Interacting with sci-fi's alternative views of redemption
What do sci-fi films, television shows, and novels have to do with the Gospel? Well, our friends at Christianity Today magazine tackle that very question in "Sci-Fi's Brave New World." Here's a slice:
The culture-shaping force of science fiction storytellers may be more significant and more widespread than we imagine. That's because they trade in myth. By myth, I mean a transcendent story that helps us make sense of our place in the cosmos. This common definition makes the Christian gospel, as C. S. Lewis suggested, "God's myth" - not because it is fiction, but because it is a story that gives ultimate meaning. We live in an age in which new myths, born mostly of science-fueled imaginations, are crafted and propagated at an unprecedented rate. ...Click here to read the article in its entirety. Once you've read it, I'm curious about any specific intersections between the world of science fiction and the gospel that you've found in your own preaching ministry?
These powerful narratives represent a cultural current the church needs to take seriously as the source of a growing worldview. Propelled into post-Christian public consciousness by the powerful machinery of mass marketing and media, techno-spiritual myths do not draw audiences of millions because of compelling storytelling and mind-boggling special effects alone. They also provide spiritual seekers answers to perennial questions about our nature and place in the cosmos, our predicament and redemption, and the future. Seldom are the myths adopted as a complete worldview package. Rather, readers and viewers, often young and outside the church, fashion personal spiritual systems from individual experience and elements of mythic popular culture.
Posted by Brian Lowery at 11:05 AM on February 9, 2009
