing, now don’t they?
Even more so of a “self sacrifice”.
If he did, he’d be standing next to Saint Maximilian Kolbe, who willingly went to his death a starvation chamber in Auschwitz in the place of another man who had a family.
I have no idea why Armageddon remains stuck in the public’s consciousness when the vastly superior Deep Impact is mostly forgotten.
“Well, at least we’ll all have high schools named after us.”
Aerosmith.
As a Christian I agree with those who’ve said that self sacrifice is not the sin that the despair of suicide is.
I think that even despair can be forgiven. After hearing an acquaintance say the the people who jumped from the WTC on 9/11 are in hell for committing suicide, I asked my priest about that. He said no, they were just choosing how to die, and choosing to jump didn’t condemn them.
So, theologically, that means that assisted suicide of the terminally ill is okay? Because that works for me.
We can’t know. According to the Catholic Church, the only person who knows what happens to a suicide is God. While suicide itself is a grave sin, there are exceptions for fear of torture, diminished mental state, etc.
Doing it in order to set an example for young people, however, is no bueno.
But yeah, Willis’ character sisnt commit suicide. He sacrificed himself. We would never say a soldier who jumped on a grenade killed himself.
It would be a leap of faith so to speak.
I agree, and was about to quote the same line.
Armageddon has far more cultural relevance. Yes, I mean that- remember “cultural” doesn’t necessarily mean quality. Armageddon was the movie that firmly established the Bay Standard. Bay’s first couple of movies certainly showed his personal idiom and sense of style but it was with Armageddon that he made his first true and complete statement “This is a Michael Bay movie!” Compare Transformers to Armageddon, there’s so much that he’s still doing exactly the same way, and I’m not just talking about action: there’s a romantic scene between Shia LeBeouf and Megan Fox lying in the grass on a hill and it’s scripted and framed and edited almost exactly the same as a romantic scene between Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler lying in the grass on a hill in Armageddon.
Armageddon was the movie with which Michael Bay perfected his formula and that Michael Bay formula had tremendous influence for better or worse (Spoiler Alert: Worse) on just about every popcorn action movie for the next decade and, to some extent the next next decade.
Armageddon had a profound effect on the expectations we’ve placed on popcorn action films ever since. Thus, it will remain of far greater cultural relevance than Deep Impact.
In fact, that’s why I personally enjoy it more. It’s the only Michael Bay movie I’ve ever purchased, it’s the only Michael Bay movie that I’ve ever watched more than once. The formula is executed so perfectly that I have to respect it for it’s purity. It is so pure that it was impossible for Bay to ever create anything else that would ever be more than a pale comparison or unintended parody.
It’s the beautiful soft little mouse that Michael-Bay-as-Lenny will continue to pet and stroke with injurious force until it’s dead.
Because at least it had the scene where you could release your frustrations and cheer Bruce Willis to his death. I just wish he’d died sooner, much sooner. Even choking on a snack would have done.
I think Christianity makes a distinction based on motivation. Killing yourself because you don’t want to live any more is bad. If you die not because you want to kill yourself but rather in the act of saving others it’s a good (or at least not bad).
In Armageddon Bruce’s character didn’t necessarily want to die - if he could have saved everyone and lived himself presumably he would have taken that option - but the only means of saving everyone would result in his death. His death was, so to speak, as side effect of the solution to the problem, not an end goal in itself.
Deep Impact had a stick so deep up it’s ass you’d need a ragtag team of oil drillers to get it out. Armageddon was fun.
Perhaps it could be looked at as imitating the Christ. Sacrifice yourself so others may live. Whether you agree with the theology or not, the act of self sacrifice has precedence in Scripture. And before,of course.