I've recently been reacquainting myself
with Battlestar Galactica,
the most recent version done a few years ago. Truth be told, I've
been a BSG fan since I
was three or four years old, when it originally came on television,
as well as the Galactica 1980 spinoff.
I never missed a rerun of the original series on Saturday afternoons
when I was growing up either. The original series was far more kid
friendly than the recent series, yet the recent series is far more
realistic in terms of human characters, responses, and relationships
under the extreme stress and trauma of having your whole world
destroyed and having to rebuild everything from scratch (literally).
This, I believe, is what made it do so well, even though it is also
what makes it difficult to watch and unfit for kids of any age.
In one of the
episodes from season four, a leader of rebel Cylons (Cylons generally
being the bad guys) addresses the Colonial Quorum (the government of
what's left of the good guys). In her address she expresses that
humanity's greatest flaw, being mortal and subject to death, is also
what makes humanity whole. When the Cylons had the capacity to
download their consciousnesses into new bodies, time was pretty much
meaningless, and so was their existence. But when they lost that
ability, when they became mortal, suddenly every moment of life
became precious to them because they knew those moments were now
limited.
In the
book, and later the movie, The Bicentennial Man,
the android Andrew Martin spends his life, from the time he is
switched on, pursuing a goal of being human, and being accepted as an
equal among human beings. In his journey he underwent radical
physical upgrades so that his robotic body began to resemble and
function like a human body instead of a machine body. As he spends
his two hundred years making every change imaginable, he watches his
human friends and “family” grow old around him and pass away,
much to his grief. In the end, the thing which held him back from the
recognition he sought was his own inability to die. It's when he
takes steps to allow the circuitry in his positronic brain to
permanently corrode over time that he finally wins the recognition,
and peace, he had spent so long in search of.
The Bible says that death entered the
world through sin, and death was one of the punishments for Adam for
doing what God said not to do, “but from the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil you may not eat; for in whatever day you eat from
it, you shall die by death.” (Genesis 2:17, Saint Athanasius
Academy Septuagint)
We know from modern science, that
natural death was in the world millions if not billions of years
before human beings, modern or otherwise. Death on its own is a part
of life and the processes of life. As something dies, it contributes
to the nourishment of the life of something else. In fact, life can't
exist without death, be it the death of a plant or of an animal. In
order for one form of life to be fed, another must die and this is
true whether we are talking about a plant or animal or single-celled
organism. Something must die and decompose into the soil in order for
a plant to be nourished and grow and bear fruit. The bread you may
use in a sandwich was made of the seeds of the wheat plant. Those
seeds, the embryonic young of the wheat plant, had to die in order to
feed you and sustain you. Every hamburger is a heifer or steer that
died so you could eat fast food. In the human body cells are
continuously dying in order to make room for new cells. The uppermost
layer of our skin is made up of dead skin cells, which are constantly
shedding off as new skin cells are born from the bottom and grow
their way to the top. It's a fact that the human body itself
completely replaces itself every seven years as the cells within the
body die and are replaced with new cells. Cancer, one of the most
heinous diseases, is a malfunction in the cells where they start
reproducing out of control and don't die like they're supposed to.
There is no life without this kind of death. If this process were to
be interrupted, biological life on this world would end. It is so
important that it's built into our very genetic coding as telomeres.
But the death which came as a
consequence to Adam and Eve's disobedience was something else
entirely. It had to be. Everything God created was good, and the
natural cycle of birth and death is necessary for that creation to
function correctly. The death which came about by Adam and Eve's sin
is destructive. It feeds no one and nothing but itself.
“Adam” means “human being” in
Hebrew. Whether the Scriptures are speaking of a literal Adame and
Eve as the ancestors of all human beings, or if they are speaking in
general terms of Adam and Eve as representative of the human beings
at the time, this destructive death spread to every human being then
and now. Instead of a continuing cycle of life, death, and rebirth,
humanity would continue on in a cycle of death and destruction which
would end in the death of humanity as a whole, and the destruction
and suffering of many other forms of life on earth in the process.
Often, “eternal life” is seen as a
synonym for “living forever.” But consider, would living forever
really be a reward or a blessing? Would endless life in our current
physical bodies really be something to look forward to? If it was
only a select few, we would have to watch friends and family pass
away until we were alone, and would be afraid to make new
relationships for fear of losing those to death as well. If it was
everyone, the Earth wouldn't have the resources to sustain an
immortal population if it continued to grow. It is likely every other
species on Earth would be pushed out and go extinct as we made more
room. If it didn't continue to grow it would stagnate and people
would eventually begin to despair that there was nothing new, and
quite probably wish for death. No, there is something perverse about
living forever under these circumstances. It is a selfish desire born
of a fear of something which is a natural part of life and the cycle
of life. We're so afraid of the possibility of not existing that
we're willing to sacrifice everything else to keep it from happening.
This is not the eternal life talked about in the Scriptures. It isn't
even the proper translation of the Greek phrase.
In order for there to be life, death
must come first. In order for us to take our natural place in the
creation, we too must die and be able to die. It was through Christ's
death and our joining to His death through baptism which bring us our
salvation. And in order for us to be raised with Christ as undying
just as He is undying, we must first die to the life we now have. We
must not interfere with its natural course, either in trying to avoid
the death which comes naturally to us (which is an exercise in
futility), or in trying to take control of it ourselves and hastening
it (which is murder and damaging someone else's property). But this
is not the destructive death, which nourishes nothing and only causes
more destruction and death.
That kind of death is produced by fear,
greed, and selfishness. This kind of death can be seen easily enough
as one selfish action produces a chain-reaction of pain and misery
within the person who committed the action and especially with those
who surround the person who committed the action who are directly and
indirectly affected by it. This kind of death is futile and
accomplishes nothing positive or beneficial.
In reality, our natural ability to die
can be one of God's greatest gifts to us. It allows the human race,
as it is, to continue without overtaxing our resources. It allows us
to move on into greater union with God through Jesus Christ
unencumbered by the malfunction which plagues the human race. And it
gives us the chance to be at peace regardless of who we are.
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