I'm watching a non-recent movie at my in-law's home in Danville, Illinois. It is 1996's Star Trek: First Contact, the movie where the Next Generation folks truly left the land of TV and came into their own. It's somewhat nerdy to watch this movie, especially on the Sci-Fi channel (a network tailor-made for nerds). Remember, I'm only 9% nerd.
One of the film's thematic elements involves the transformation of Enterprise crew members into Borg. (If you haven't seen the Star Trek TV show/movies, I really don't have time to help you catch up). The idea of this transformation plays on one of our deepest fears: the loss of our own identity. The Borg do not kill but eradicate the individuality of the person and make him or her part of their own, and they join what is called the Borg Collective. The individual - who can no longer be called that, by the way - has no thoughts or feelings of her own, but is linked with the Collective (also called the Hive).
The Borg Queen tells Data, "I am the beginning, the end... I bring order to chaos..." God-like statements, are they not? And yet, she says herself that she is part of an organization - "I am the Borg." She is part of the Borg, yet somehow apart from the Collective.
As believers, we do not need to fear this kind of loss of identity. The Lord declared to the prophet Jeremiah that before we were conceived in the womb, He knew us. For the Christian, the fact that God knew us and created us is the bedrock of our existence. God formed us, and He set us apart for His divine purpose.
It's been awhile since I've seen this movie, but I distinctly remember gettin the feeling that the Borg represented something about Christians that some abhor. (I immediately thought Christian and not religion in general because of the precise quote you gave.) It posed a sort of false dichotomy that I think exists in the minds of some. That is, if you submit to God, then you become some sort of unthinking clone.
ReplyDeleteThe obvious flaw to this is that the Borg have proven far more adaptable to their environment than we have as Christians.