STAR TREK and the Children of the Son

CHRISTIANITY FOR THE NEXT 1000 YEARS

In the beginning God created skies and earth.

Greetings and welcome back. I pray my post today finds you fit and felicitous.  I have been seeking to explain how we can be God people without keeping our intellects in the sand.

Captain Kirk in Rome

In a fascinating Star Trek episode, “Bread and Circuses,” Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock beam down to a planet run by 20th Century Romans. They are searching for the captain and crew of a Federation ship that is orbiting the planet on autopilot.

All the well known trappings of being Roman are still present. They are as brutal and powerful in their 20th Century as they were in our 1st Century, except they possess guns and swords. 

The Romans have transformed slavery into an institution with pensions and healthcare for their slaves. The Romans also broadcast their gladiatorial games on television for global entertainment.

Before running into the Romans, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock fall in with a group of people who call themselves Children of the Son.

Kirk and Spock believe they are saying Children of the Sun. They do not recognize that Rome has lasted into the 20th Century as has Christianity.

They try to explain where they came from to the leader of the group, Septimus, without saying that they are from the United Federation of Planets.

In Star Trek lore, the Prime Directive forbids any Federation explorer from telling the truth about where they come from so there is no undue influence on societies that are not ready to be contacted. 

An Old Way of Thinking

In the discussion, Kirk is trying to ascertain what happened to Captain Merrick and his crew without violating the Prime Directive. He asks Septimus if there have been rumors of distant travelers who may have come from the stars in the sky.

Septimus explains that it would be impossible for travelers to come from the sky for that is where the Son dwells. He also says that the stars in the sky are only lights.

I could not help but think how nicely this 1968 broadcast captured the sense of what it was like to believe an ancient cosmology.

Cosmology is the study of the cosmos, the universe, of all that is. The way we think about God today, even if we are fundamentalists, is greatly affected by modern cosmology.

Indeed, the way ancients thought was profoundly affected by their cosmology. 

Cosmology and God Lore

This ancient cosmology underlies all God lore: about God forming a shapeless earth, about God planting a garden, about God visiting Abraham, about sky dwellers visiting Lot, about a flood that covers earth (the flat disk, not the planet), about the sons of heaven looking down on women of the earth and lusting to mate with them, about a tower raised up to the sky; about a god who lives in heaven yet sends his presence on a mountain, then a tabernacle, then a temple, then a Torah in our hearts; about a star that can be followed, about a son being sent down to earth, about a son seeing all the kingdoms of the world from a great height, about a son being crucified, resurrected, and ascending back home in the sky.

So how shall we believe today?

Blessings…