Is Thor a God?

Had this interesting conversation with my youngest son yesterday (after seeing The Avengers a couple times over the weekend) about Thor.  If you've seen the Marvel comics movies or you remember the comic books about this character you'll know more information than the average person about this character, but to make it easy for everybody lets just boil it down to the basics.

• Thor is from a "realm" called Asgard
• Thor is very powerful
• Thor is called the "god of thunder"
• Thor is a big guy with an even bigger hammer
• There is debate as to whether Thor (and others from his realm) are immortal

So we have this "god" who comes to earth to help us defeat bad guys.  He joins with The Hulk, Captain America, The Hawk, Iron-man and The Black Widow to defeat Loki and the aliens.

When Thor finally shows up in The Avengers movie he takes his brother Loki from The Avengers custody.  Iron-man immediately follows the two and as Captain America prepares to jump out of the plane (he's the only one of the three that can't fly) The Black Widow tells him, "you better sit this one out... because they are gods."  To which Captain America replies, "There is only One God, Ma'am, and I'm pretty sure He doesn't dress like that."

You can see why this would be my favorite quote of the movie!  

Anyway, after seeing the movie my son asks me, "is Thor a god?"  He surely was trying to reconcile God with god.  So my first answer was, "Thor is made up character for comic books and the movies.  He's not real, so it doesn't matter."  But if you know my son, you know that answer didn't fly.  So I thought of another approach.  I asked him, "Did Thor get hurt in the movie?"   I then asked him some things like, didn't Hulk beat up Loki (another god/Thor's brother)... The Hulk and Thor fight each other and pretty much neither one wins, each doing damage to the other but pretty equally matched... Thor and Loki are both injured in the movie, scraps and cuts, etc.  

We talked through these things and then I asked him the most important question.  "Do you think anybody can stand up to God?"  He replied, "No."  That's right, I said, God is so big and so powerful that no one can harm him or hurt him.  No matter how big and strong someone might be they can never hope to even lay a scratch on God.  

Then, as I told him to go to bed for the 100th time, I asked him the question he asked me.  "Do YOU think Thor is a god?"  He said, "Nope."  And headed to bed.

Thor is a make believe character that entertains us on the weekends.  Never confuse a god with God.  Read the second half of the book of Job if you'd like to know a little bit of the power of God.  When God begins to ask Job if he knows where the snow is kept or the lightning stored.  If he can tame the leviathan  or put a hook in his nose... pretty impressive.  To quote a fairly famous song, "There is NO ONE like our God."