The Great Beyond

I recently watched an interesting movie called “City of Ember.” The setting is a future post-apocalyptic world in which a handful of the world’s leaders created an underground city in order to preserve humanity from something unknown. Although the setting is supposed to be in the future, there are no flying cars or light sabers, the city looks like England in the 1900’s. The conflict is when the massive generator which gives them power begins to fail and some of the city’s citizens start to long for a life outside of the city. Most of the people tell them there is only darkness outside of the city. The city is all they have ever known.

A theme of escaping limited reality is actually fairly common in movies. There was the ever-popular Matrix trilogy, in which the characters tried to escape their computer generated fake world. For about 6 movies, the astronaut played by Charlton Heston tried to escape an earth that was dominated by oppressive apes. Kevin Costner tried to find land in a water-covered world in the biggest movie flop of all time, “Waterworld.”

Good or bad, this movie theme seems to say something about human nature. We seem to have something within us that longs for the truth beyond what we can see. Science also continually creates theory to conceptualize what is not readily observable. We are always looking at the horizon.

Paul wrote fairly vaguely in 2 Corinthians 5 about the world that exists beyond our grasp. He says we will live eternally in a place not made by humans. We will be “clothed” by a heavenly dwelling. We were made for the purpose of living in a different, immortal world.

I think it is good to be occasionally reminded that our present reality is not our future reality. Even in this life, things change in ways we cannot currently imagine. This life itself will also pass away, but that is not the end.