I love science fiction, and robots fascinate me. My wife thinks it’s silly—but I think she’s wrong. In the new movie Terminator Salvation, Robots rule the world while the humans are the insurgents, trying to take back their planet. I can relate with this movie because I feel like I’m trying to take back a world run by robots
I was talking with my friend Zach today, and he was telling me about a book he’s working on. The idea is about how to prevent people from becoming religious robots. That got me thinking about how the idea behind robots is that they are supposed to make our lives easier. However, the truth is that the things we create often end up owning us.
I think Religion is like that. Religion isn’t bad, but it can get bad really fast. Religion is like the framework of a house. It gives me boundaries to live my life in, but it’s not my life. My life requires me to think, move and adapt, not to polish framework. Yet, I find people all around me who are religious robots. The framework that was supposed to empower them to work out how to live life has ended up owning them.
Perhaps unconsciously, we sometimes preserve a culture that’s long gone when the call of Christ is to create a new culture for a new time and a new people. His culture is a culture of love, compassion and life transformation, not robotics. Let’s win the world back from the religious robots.
David Achata
I've spent the last week enjoying some "grandma time" on Vancouver Island, B.C. Early this morning, I was riding along with my grandaughter Carlye and her mom, reveling in the early morning mist hovering over forest-covered Canadian mountains and listening to a new worship CD. Some lyrics caught my attention and I pushed replay to listen closer, "Today, I choose, to hear Your voice and live." I thought of those words when I read your blog, David. Robots are created to fill in for humans, just as religion can often serve as a replacement for a living, vital relationship with God. Robots of every kind are dead - they do not hear and they cannot live. Ezekiel saw a valley full of "religious robots" and despaired of them ever coming to life. Because of his connection to the living, Sovereign LORD, he got to participate in some "life transformation" and saw breath enter them: "and they came to life and stood up on their feet - a vast army" (Ezekiel 37:10). It's an army where even religious robots come to life . . .
ReplyDeleteYour reply makes me think of Ezekiel 36:26 and how our hearts are naturally cold and stony to the ways of God. Yet God says he wants to take stone hearts and turn them into flesh hearts. I think it's interesting how we're many of us are naturally drawn to the confines of religion because it tells us exactly what to do. All the while, Jesus doesn't want to put boundaries on us. He, instead, tells us that a man must be "born again" if he will see the kingdom (John 3).
ReplyDeleteWhen I say "Let's win the world back from religious robots" I mean it. I fear a church that is run by those who are more interested in keeping the rules than about complexities of the human experience. This weekend I was out at the AKA Lounge Downtown listening to a friend of mine play in his band. Afterward I was talking with some of the guys in the band and they essentially told me "I don't go to church, but I think it's pretty awesome that you'd come out to hear us play.... I might go to your church." What that essentially meant to me was that there are a world full of people who would give Jesus a chance if his followers would come down to earth and have a conversation about real stuff rather than "robotics." When I say that I mean, focusing on the rules over relationships. I think Jesus can and will transform those who are willing to have fleshly hearts that will move where he moves.