(Guest editorial from Hewitt Lyman, city councilman and longtime member of Gotham City Baptist Church.)

Fellow citizens of Gotham,

Once again, our noble city has been brought to the brink of chaos by the self-styled Clown Prince of Crime, who has kidnapped Mayor Hamilton and strung him bound and gagged fifty feet above the city, where a giant arsenic cream pie is poised to be launched from a giant spring directly into the mayor’s body, instantly killing him and releasing the Joker’s toxic laughing gas all over the city, poisoning us all.

In times like these, it is only natural that Gothamites would reach out for obvious, terrestrial solutions. The media has been quick to label this as a “crime,” perpetrated by the Joker, and would have us all look to crime fighters to put an end to his villainy.

However, as all thinking men and women who have not yet been brainwashed by the our media overlords know, Gotham City does not have a Joker problem.

It has a sin problem.

Sin is the root and heart and cause of the Joker’s activity and it cannot be reconciled by government interference or flying rodent-obsessed vigilanteism. Sadly, there will always be maniacal criminal masterminds wielding acid-loaded flower lapels and cartoonishly oversized hammers. The fact that Commissioner Jim Gordon and the so-called “Batman” are seeking to put a stop to the Joker by focusing on the Joker only shows how easily they have been deluded into his scheme.

The Joker does not need to be stopped. The Joker does not need to be dealt with at all.

What needs to be dealt with is sin.

The Bible is very clear about sin. If something bad is happening, it is sinful. It’s not just the Joker. When the Riddler entraps a senior citizen’s home inside a giant Rubik’s Cube that must first be solved before they can be set free, that’s a sin. When Poison Ivy’s venomous kiss puts the entirety of the city council under her command, that’s a sin. When Mr. Freeze blankets our whole city in a merciless, unending winter and refuses to reverse the sinister spell unless he is reunited with his beloved Nora, that too is a sin.

Actually, the very fact that Batman attempts to make all of this about crime sort of makes him the real criminal, if you think about it.

So let us be done with these attempts stop “The Joker” or his lover and frequent accomplice Harley Quinn. Do we truly believe that thwarting their diabolical plot at the very last second by uncovering the secret location of their lair and defusing the timed-released spring device will save the mayor and, by proxy, this city?

No. Of course not. Because the Joker isn’t the real problem here. There’s no need to address him.

No, Gotham needs to address its sin problem. Before it’s too late.