[NOTE: I just stumbled on this article by physicist and priest John Polkinghorne which explains everything I'm trying to say below, but better and with all the right credentials...So go away and read that, and if you are at a loose end afterwards rejoin me for my attempts to prove that I am perfectly amenable to a spot of popular culture after all, if somewhat determined to drag it through a theological hedge backwards.]
Old Cliff's old classic seemed creepy enough to me [1] before I discovered (that is, was forcibly encouraged to discover) 'Dollhouse' -- Joss Whedon's playfully poignant (prematurely cancelled) existential sci-fi about programming people to spec.
The premise is pretty stirringly dark: a shady operation hiring out good-looking persons ('actives') who have been imprinted with designed-to-order psyches for all manner of purposes, ranging from romantic liaisons (of varying degrees of depravity) and complex criminal dealings (with a minimum of questions asked), to specialised law and order assignments, expert trouble-shooting, and even the occasional mission of mercy. The bodies are on loan from young, healthy men and women with an eye for an 'easy' buck (they are well-remunerated on completion of their five year contracts) and, often, events in their immediate past which are painful enough to give them incentive to pause their own lives and forget. In return, they essentially 'lose' themselves for the duration of their service: their own personalities and (conveniently edited) memories are saved to disk at the start and thereon-in, when not on assignment, they are programmed to a docile, unquestioning default and live in a state of apparent innocent contentment in the spa-like underground complex designed to 'nurture' them and keep them well hidden. During the assignments themselves, of course, they go through all manner of physical and emotional trauma and exploitation -- but that's ok, because everything is forgotten when they return to the Dollhouse for 'treatment'...(?)
In keeping with all good sci-fi, this set-up provides ample material for all sorts of exploration about what it means to be human -- lots of philosophical questioning, lots of interesting observation, lots of (appropriately open-ended) comment on 'the way society's going right now'. It seems to have avoided (so far, at least) the twin temptations to fall into naive self-righteousness or to get carried away with its own cleverness. Moreover...and perhaps I should have said this first, in attempt to shrug off my sorry reputation as a cultural snob...it is excellent entertainment! There have even been days since borrowing the boxset (reluctantly, from an insistent friend) when I have watched two episodes! One time, even without a break in the middle. It has been a while since I allowed television such (temporary, I hope) sway over my timetabling.
Doubtless, if I persist with this writing thing, I will not be short of excuses to shoe-horn in a Dollhouse reference here and there. But there is one aspect in particular that I want to pick up on today as it has contributed, in a funny sort of way, towards something of an answer to recent prayer. I have become troubled lately by my long-running sense of detachment from Christian beliefs relating to 'life after death'. The notion of eternity (for humans, at least) has never sat comfortably or naturally in my mind (except, strangely, during periods of acute religious anxiety, when I have found eternal judgment all-too easy a concept to grasp). Most of the Christian answers 'feel' distant and implausible, and 'sound' like wish-fulfilment. Now, I'm not averse to exercising faith in the absence of feelings: having accepted the reality and authority of Jesus on a variety of other grounds (which do engage my feelings as well as my reason), and believing as I do that the New Testament is a faithful description and explanation of his life, teaching, death and resurrection, and the implications thereof, it seems rational to say sometimes "I believe because Jesus said so, and/or the NT apostles after him" about some things which don't immediately chime with my intuition. As Paul says before King Agrippa in Acts 26 (v8) "Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?": i.e. once I take into account that which I already believe about God, certain possibilities become very real, however small I might reason the 'unconditioned probabilities' to be.
So, I find I am ok sometimes to believe things that I don't 'feel' the truth of. But it is natural to expect and hope that if those things are true, my heart will follow my head in time. Also, it is very difficult to explain to other people things which don't feel real; I am troubled by a sense of dishonesty. As such, I have been praying that, if indeed my head-understanding of the New Testament teaching on life after death is true, it would start to ring true to me.
Well, interestingly, and to my gratitude, Dollhouse has been one factor in helping to furnish me with something of a picture of how it might work. This in itself is part of a meta-level change -- I have been convicted lately that I am all too quick to dismiss the power of the imagination and senses as part of our resources for accessing truth. [2] Perhaps it's my turbulent emotional history that has made me such a fan of hard, cold, reason [3]. Perhaps, also, the unhelpful cocktail of emotionalism and less-than-sound thinking in my church growing up. But the last year or so I have noticed something of a re-awakening of my senses. To be honest, this has oftentimes proved painful and daunting -- I am tempted to miss the sorta numb straightforwardness I had gotten used to. But I am pretty sure I can see God at work in and through the process, which I am wise enough to acknowledge makes it a thing to be grateful for.
Anyway, back to the question in question. One of the recurring ideas explored by Dollhouse is the classic sci-fi suggestion that human beings could live forever by uploading their personalities from their decaying bodies and downloading them into another body. Variations on a theme persist throughout the genre -- think Robocop, in which a dead policeman is turned into a cyborg; Red Dwarf, in which Rimmer is a hologram; Source Code, in which *spoilers redacted*...) Well, I was suddenly struck by the realisation that I always found these types of plots pretty plausible, as fiction goes. As I discussed a bit in an earlier post, the idea of a person as 'embodied information' is one that I find helpful (cautiously, to a point, and not intended in a reductive sense...) Is it, after all, so very far-fetched to suppose that the person could exist in a new body if the information could somehow be stored and transferred?
Now, from what little I know about neuroscience [4], and theology too as it happens, I am fairly convinced that matter matters. That is, the information of who we are needs to be physically implemented in order for us to 'be'. In the separation, we cease to 'be' and the information that comprises us, no longer having a suitable storage device, disappears. (But...hmm...information can be remembered, no? More on that later...)
In fact, the Bible (though not all Christians seem to have picked up on this) discusses life after death in terms of physical, resurrected existence rather than something spiritual and disembodied. Paul delves deep into this theme in 1 Corinthians 15, of which this is just an excerpt (I'd recommend reading it all to get it in context):
But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. (v35-44)He cites Jesus' own resurrection as the basis for this hope: "But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead." (v20-21)
Another example -- this time in Paul's second letter to the Corinthian church -- again describes an existence which is more substantive than our current one, not less so:
For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. (2 Corinthians 5:1-4)Hold on a sec -- physical bodies need a physical space to inhabit; the idea of imperishable bodies in a decaying universe is pretty horrific. Accordingly, the Bible talks about the whole created order being remade in a similar way. Chapter 21 of the book of Revelation talks about "a new heaven and a new earth" in which "the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." " (v3b-4) Similarly, 2 Peter 3:13 -- "according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells". Pretty mind-blowing, I grant you. But the step of faith between believing that God is the creative agency behind the world as we know it, and believing in another, future, grand-scale act of creation, is logically far smaller than it feels. [5]
But if resurrection is physical and affects the entire natural order, and happens all in one go and not to each one of us individually after we die, what about the between? Where does the information go when the matter in which it is encoded decays? I'm not equipped to get into the theology of this. But consider the vast mental capacity of an infinite, personal, loving God. If the essence of our 'selves' is information, we can be remembered (see, again, the Polkinghorne link from above). This has some interesting corollaries: passages like Psalm 139 take on new resonance ("[...] My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance [...] Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! [...]"); and where it says (e.g. in Hebrews 10:17) that He will "remember our sins no more"...I mean, I don't want to stretch the picture, but there's something in that that helps me get my head around how the essence of our renewed selves can be the same and yet different: the sin, the brokenness, everything that is impure and separates us from God is forgotten and therefore not 'downloaded' into the 'upgrade' (to be achingly trite for a moment).
For me, then, the Bible and what it says about Jesus gives me reason to believe in a resurrected life, however strange the idea initially feels. As for the slightly sci-fi elements of the perspective I've offered here -- please don't mistake me to be claiming them as 'fact', especially not in the mechanical sense of the word. It's just imaginative speculation, which happens to be helping me connect with the idea on a heart level as well as a head one. Perhaps it will help others too -- if so, don't stretch the metaphor! if not, ignore it!
I feel a coda is called for. If, on examination, we conclude the possibility of resurrection to be plausible, an obvious question arises: How do we get to be a part of it? The much-bandied phrase 'the free gift that costs everything' springs to mind when I read passages like Romans 6:5-11:
I feel a coda is called for. If, on examination, we conclude the possibility of resurrection to be plausible, an obvious question arises: How do we get to be a part of it? The much-bandied phrase 'the free gift that costs everything' springs to mind when I read passages like Romans 6:5-11:
"For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus."
I won't attempt to go into what "dying with Christ" might mean -- it is too big a topic to deal with briefly. Suffice to say, as I attempt to learn the implications of it for myself I find it to be no small deal. Nonetheless, I am compelled to agree with Paul that everything which I might have considered worth clinging on to in my own life is nothing compared with the joy of knowing Jesus:
Boy, am I reassured by what Paul says immediately after this:Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:8-11)
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14)A welcome reminder that this is not something I am required to do by myself or for myself, nor something which I can expect to see completed in this lifetime; it is an invitation held out to me because of what Jesus has already done, which I hope to spend the rest of my life entering into in increasing measure...and after that? Well, I guess I'll find out...
[1] I just checked the lyrics and -- no joke -- they include the line "Gonna lock her up in a trunk"...!! What?!
[2] Through reading Blaise Pascal's Pensee's, among other things. I find it very striking and challenging that a mathematician (and, arguably, a (very) early (1623-1662) computer scientist) should take such careful interest in the role of the senses as well as that of reason. I'm starting to learn that maybe truth sometimes (often?) transcends reason, even though (I believe) it is always consistent with it.
[3] I always wind up Spoonerising this phrase, which amuses me because it sort of works both ways: think "card-holding rationalist".
[4] It's been a while since I listened to/read any of his stuff, but I seem to remember Christian neuroscientist Bill Newsome offering some interesting perspectives. Here, for example, are some brief, thoughtful answers (in video form) to some big questions.
[5] A brief aside, for those wanting to protest "you can't have reproduction without decay": Matthew 22:30 records these words of Jesus "For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven", which would seem to me to preclude (among other things) continued reproduction.
[4] It's been a while since I listened to/read any of his stuff, but I seem to remember Christian neuroscientist Bill Newsome offering some interesting perspectives. Here, for example, are some brief, thoughtful answers (in video form) to some big questions.
[5] A brief aside, for those wanting to protest "you can't have reproduction without decay": Matthew 22:30 records these words of Jesus "For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven", which would seem to me to preclude (among other things) continued reproduction.
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