Brehm Center

            As we approach Y2K (year two thousand), movies dealing with the end of history have proliferated. Besides entertaining us with their nonstop adventure and eye-popping special effects, these films should challenge the church and its thinking (theology) if we would but observe and consider. For the typical, current "end-of-the-world" movie both rejects establishment approaches to life and its solutions (including by implication, the church) and recasts our apocalyptic dreams and projections in secular terms.

            Some of these films recent movies are post-apocalyptic, that is, they deal with events after the destruction of the world as we know it. Kevin Costner's Waterworld is a good example of this genre (even if a bust of a film!). Its story is played out amidst a world covered in water because of human stupidity and greed.

            A second group of films, and perhaps the more prevalent, portray events that threaten to bring about the world's end. Some malevolent force (asteroids in Armageddon; aliens in Independence Day; and dinosaurs in Godzilla) is about to bring about our destruction. To avoid it, we will need the best of both human ingenuity and technology. But humankind is capable, even if barely; we ultimately must take responsibility for ourselves and our posterity. Though there is carnage and loss, life will continue. Or so the script suggests.

            The 1998 movie Deep Impact, now out on video, is a good example of our current doomsday movies. As the film opens, Leo Biderman, a high school student on an astronomy field trip, discovers a comet "the size of Mt. Everest." It is about to collide with the earth -- that is, to make a deep impact. What will people do, given this "ELE" -- Extinction Level Event?  Throughout the rest of the film we observe the response not only of Leo; but of Jenny Lerner, an inexperienced but ambitious MSNBC reporter; and ultimately, of the President of the United States, Tom Beck (played convincingly by Morgan Freeman). The government has been secretly working on a survival plan we are told; it is building a spaceship called Messiah to intercept the comet, plant nuclear devices beneath its surface, and skillfully blow the comet to smithereens. It would be wrong to give away the story, which involves choosing a million people by lottery to repeople the planet (animals "two by two" will also be squirreled away in the underground fallout shelter in Missouri). But several observations can be made without giving away the particulars of the ending (the larger pattern we already suspect: "though there is carnage and loss, life will continue!").

Rationality Is Insufficient

            First, linear thinking is out. Planning, organization, technology -- these are insufficient by themselves. Jenny Lerner uncovers the asteroid threat by mistaking ELE for Elie, a supposed lover of a senator, and she is hailed as an investigative genius. Just as septuagenarian John Glenn joined six younger astronauts aboard Discovery last October for a space flight, so Spurgeon Tanner (Robert Duvall) is the older former astronaut involved in accomplishing the Messiah Project (most of these films are not too subtle in their meaning!). Although the younger crew members resent him at first, believing he is educationally outdated and along only for P.R reasons, Tanner proves indispensable. The others might be better able to handle the necessary technology, but leadership, wisdom, and an aesthetic sense are equally necessary, particularly when plans inevitably fail. A highlight in the film is when Tanner goes to comfort a young colleague in the doomed space craft by reading her Moby Dick.

            We are reminded of The X-Files, where Fox Mulder's intuitive, even irrational, grasp of reality (his sister was abducted by aliens when he was a small child which opened him to believe in anything and everything) and Dana Scully's no-nonsense rationalism (she is the clear thinker, the scientist/medic) must both be used if catastrophe is to be avoided. Both in the TV and film episodes of this ongoing saga, there is no retreat from our technological age. But equally sure is the realization that the scientific rationality of our modern age has come to a dead end and must be supplemented. Guidance must come from multiple sources.

            In his inaugural lecture as Professor of Practical Theology at Aberdeen University, John Drane points to this same need to go beyond rationality and coherence as a major theme in the film Armageddon. If there is a way of preserving planet earth, it will not be through the normal rules of reason and rationality. It is not NASA or the Pentagon who will save us. In fact, the NASA director tells his colleagues at one point that if they feel like praying, "now would be the time." And the experience of many in the movie theater is to without thinking begin to pray for them for we know that their buttoned-up approach to problem solving will fail (only after a few seconds do we remember that this is a movie!). It is not the government that will save us, but Harry Stamper, the world's greatest oilfield driller. His strategy will be totally illogical, but also ultimately successful.

            What are we to make of this? As I write this essay Time magazine's cover story is about the herbal medicine boom with it's so-called alternative remedies. The film Patch Adams is about to be released with Robin Williams playing a doctor who dresses in clown outfits in order to assist the healing of his patients (much to the consternation of the chief of the medical staff). And Jesse "the Body" Ventura is in Hollywood to celebrate his recent election victory over Hubert Humphrey, Jr. as Governor of Minnesota. Is there any who would doubt our culture's denial of system and coherence alone? I think of the image of Ken Starr in his grey suit and impassive face, sitting on his briefcase to increase his stature and trying to convince a group of legislators and the wider population that logic should prevail or our system is in trouble. But as we approach the millennium, it is logic and mysticism, Prozac and St. John's Wart, poetry and physics, a good (successful) president and a bad (sinful) person that together hold sway. There is no longer a system to be trusted. Loose ends will remain. But success can be found in using both the intuitive and the rational.

A Secularized Evil

            There is a second aspect of Deep Impact's apocalyptic vision which is also worth noting. Evil is now secularized. It is not the Satanic that is a threat in these movies, as much as it is a comet (in other movies, you can substitute global warming, viruses, and even aliens). Moreover, it is not a sovereign God who initiates the apocalypse, but natural causes hastened by human blundering and capriciousness. In the biblical vision of the apocalypse, the righteous are raised -- they escape the final annihilation. But in this Hollywood version, good and bad people alike are threatened. It is not so important to be among the righteous, as it is for human ingenuity and heroism to link with technology in order to save the day.

            What are we to make of such a "natural" apocalypse? Conrad Ostwalt, speaking at a recent conference on religion and film has suggested provocatively that Americans are increasingly substituting Hollywood doomsday films for the more typical Christian apocalyptic vision. With the evangelical church becoming mainstream within our society, we have difficulty portraying world destruction from the hands of a sovereign God. After all, we like the world we live within. So outside of certain religious groups on the cultural margin, a real apocalyptic consciousness is largely missing from contemporary Christian thought. The church's voice has grown silent (when was the last time you heard a sermon about the world's immanent end at the hand of a righteous God?). Enter Hollywood to deal with our millennial fears.

            Perhaps Ostwalt has overstated his case. But only slightly. While James Orr predicted one hundred years ago that this century would be the "age of eschatology," few are speaking that way about the next. Typically, we continue to believe that the end times will come, but this is not preached or taught as often as other aspects of the Christian story. A minister friend wrote his masters dissertation on "gehenna" (Mt. 18:9) and the "lake of fire" (Rev. 19:20; 20:10). His doctoral dissertation was on angels in the eschaton. But that was in the 1970's when Hal Lindsey's first book, The Late Great Planet Earth, went through multiple printings and the Soviet Union was still the threat from the north. Now he has moved to a large evangelical megachurch and his first lengthy sermon series was on wisdom for life from the book of Proverbs. The focus of his ministry has become that of helping people live Christianly. This is what an upper middle class congregation needs (and expects). But in the process, has this congregation no lost something of the story -- God's story? The denouement is absent; the ending is postponed.

            Do we live in the full consciousness that God will bring this age to a close?  Do we want to hear an apocalyptic, end-time message? God will overcome evil and establish his universal kingdom for ever. If God's message about the ending of his story is no longer being heard vibrantly within the church, is God using Hollywood to challenge us to recover a sense of the apocalyptic. Most of us go to see Deep Impact or Godzilla with popcorn in one hand, and then we head for the pizza parlor with our children. These movies are simply escapist fare. But could it be that these futurist, fantastic images also have the magical capacity to inspire once again our imagination with regard to the end times? It would not be the first time God has used unconscious agents to accomplish his purposes. (You might reread Isaiah 10 or the book of Habakkuk.) Whether a complacent, middle-class church wants to hear such a message, the final act of God's story will happen.             Maranatha. Lord come quickly.