God, According to Sci-Fi
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.
2017. In the extended season of Portland we call RAIN, all caps. My car, my beloved Neo, was out of commission with expensive European problems. I was riding buses to go from deep southeast to deep northeast. It’s interesting what happens to your energy, your mentality, your very perspective when something like transportation is altered.
Suffice to say, the commute was about one hour there and back. Frustrating, but I had the ingenious idea that maybe I could finally read some more as I was knee deep in writing my fantasy story.
Embarrassing to admit this but, I don’t read a ton. Well, not quite. What I mean is that I don’t read fiction or nonfiction a ton. I mainly read spiritual memoir stuff, a la Blue Like Jazz or Bird by Bird. I also love to read theology books, but only from certain authors and with a certain, more contemplative bent. More Brennan Manning, Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, etc. and less John Piper, John Eldridge, and John McArthur (apparently I don’t like Johns, but I LOVE the gospel of John).
Anyway, in spite of how I write a lot, read a little, and feel slightly embarrassed about that juxtaposition, certain authors connect well with me and aren’t hard to read while also being deeply entertaining. Ray Bradbury has always done that for this guy. His prose is sparse, his characters and story premises interesting, and his tendency to meander seemingly without cause… is pretty minimal.
I picked up an old ass copy of The Illustrated Man, a specific collection of his short sci-fi stories and was hooked from the first story onward.
The opening tale, written in 1951 mind you, is called The Veldt. It stars a family of four, mom, pop, a girl and a boy, who have access to a machine that enables them to change a room in their house to become an environment of their choosing. Essentially, this was The Matrix before there was The Matrix. It tackles tech addiction long before we even had tech to be addicted to. It is eerie, it is dark, it is a warning. All of Bradbury’s sci-fi books, all great pieces of sci fi, whether via book, movie, show, and/or video game, serve as warnings to an ever-evolving, constantly reshaping world.
Science fiction serves as God’s gateway, through the clever and wise minds of authors and creators, to peer into a hypothetical vision of the future, to reveal to humanity what we might forget as we creep more and more into digital unknowns and tech dependency. While sci-fi often serves as a warning, coupled with a sense of eeriness, world weariness, and human vacancy, so too does it reveal the true power of true humanity. Regardless of our space ships, our laser swords, our hyperspace travel, our overused, depleted planet, our unnaturally processed food… still, somehow, some way, humans find a way to reach back to what makes us human to begin with.
It is, like Dave Bautista’s character in Bladerunner 2049 says, in describing the limited scope of his fellow, “almost human” replicant counterpart:
“You newer models are happy scraping the shit... because you've never seen a miracle.”
The global temperature of the earth has risen by nearly two degrees since 1880. We lose 426 gigatonnes of ice per year. The sea level rises 3.3 millimeters per year. All these stats aren’t quite fake news; this is directly sourced from the front page of NASA’s website.
Personally, I have to admit I don’t spend much time thinking about global warming or conservation or recycling. Or anything of that ilk. Not quite because I don’t care, but precisely because I care (and feel) too much. The first science course I ever took at university told me all about the tragedy of the commons, the rising temperature, the extinction of so many animal species. To be honest, it has coated my very desire to ignore any news or insight about the rising, near pandemic levels of near catastrophe humanity is causing to the world through our food, through our travel, through our general disregard of ecosystems thousands (sometimes even hundreds) of miles away.
My calling in life is very much in the social sphere. Specifically in the humanities, working with underprivileged and underserved communities, particularly little people called kids. I love the idea of being a Gandalf, being an Obi-wan, being a Dumbledore on the “hero’s journey” of the life of a disenfranchised, at-risk youth. The more ACEs (adverse childhood experiences), the better potential for a more beautiful, redemptive story. The more clearly I can witness the central message of the Gospel at hand. The more like Christ I can tangibly be for who I think are the “least of these.”
Suffice to say, at times I’ve felt that because I’ve dedicated my life to one problem or issue facing the world at large, that leaves me off the hook for others. Now, to defend myself a bit here, this doesn’t mean I throw beer cans in the trash, litter in public parks, and/or go to fast food restaurants constantly knowing how they contribute to the earth’s battered state. Of the three mentioned, it is the last one I dabble in at times but I try to limit.
Yet through sci-fi narratives, particularly the stories showing the world used-up and disrespected, I am reminded not only that my individual actions matter, but that often it is the poorest of the world who suffer the most when the world is so poorly treated. In other news, as we continue to wreak havoc on the forests of the Amazon, rely so heavily on trucks to deliver our goods to and fro, and use plastic for the sake of mild convenience at the cost of heavy animal and soil decay, it is the “least of these,” it is the boys and girls hundreds of miles away whose home floats away as the sea levels rise. It is the indigenous people’s very way of life threatened when the very animal they hunt’s (in a spiritual, often humane manner) very ecosystem is threatened by poaching, by encroaching, by development. It is the people who make less than a dollar a day who are the most vulnerable when people who make thousands so flippantly use up the earth and send their problems back to the same dollar a day earners.
The first time I watched A New Hope I was six years old. I remember this date as well as Michael Jordan’s game winner in game 6 against the Jazz, as much as my awkward first kiss, as much as when I first accepted Jesus “in my heart,” as much as when (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT for The Last Jedi) Snoke got murked by Kylo Ren in an excellent plot twist that all the TLJ haters are still and will forever be wrong about.
The crawl came through, and, being six years old and not quite a stellar reader yet, I did not catch onto the plot of “the rebels stole something, the rebels are good, the empire wants the thing back, the empire is evil.” All I saw was a little ship being chased by a huge ship in space with some incredible tunage in the background. My nerdy Enneagram 4 heart literally surged out of my body, and I ran around my living room, jumped on my couch repeatedly, in absolute ecstasy. I was so filled with glee, with excitement, with the joy of a huge imagination finally meeting its match on screen.
Let’s be fair though; Star Wars, my beloved now slowly tarnished with every wildly safe new property, is definitely space fantasy, not sci-fi. And fantasy, according to God, or, rather, God, according to fantasy, is another blog for another time.
Nevertheless, I love space. I love spaceships. I love the exploration of the unknown that sci-fi does better than any quippy memoir, any fancy pants literature, any Oscar-winning one word biopic.
I’ve always been annoyed that stories which aren’t “real” are considered less important than “real” narratives. Star Wars being a notable exception, so many folks don’t appreciate quality science fiction stories for reasons I still can’t grasp. Whether it’s a lack of effort, lack of imagination, or a fear of being perceived nerdy, or maybe a mix of all three, it’s as if an entire genre of great storytelling, character development, and profound narrative theme are ignored on the basis of something seemingly so shallow.
(For those who don’t like sci-fi or “unreal” stories, I’d love your input in the comment section below. I do genuinely want to know what you don’t like and/or appreciate about it. I won’t bite. That hard anyway.)
From Firefly to Mass Effect, from Arrival to Fahrenheit 451, from Bladerunner to Bioshock, so many quality stories are not delved into because of an apparent lack of relatability. But from someone who struggles with being relatable, with being normal, with being intentionally and unintentionally nonconformist, I relish these stories.
And I hear God speak so powerfully in them. At times, more so than in “real” stories.
Whether it be the power of community and interdependence in Firefly, the importance of wise decision making and empathy in Mass Effect, the depth of language and interpersonal connection in Arrival, the strength of the written and spoken word in Fahrenheit 451, the moral ambiguity and environmental degradation in Bladerunner and Bladerunner 2049, and the perils of rampant, uninhibited capitalism shown in Bioshock, these stories teach biblical principles as well as any quirky Christian memoir or any hoaky sermon metaphor. In fact, I’d argue, they do it better.
In my post Christian Art Sucks, I wrote about why I don’t like many specifically Christian narratives, songs, or art pieces. The reason being that the agenda is obvious, the sermonizing so often on the nose, the characterization and nuance and flair always lacking in favor of making sure a general audience (which they clearly think to be dumb) understands the biblical message because it is so overt. There’s zero subtlety, and I’d argue art is only as good as the power and variance of the subtlety on display (see Jesus’ many parables for proof of this).
This is precisely why I love sci-fi stories. With their subtlety comes the subtle whisper of God’s voice. It’s why I feel God patting me on the shoulder and saying “those altruistic aliens in Arrival? They talk and love like I do,” and “you see how Malcolm and Wash makeup and forgive each other after they fought in Firefly? That’s how my followers should love and forgive each other,” and “you see how that astronaut describes The Man in The Illustrated Man? How ‘he healed the sick and comforted the poor. He fought hypocrisy and dirty politics and sat among the people, talking, through the day?’ That Man is the Son of Man just in another world and in another story.”
God can use anything for His redemptive purposes. This I believe with all my nerdy, big feels INFP heart. In my blog All Good Art is God’s Art, I describe how God used scenester metalcore and a few grungey singer/songwriters and their rich songs of lament to communicate His understanding of my frustration and doubt about faith. And in God, According to Hip-Hop I wrote how he used rappers of all shapes, sizes, and colors to speak to me about how we should treat the poor and marginalized better and how close those poor and marginalized people are to His very heart.
God is not limited by conventionally culturally Christian means to convey His truth. All truth is God’s truth. All good stories, all good themes, all good characterization, all good and honest and accurate and redemptive messages are ripe opportunities God channels to compel people to live into His kingdom. He isn’t confined to the teacher on stage, the worship leader playing the same three guitar chords, the same few authors who tell the same safe stories that are conveniently neat and tidy and which never portray the world as it actually is or, in sci-fi stories, how the world might be if we don’t change things and change how we treat others and change how we treat the world.
God isn’t scared or intimidated or worried about the truth. God isn’t looking for us to curate a Godly bubble that disengages with the problems of the world while keeping us on a safe and narrow path without offering help and love to those on the broad and destructive path. God wants us to press into the darkness, engage evil directly, and shine His light into all dark corners of the earth.
And through grimy and gritty stories of the future, a future ransacked by resource deprivation, increasing dehumanization of labor and laborers, and ever increasing measures to take divinity from the divine through technological means, God speaks about how He designed us.
How we are not alone. How the world He made is good, in fact, very good. And how if we ignore His presence, His mandates, and persist in treating His world so poorly, it will no longer do what He designed it do for us. How if we do not treat each other the way He designed us to treat each other we will sow only war, only famine, only inequality.
They say that in lieu of the coronavirus causing such disruption and panic in our world the world is finally able to rest. Birds are singing their songs, fish are swimming in the rivers, and people are reaching out to one another in ways they never did before in our “go, go, go” contemporary moment.
We never relish suffering of anyone or anything. We never want people to die and we don’t want entire animal species to die or entire ecosystems to be destroyed.
It’s crazy, then, that in lieu of such suffering has come some modicum of good. That with an increasing fear and concern of family and friends has come an increase in reaching out to those same family and friends. That with the world all being on a mutual kind of stand-still, the earth is replenishing and nursing, even if on a small and negligible level.
I said it before, and I’ll say it again; God can use anything to teach us, to mold us, to help us learn all the more how much He loves us. Yet still, I absolutely don’t believe He preordained the coronavirus. I don’t believe He wants thousands of the animals He created to die needlessly, and I don’t believe He wants us to be held hostage by systems that imprison us to constantly update our resumes, make those extra dollars and cents, and travel all over the world without first mending and renovating our souls. Jesus said it better than I can; what does it profit for a person to gain the whole world and forfeit their own soul?
Therefore, often through the themes and messages of sci-fi, I see God reminding us to take care of our souls. To give Him all of who we are so that we can work to mend the world, not break the world. To heal and give life, not to take and to destroy what’s left.
The good news Jesus taught isn’t just for people, after all. The good news applies to the world as well.