**What I say today about Interstellar will include Spoilers. Interstellar is in one sense a powerful expression of worship to one of the many gods of our Western culture: science and technology. Both very good things, but if made the Ultimate thing, if sought to be our saviors, will surely fail us. But in the movie this is the means of our salvation, in fact, it is advanced human civilizations from the future that save us from a dying Earth. Essentially, we are self-saviors through science and technology. On the other hand, I appreciated Nolan’s exploration of the dark side of humanity especially seen in the rescue operation of Dr. Mann (Matt Damon). Dr. Mann (mankind?) is said to be “the best of us” meaning the best of scientists humanity has to offer. And yet, he is cold, heartless, and a murderer. We even see a kind of reenactment of Cain and Abel at the beginning of Dr. Mann’s new world. In addition, the leading scientist back home is Dr. Brand (Michael Caine) who has been deceiving everyone (including his own daughter) with a monstrous lie for over 40 years to achieve what he feels is best for humanity. One of the many problems that science and technology cannot solve is the evil within every human heart. As Solzhenitsyn said in the Gulag Archipelago: “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Even if we enter new galaxies through wormholes, wherever “man” goes, he takes the Curse on his or her soul with him. HG Wells had such utopian dreams for humanity in 1937. He said: “Can we doubt that presently our race will more than realize our boldest imaginations, that it will achieve unity and peace, and that our children will live in a world made more splendid and lovely than any palace or garden that we know, going on from strength to strength in an ever-widening circle of achievement?” (A Short History of the World) But in 1946, after WWII, Wells said differently: “The cold-blooded massacres of the defenseless, the return of deliberate and organized torture, mental torment, and fear to a world from which such things had seemed well nigh banished—has come near to breaking my spirit altogether… ‘Homo Sapiens,’ as he has been pleased to call himself, is played out.” (A Mind at the End of Its Tether) We should do all we can for the good of the human race through science and technology, but if we look to them as Ultimate saviors rather than God and Christ, in the end we will despair like Wells. Only in Christ, who both humbles our pride and cures our wretchedness, can the paradox of humanity be solved and evil within the human heart finally extinguished. Those who chase false saviors will inevitably hear what God said to the Israelites of old: “Where are the gods you have made for yourselves? Let them come and save you when you are in trouble!” (Jeremiah 2:28)
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 15:30:36 +0000
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