The Company of Christ
28 October 2007
I would be loath to call myself a “Trekkie”, but I have to admit to watching a great amount of science fiction on television. I’ve got one of those clever video recorders, ideal for clergy lifestyles, which will automatically record all the programmes you like. So at various snatched moments during the day - such as mealtimes - I catch up with my recordings, even if they are well-known repeats.
The idea behind the “Star Trek” series is based on three major assumptions.
The first of these is that the universe out there is teeming with life and that there are thousands of inhabited planets all waiting for a visit from us.
The other assumption is that somebody one day will invent a way of travelling through space at velocities above the speed of light. Without that technology we never shall reach the stars, because it will take several human lifetimes to reach them at normal speeds.
The third assumption is that by the 24th century when these series are set, humanity will have evolved into a more responsible and less violent race.
This latter view is fully in accord with contemporary attitudes in our post-religious world. In the world of Star Trek there is none or very little religion. If it exists, it is either the personal philosophy of an individual or the crazy, dangerous beliefs of some primitive unenlightened society the crew have chanced upon. Naturally, with their superior intelligence and more evolved world view, the visitors from Earth show them a more enlightened and, let’s face it, Western European or transatlantic set of values.
These values are based on the premise that man has no need of exterior forces or influences to show him how to behave. As the centuries and millennia have gone by, mankind has evolved into a more sophisticated, less primitive and more balanced race of beings. They have finally learned the lessons of the past and have given up the use of unnecessary violence to achieve their ends. In the Star Trek world there is really no such thing as money, and nobody does anything any more simply for the purpose of accumulating wealth.
This optimistic view of the future of humanity is derived, of course, from our contemporary Western view of ourselves. As mankind moves through history, he becomes wiser, more self-reliant and leaves behind all those primitive and atavistic instincts which caused so much tragedy in the past. The people of the 24th century can look back at our time with pity and shudder with relief that they do not live in such a violent and conflict-ridden age.
This forward development of the human race is, of course, essential to the successful working out of the Star Trek myth. At the moment we are living through one of those renewed periods of interest in the universe. Once again we are getting curious with what might be “out there” and various theories, schemes and even plans are being considered in preparation for mankind actually setting off into outer space. But even if the technology were to make it possible, there are few people who actually believe that we are ready to go out in the great yonder and start interfering the life of the universe. We have made so little progress with achieving peace and economic parity between human beings on our own planet, that it would be an act of supreme arrogance to go careering off into interstellar space, before these things have been accomplished at home.
Even if we are not talking about flying off in space ships, it is almost a given in contemporary attitudes that somehow things are better now that they used to be. I’m not talking about the easy things that mark what we might call progress - technological advance, more effective medicine, mass communications. Along with this goes the almost unconscious conviction that somehow we are better people than the generations that lived before us. That we’ve outgrown the old beliefs and superstitions that dogged our ancestors; we’ve finally grown up and we can leave these old primitive beliefs behind.
In the Church we’ve been familiar with these kind of beliefs for some time. Occasionally they are articulated into statements such as “man has come of age” or even “God is dead”. God is dead, because, so the secular argument goes, he is basically a human construct and since we are grown up now we have no need of his existence in our lives. We consign him to the waste bin of childish beliefs, along with Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
The problem with all this is that, as far as I can see, there is not the slightest shred of evidence that human beings today are in any qualitative sense better than their predecessors. A brief glance at human history in the last hundred years will demonstrate a century when more people lost their lives in violence than at any other time in the past. The development of technology has meant, in actual fact, that we can kill people more efficiently than ever before. The possibility that the mad, the bad, and the sad such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung can rise to such heights of power over their fellow human beings shows that we are still unable to exercise real judgement about others and their potential for harm.
Does this mean that I or other Christians are pessimistic about the human race? Are we doomed for ever to make mistakes on an ever increasing scale until we finally wipe ourselves off the face of this planet?
Well there’s much to make us gloomy about human prospects. It’s not a good time of the year to feel bright and optimistic. As winter approaches our days become shorter and darker; it’s difficult for many people to avoid a seasonal downswing in mood round about now. The summer holidays are a far distant memory now and the russet colours of autumn give fair warning that the central heating will now be on for the next six months.
But into this darkening and sombre season the Church in a brilliant stratagem places one of its brightest and most optimistic celebrations. Just when our own mood threatens to blacken, we celebrate together the feast of All Saints. All Saints is sometimes described as a kind of roll of honour of the countless men, women and children who have won through in the fight against evil and in defence of their faith. This is true, and our own faith is stronger and more firmly based when we consider the huge sacrifices made by our ancestors in the faith. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church” as the early theologian Tertullian memorably said.
But rather than just looking back to our early history, All Saints Day also helps us cast our eyes forward to the future. To our own personal future and that of the race to which we belong. I have indicated already that I am pessimistic about the possibility of the human race advancing itself and that, over thousands of years, there is no evidence that his has been achieved.
But this does not mean that we can never be better than we are, that we are trapped in our humanity with all its imperfections and failings. Central to our faith is the belief that, although fallen, mankind has the potential to be redeemed. Human history is also the story of God reaching out to his creation, calling it back to a renewed relationship with him and offering it a future where mortality is finally left behind.
When God reaches out to help us we call it salvation. When man responds to this initiative by God we call it conversion. When God then welcomes us back and begins to change us, we call it sanctification.
Sanctification is the process by which we are changed back into God’s likeness, where we master our human desires and passions and learn to live according to God’s Law of Love. We do not become less human, but recover the human dignity God always intended us to have.
Being a Christian is often described in many different ways - e.g. the pilgrimage of faith. But sometimes it is called the Path to Perfection and, daunting though the prospect might be, it’s one I like, because it marks out what the goal of this business of believing in God is all about.
When we encounter God’s presence in our lives we become aware almost instantly of the great gap that exists between human waywardness and God’s holiness. But it is a gap that has to be narrowed and eventually eliminated, otherwise we shall never “see God face to face” as we are promised in the Scriptures.
The truly Christian life, then, is one that has to be dedicated to the search for true holiness. We have to allow ourselves to be transformed by God so that we are fit for the Kingdom of Heaven. We will not achieve this is we remain content with who we are. And this runs contrary to the selfishness and self-centredness of this age. In a time when most people don’t seem to bother if their words or actions affect others adversely, it has become counter-cultural for Christians to make efforts to modify their behaviour, to subscribe to a set of unchanging values.
Those human individuals who seem to us to have succeeded in this endeavour are those who we call “Saints”. We keep the memories of a fair selection throughout the year and if you yourself are serious about your own search for holiness I would recommend that you read some of the biographies of the saints. They come over not as stained glass images, but as real human beings who struggled with the same problems we have, but overcame them with God’s grace.
This last point is really the ultimate secret of holiness. Unlike the arrogant humanist view of a self-transforming mankind, Christians know that we cannot change without God’s help. We call that help, so freely given, his Grace, and the people we call Saints are those who had the humility to open themselves completely to that power and help in their lives.
If you do read the lives of the saints you will find that a constant motif running through them all is the striking sense of humility they displayed. It was their own unaffected sense of their need of God that allowed him to complete the cleansing process of sanctification.
Saint John Vianney, the Cure D’Ars once said that humility was rather like the string holding a pair of rosary beads together and the virtues were the beads themselves. Our own path to sainthood will involve following God’s way and doing his will. But good deeds are not enough. Without humility the good deeds we do can become loose and fall away.
However much I do enjoy watching all these different space operas, the sensible side of me realises that they are mere fanstasies. I do not believe that the future of the human race means us whizzing around the galaxy at warp speed dressed in primary coloured lycra uniforms.
The bible paints a different scenario, with a different uniform and a different future. “I saw a huge number, impossible to count, of people from every nation, race, tribe and language; they were standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands.” This is the true destiny of mankind, released from all that holds us fixed to this earth, cleansed of all that mars the image of God in us and eternally praising God for his great love which has finally drawn us to his presence.
The Revd Canon Kit Dunkley Vicar, St Luke, Holbrooks, and Provincial Master, Society of the Holy Cross