What happens to a culture’s stories when it rejects myths in the name of science?
Imagine long ago, a tribe gathered round the flickering fire, telling stories of gods and monsters, rebellion and consequence, present meaning and future destiny.
Now jump forward to the present, to faces rapt in the light of a screen, as starships soar while heroes and villains battle. Different symbols, same quest for meaning.
In the 20th century, the many triumphs of science and technology in understanding our world—and improving our lives—helped lend plausibility to the claim that science is the only or best way to find truth. Many wielded this as a scalpel against superstition, myth, and religious faith. The empirical seemed to triumph over the supernatural.
But our need for myth, for stories big enough to explain the world and bind us together, didn’t disappear. Secularization, and the gradual process of turning away from the Christian worldview that had underpinned Western culture, left a deep longing for meaning. Our search for mythology and meaning-making never really went away. It was translated into a scientifically inflected paradigm.
How Sci-Fi Reveals Shifting Cultural Narratives
Science fiction gives a particularly vivid window into different worldviews in our cultural moment. It projects our culture’s hopes and fears for the future—whether as utopia or dystopia, or in the tension between the two. Science fiction allows a secular exploration of eschatology: thinking about the “end times” and reflecting on our future and our mortality as a species.
The genre speaks to our present experience as well: films such as Everything Everywhere All at Once and the animated Spider-Verse movies wrestle with how we find meaning amid a multiverse of competing narratives and worldviews. Let me give a few examples of how science fiction reveals our shifting cultural narratives.
Our search for mythology and meaning-making never really went away. It was translated into a scientifically inflected paradigm.
Science fiction often reveals our longing for technological and scientific hope, an optimism where, through the light of science and human reason, we can solve our problems and reach the stars.
Star Trek is a classic example: By the 23rd century, humanity has overcome war and poverty and joined the peaceful United Federation of Planets, exploring the universe at warp speed. This series helped fuel real-life ambition to send humans to live on the moon and Mars, from NASA to the dreams of Elon Musk.
The same ethos continues in novels and movies like Andy Weir’s The Martian and Project Hail Mary, which emphasize the potential of human ingenuity and cooperation to overcome our problems.
The problem with this as a mythos is that it fails to deal with the darker side of human nature. Techno-optimism has an underdeveloped sense of sin: It asserts the problems we face are external, solvable by autonomous human reason. The internet’s introduction was heralded with optimistic promises of global unity, but absent a transformation of the heart, the technology has only accelerated polarization and conflict. Technology amplifies what’s in our hearts, for both good and ill.
Space-travel optimism also fails to reckon with the hard physical constraints that make human life inextricably tied up with planet Earth. Nowhere else in the universe can we thrive like we do on our home planet, and the dream of galactic exploration can be escapism from facing our responsibilities at home.
As Christians, we can affirm an optimistic view of human potential, but highlight our need for divine intervention to deal with our hearts. This is a need Project Hail Mary hints at when the story takes a turn from science to sacrifice as necessary to solve our problems. The best science in the world can’t save our souls. We need a supernatural intervention of grace.
Another strand of science fiction is the dystopian and postapocalyptic outlook. Here we see warnings of the dangers of science and how technology might be abused by powerful individuals or corporations. Stories such as Stephen King’s The Stand, the Mad Max film series, and Fallout games and TV series explore how—by accident or human folly—modern civilization could collapse and technology could bring about the apocalypse.
Often, these stories reveal a pessimistic view of human nature in which the collapse of civilization returns us to a state of nature “red in tooth and claw.” Widespread contemporary anxieties about climate change often loom large, as in Interstellar’s near-future dying Earth or WALL-E’s future where the planet is choked with rubbish.
Opportunities for Christians
How can we as Christians engage well with this genre? Science fiction and its fan communities can provide opportunities to discuss big questions of meaning, purpose, and the future with our unbelieving neighbors.
As Christians, we can participate in the cultural conversation, whether by writing science fiction ourselves, engaging with it critically, or being part of fan communities online or in-person. If, like me, you’re a fan of science fiction, consider building bridges to share the reason for the hope we have (1 Pet. 3:15).
For example, as a Doctor Who fan, my love for the Doctor, the Time Lord who is sometimes messianic, sometimes a “madman in a box,” has given me opportunities to share my love for Jesus as the real Lord of time who actually gave his life for the world and rose again.
We can also point to the hopeful realism of the “now and not yet” of the kingdom. A strong doctrine of sin keeps us from thinking we can make heaven on earth by our own efforts—which quickly turns dystopian in practice. But because Jesus is coming back to restore all creation and bring it into the freedom of the children of God (Rom. 8), we have hope both for the future and for what Francis Schaeffer called “substantial healing” in the here and now.
We probably can’t make the Star Trek future a perfect reality, but if we live in the light of God’s coming kingdom, we can make the future better. Optimistic science fiction can help inspire us. We just need to remember our Creator who made the world and gave us the minds to “think his thoughts after him,” to use a phrase often attributed to Johannes Kepler.
Science fiction and its fan communities can provide opportunities to discuss big questions of meaning, purpose, and the future with our unbelieving neighbors.
We can highlight how the Christian faith satisfies the longings of both our reason and our imagination. As YouTube cultural critic Damien Walter argues, science fiction unites logos (science) with mythos (fiction). C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien famously contended that Christianity is the “true myth”—it gives us an ultimate story to believe in, but one that’s really true, based on a rational apprehension of the Bible’s testimony, grounded in fact and history.
Hope Beyond Sci-Fi Futures
We might feel that it’s the end of the world as we know it, or maybe that we’re on the cusp of a technological utopia. But the gospel also offers us a better story for the future.
Whatever the “postapocalyptic” challenges we may face from AI, climate change, or killer robots—or whatever Star Trek dreams we might realize—we know that only in Jesus will all things be made new (Rev. 21). We’re called to be ambassadors of the coming kingdom, new-creation people in the here and now (2 Cor. 5).
If science fiction reveals secular culture’s longings for mythos and logical meaning, let’s take the opportunity to point people to Jesus—the person in whom “true myth,” historical fact, and living hope meet.
