The Promise of the Future

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been watching Star Trek: The Original Series. I recently finished the first season. It’s a good show and mostly tame by today’s standards. I imagine the ridiculously low cut skirts of the female crewman might’ve caused a stir, but beyond that it’s reasonably wholesome. A far cry from the level of titillation that might be expected today.

But that’s beside the point. No, I was struck more by the 1960s view of a future for mankind. In the 23rd Century, creator Gene Roddenberry postulates that we’ll have hand “phasers” which shoot highly concentrated lasers, interstellar travel with alien comrades, a teleportation machine which materializes and dematerializes people, and, it would seem, a united Earth government.

Yet information is stored on tapes. Video screen quality is sub-HD. Communicators are both better and worse than basic cell phones. Women don’t have vital roles on the ship—anyone could do Uhura’s job—and all the department heads are men. By progressive standards, it simultaneously ticks many boxes while falling hilariously flat.

Why am I calling attention to this? Because it demonstrates the arrogance and futility of man’s thinking when it comes to predicting tomorrow. It’s not only a problem that runs rampant in most speculative science fiction, but indicates how fallible we are as a people.

Back to the Future Part II is also guilty of this. In that film, the writers envision a 2015 wherein we have flying cars and hover-boards, food hydration machines in our homes, extendable holograms, fusion-powered engines, and, based on what a little kid says, video games where no one has to use their hands. It’s a smorgasbord of high-functioning equipment in an improbable future.

But we don’t have personal flying cars, do we? No, we have hybrid cars. Electric vehicles. We have VR goggles, but you still need your hands for true gameplay. We can’t put tiny pizzas in a hydrator for five seconds and have the real thing pop out moments later. We have fantastic quality LCD screens, now up to 8K resolution, but no Jaws 19 shark hologram reaching out to bite us. We can talk to anyone, anywhere in the world, but we’ve long foregone fax machines in most of our homes.

Again, the hubris of man is out in force. Man thinks he can predict the future. He envisions a tomorrow with promise, a grandiose embellishment of his current time’s technological knowhow while dismissing the subtle signs of improvement elsewhere. He looks to the Jetsons, to robots and aliens, to mass utopias and flying cars, but not to the simpler, yet impressive succession of ideas which take hold.

Man could not conceive of personal computers in every home. He did not see high-resolution televisions in every living room. It wasn’t in his calculations that cars would be made ever sleeker, ever diverse, but not likely to fly. And he sure didn’t dream of man walking around while carrying five-inch “do-anything” devices in their pocket. A man of the past would marvel at a smart phone while lamenting all the things which speculative fiction promised.

So man isn’t all-knowing. He isn’t meant to be. Why am I criticizing our minds, our improbable outlooks? Because it rings true. Because it is truth.

“Don’t boast about tomorrow, for you don’t know what a day might bring.” (Proverbs 27:1)

People are naturally planners. We have goals. We create a path in our mind and a future to look forward to embracing. But we are so often wrong. We are both optimistic and yet underachieving. Our minds see a distant time of peace, but we compromise what that means by our own estimations. When we think big, we deliver little. When we think small, we surprise ourselves. Such is that nature of modern day diviner.

Gene Roddenberry, a humanist, thought mankind’s progress should be rooted in reason, science, and the human spirit. He believed that humans could forge a future of peace with one another and one day ascend to the stars. Admirable. Respectable. Agreeable. Flawed. Laughable. Sinful.

The secular path to enlightenment and growth is one built on lies and false futures. We as humans can’t know the future. We are not omniscient. So we see and deal in half-truths, half-measures, believing ourselves capable of more than we could ever possibly be. Our pride sustains and ruins us, a picture perfectly encapsulated by our implausible and misaligned predictions of the future.

Man is right to hope. Indeed, hope is the very thing that has been offered to us. But it doesn’t come in the form of logical aliens, human achievement, sophisticated technology, artificial technology, or any of the fancy conceptions made by men and women throughout the years.

It comes by One Father, One Son, One Spirit. One God, from the beginning, who was with the Word and was the Word.

There is a promising future ahead. It’s been written down for centuries. We need not speculate. As it is said in Scripture:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea no longer existed. I also saw the Holy City, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband. Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look! God’s dwelling is with humanity, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away ever tear from their eyes. Death will no longer exist; grief, crying, and pain will exist no longer, because the previous things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:1-4)

So rejoice in the Lord. Be thankful to him. It is not up to us to create a new world. He has already decided that eons ago. Enjoy the fiction conjured up by sci-fi auteurs, but rest assured that it will never live up to reality, and assuredly never to the promised rebirth of creation at the end of time.

I like Star Trek, Star Wars, and Mass Effect. I revel in the adventure and thrill of space opera and science fiction exploration. But I recognize that they are flawed views, human views, of a place and time that will likely never exist.

I look to the Lord and I am thankful. I am glad for Him, for my salvation, for the love and security that I feel in Christ. May you know this truth as well. Thank you for reading. Peace be with you and God bless.