One of the themes of this Sunday is faith in God who will be there for us. In tandem with this faith is also our preparedness to meet Him when He comes. It is within the context of God’s fidelity that I would like to explore the phenomenon of the “dystopian future”.
Have you noticed the number of movies which offers a peek into the future that is darkly dystopian. If utopia means a good place, then dystopia is just the opposite meaning a “bad” place.
There could be an inherent flaw in the dystopian universe represented not least by books or movies like Maze Runner, Twilight, The Hunger Games and The Divergent Series. For example, the world is dark and destroyed and yet in the Divergent series, trains still run... These scenarios pose a pertinent question on where humanity might be heading to. They also highlight man’s anxiety about the future; a future where either God has failed, God is impotent or God is absent. For Nietzsche, God is dead.
A fear of the future is symptomatic of a crisis of faith. Put it in another way: we do not know where we are going. But that is not as bad as doubting if there is a future where we can be at home in. Our miscalculation is to mistake dystopia as a future reality because it is somewhat staring at us now because we do not recognise it.
The question on where humanity is going is both anthropological as well as theological. Anthropological because it is a question about man. In other words, what does it mean to be a human person. Theological because it is a question about God. Does He exist at all? Both these questions are closely related in the sense that the question of man is at the same time the question about God. Why? The locus for the connexion is that man is made in the image and likeness of God.
The first reading implicitly establishes this affiliation between man and God. The connexion is observed through civilisation which expresses mankind as a flourishing society. Dystopia, on the contrary, reveals the failure of civilisation. For any civilisation to flourish, we must make certain assumptions about the human person. Sadly, this anthropological question, that is the question of man, is being asked with God out of the picture.
Society today has been trying to determine what the human person is independently of God. A good example is the discussion whether gender can still be use to differentiate between a man and a woman. Gender binary or hetero-normativity are concepts which are challenged because they are considered to be restrictive and oppressive. Instead, we are moving in the general direction that a man is who he defines himself to be. Likewise the same for a woman. Who I am is merely a choice I can make.
This renders gender a fluid, flexible and nomadic reality. Such ambiguity is emblematic of the confusion that arises from a discussion on man’s identity that is autonomous from God. When God is absence, the future of man can only be bleak because the human person without God is merely “natural”. A good analogy for man as “natural” is Plasticine or Play-Doh as it is called today. It means a person’s gender is mouldable subject to the buffeting winds of prevailing ideologies. When that happens, sexual differences are reduced to a social construct and they are not grounded in significant biological differentiation. It does not matter what physiology you have because one’s biology is not important. When a person is what one defines himself or herself to be, then it does not take long before gender re-alignment can be imposed on some young children. The question is if your child says he feels like a dog, do you begin to feed him dog food?
In this dystopian future without hope, the present is no more than a prison of competing despotic whims and dictating fancies. One day it is the Paleo diet, the next the Atkins diet. Yesterday we studied grammar but today we focus on situational English. We buy into a regimen of Noni juice to prevent cancer but now we have changed it to Soursop.
Where we are heading to, that is, the resolution of this crisis of faith in the future, can only come about when we face God.
As mentioned earlier, the anthropological question about man is also a theological question. This means the answer is found in trying to understand what God has intended for creation to be. It is significant that of all created reality, visible and invisible, man is the only creature who bears the image of God. This designation gives man such a personal privilege. It is not a privilege of entitlement or domination in the way we have rapaciously destroyed the environment. Rather, it reflects a truth that whilst the world was created for man, man was created for God. Therefore, God must enter into the discussion about who man is. The starting point is God’s love for us revealed in the human nature He gives to us in creation. It is the same human nature which, in the mystery of the Incarnation, God the Son took upon Himself when He became man. Therefore, who we are is cannot be our self-construction.
If there is anything useful about the dystopian genre, it can discern a common theme running through each movie or book. In this really messed up future, man is looking for salvation and the one who saves is either a hero or anti hero. Sadly, when push comes to shove, we prefer anti-heroes because they are like and so justify our poverty of heroism. At the same time, these anti-heroes possess a modicum of what a true hero is to perform what is necessary for salvation. Whereas, the Christian perspective, bears witness that the salvation of the whole human race comes not from a hero or anti-hero but from Jesus Christ—Son of God made man. In Him, we have hope because He is faithful and can be trusted. The author to the Hebrews reminds us: Faith is confident assurance concerning what we hope for, and conviction about things we do not see. What we cannot fully see is the future but it is not dystopian. Instead, we believe in the future because it belongs to God. Faith in God is the only cure we have against this dystopian depression and anxiety. Man must head into the future with faith in the present and hope for tomorrow. This is the preparedness that the Gospel speaks of. Instead of fearing for the future, we should live in the present as if we are ready for eternity because we know God will keep His promise as He did to Abraham and his descendants forever.
