Her belief in God and the idea that Jesus loved her made her a better person, and allowed her to not be turned into a hedonistic monster like so many of her cohorts. To cut into the Boys briefly, the idea of having faith in an idea being beneficial two at least two characters in the series, while it also demonstrates that it could be used poorly by those who are cynical or too hardline.Īnnie January, for example, was introduced to Christianity as a PR stunt, but she ended up embracing it as it gave her an anchor amidst the corporate/paramilitary upbringing that she'd received.
The idea that religion can be both a good thing, and a bad thing when those who believe in, but lack empathy to use their faith sensibly, it start to thing that it's a Universial Morality License is pretty much a theme through a lot fo Ennis' work, including his War Stories, the Boys, Punisher etc. That guy had such a rigid and personalised view of religion that the First of the Fallen was able to break him with just a sentence. For example, a teenage boy confessed that he'd slept with a man, so the priest (knowing that homosexuality wa illegal in the UK at the time) sent him on his way and then called the cops, and was happy to have made the right choice after the kid killed himself in prison. The belief that whatever he does is right, regardless of how horrible, combined with his lack of empathy for humans (which is mistaken for mere snobbery by the humans he interacts with) lead to a lot of unpleasant things he does, and nearly does.įor example, he lists raping a teenage girl in Nazareth (implictly Mary) as an example of the things he's done that have gone on to better the world, and NEARLY gives a stand-in for the BNP his backing in the next British General Election because they impressed him with his talk of order and purity before Constantine deflates that bubble by addressing what they are to Gaberial in terms he understands.Īnother more human example would be a village priest who Constantine met in his youth who routinely abused the sanctity of the confessional to "punish" those who offend his moral or religious standards. He works for God, and is such is proud of the fact that this means that whatever he does it must be for the right reason, so when Constantine arranged for him to Fall, the experience broke him entirely as he believed that if he was as loved by God as he believed, why would he be evicted from Heaven? That would make Gabe a sympathetic character, if it wasn't for the fact that as a supernatural being from Heaven living on Earth, he didn't understand humans that much and wasn't really interested in trying to find out how they work. For example, let's take the Angel Gabriel from Hellblazer.