Live Long And Prosper

I didn't watch much TV when I was a child. It wasn't some sort of moral statement on my parents' part (although my mom liked to limit TV time). Rather, it was a function of the fact that we didn't have a lot of money, and so we never had more than the one or two channels we could pick up on our old black and white set. For most of my childhood, those were PBS and NBC, although later on FOX was invented, and our TV world increased by 50%.

It was FOX that gave me the glory that was syndicated Star Trek. In addition to our regular black and white TV, we also had this tiny (like 9 inch) black and white set. I would take it to bed with me (I don't think my parents knew) and watch a couple of hours of Star Trek reruns before going to sleep. This was the original...none of that Next Generation junk. We're talking Spock, Kirk, Bones, and the whole crew. I never quite developed into a Trekkie, but I did gain a deep appreciation for science fiction.

My wife and I went to see the new Star Trek film last night. I have seen a few of the other films in the franchise, and I haven't been all that impressed. This one is magnificent. I am already a huge fan of JJ Abrams (via LOST), but the Star Trek film just solidified my intention to see everything the man ever does. It's one of those rare films that I'll probably see again, voluntarily.

While watching the film and munching my $7 medium popcorn, I was thinking about the vision of the future and humanity's future portrayed in the film. It's not a Utopian vision; there are still conflicts, on earth and throughout the galaxies. But there is a certain presumption that a few hundred years hence, humanity will have worked out many of our troubles with each other. While our world isn't perfect in the Star Trek world, it is pretty far down that road.

That world-view strikes me as a pretty good stand-in for what the Kingdom of God might mean in the gospels. The Kingdom of God, that thing that Jesus won't stop talking about, is really just the idea that Jesus has inaugurated a change in humanity, and that one day we will be able to complete that change. Jesus doesn't want to obliterate or pave over human nature, but he does want humans to realize the potential we hold--the potential for peace, justice, righteousness, and a spirit of goodwill.

That's not exactly what Roddenberry and his creative heirs have in mind. But it's not so far off, either. A world where our differences blend to make us stronger, where there's little enough strife that we can build great things together, and a world where a Vulcan and a human can make out in an elevator...I think that's a world Jesus could get behind.