No, this is not an article of the #MeToo Movement. Such a title might well evoke a host of loaded meanings, but no, this article doesn’t really have to do with the masculine gender at all. I use men in the generic and older use of the term, merely meaning human. The title is an inner exclamation I once made as I reflected upon the monsters found in all the SciFi movies and TV shows of the late ’60s and ’70s. It dawned on me that they were all just men in costumes. Most of the time they still had two arms, two legs, one head, and so on. Now, this was certainly due in no small part to the technology of the time. We simply didn’t have the ability to create anything more bizarre. But at a more fundamental level, it’s because we live and move in a reality made by God, and thus the things we know of are the materials we use, even for our fantasy.
What I mean is, we can’t even think a thought outside the reality created and sustained by our God, any more than we can think a thought without words. There may have been a time, as infants, when we thought without words, but one struggles to even comprehend what such thoughts would be like now. And so, when we build our fantasies we use the stuff of this world to do it. This is understandable, for if we tried to move beyond things we know, how would we even communicate them to others? We would immediately fall into using comparison terms, such as “like” to introduce novel ideas. We understand things through similarity and contrast; similarity and contrast to the things of God’s creation.
I have always loved the SciFi and Fantasy genres. I think they are one of the best vehicles for telling a compelling story. Somehow placing the common things of everyday life into unfamiliar realms makes the mundane sparkle a little brigh
I recently saw a delightful little movie called Yesterday. It tells the fantastical story of a struggling musician, who wakes from a bicycle accident to find he is, apparently, the only person in the entire world who remembers the music of the British rock band The Beatles. And being a singer and musician he is able to perform these songs to the wonder and admiration of his friends, who think he has written them all. Soon he is an international mega star, conflicted by his little secret. The movie only works because, unlike his friends, the audience has the collective cognizance of decades of the Fab Four’s music. As the movie rolls on, each successive song is met with joyful recognition by the viewers. We have grown up in cultures that have been – for better or worse – hugely influenced by their music. But would their music really be popular today, if it were just being introduced? Perhaps a different example will clarify this. What if the movie told the story of a struggling musician who wakes to discover he alone remembers the ditties of some traveling troubadour from the 1300’s. Would he likewise rise to international fame upon the introduction of these “new” songs? Of course not!
You see, we “get” a story like Yesterday because we can’t think a thought outside of a history in which we have known the songs of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. In like manner, only much more pervasively, we can’t think a thought outside of a creation formed and sustained by the Triune God. It’s all we know…it’s all anybody knows, for that is what reality is.
What difference does all this make? What application is there for everyday life? Much in every way! For one thing, it’s good to remind ourselves of this foundational fact – “This is my Father’s world” isn’t just a nice line from a famous hymn, it’s the truth! We don’t live in a neutral universe with mute objects all around. We live in the reality that God has created and every atom of existence bears His fingerprint. It all testifies to Him. “For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist (or hold together).” (Col. 1:16-17) Because the Word Himself holds all things together, there is communication in all that He has made. It is no coincidence that the preacher finds so many sermon illustrations in the day to day.
Secondly, there are huge apologetic ramifications to this truth. The unbeliever with whom we interact is standing on the stage that God created, and all the props are His. The atheist can’t even define himself without reference to God (a-theist). He can’t make a cogent argument against Him without relying on the very laws of logic and communication that are themselves sublime declarations to His existence. Cornelius Van Til once wrote, “As a child needs to sit on the lap of its father in order to slap the father’s face, so the unbeliever, as a creature, needs God the Creator and providential controller of the universe in order to oppose this God. Without this God, the place on which he stands does not exist. He cannot stand in a vacuum.” When we speak the truth of a Sovereign Creator, there is an ally on the inside of everyone who hears our voice. Truth finds resonance within because we are addressing creatures, and creatures have a Creator. They may suppress the truth, but it still revibrates deep inside.
And this is the point of the entire article: “He is not far from any one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17: 27-28) Even when our fantasies have landed us on strange new worlds, we find His handy work there too, beneath the makeup and costumes. We have but to cast a faithful eye on the things we see, and He will be found.
But what about all those silly monsters from the ’60s, why were they able to engender such horror in the viewers? I think it was precisely because they were men in costumes. There are few things as terrifying as distorted humanity, for humans, above all other creatures, were made to bear the image of God, and when that image is marred, there’s a grotesqueness to it that is unrivaled among the hordes of potential villains. C.S. Lewis once wrote, “But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that is going to be human and isn’t yet, or used to be human once and isn’t now, or ought to be human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.” Good advice indeed.
