If you want to survive the forthcoming apocalypse, read this
Every generation creates its own ‘end of the world’ stories, and they always reflect their cultural context. In the 1950s, Cold War paranoia was reflected by numerous movies about alien invasion. In recent years you can take your pick from zombie apocalypse in The Walking Dead, an unstoppable mind-controlling fungus in The Last of Us, the takeover of the USA by misogynistic religious fanatics in The Handmaid’s Tale, a deadly pandemic accompanied by births of human/animal hybrids in Sweet Tooth and the death of every male in Y: The Last Man. In general, the genre paints a grim picture of where humanity could get to, but it is always balanced by the hope that the human spirit can endure the hardest circumstances and will triumph in the end.
The TV company which made Adolescence is remaking the 1980s classic drama Threads, which depicted the aftermath of a nuclear war on the city of Sheffield. The film reflected the predominant fear of the day, that such a war was a definite possibility. Unusually for the genre (and hopefully without spoiling it if you have yet to see it), things do not turn out well for the survivors in Threads. The film leaves us with little hope that humanity could survive World War Three. Nuclear war will not be like the sentimental folk memory of the Blitz; we will not get through it by all gritting our teeth, having another cup of tea and jolly well buckling down. (My granny used to point out that the Blitz was nothing like this!)
There is something about challenging days which makes us want reassurance that life can go on. People just like us can get through desperate struggles and find that there is life on the other side. You might expect us to turn to escapism in these moments; in fact we look to fiction to help make sense of the present. In the early days of the Covid pandemic, the most-streamed movie was Contagion, depicting the effect of a deadly pandemic on society. We want to know that the human spirit can endure; to be inspired by the strength of the ordinary people who are depicted. As we consume fictitious stories, we hold on to the hope that better times are coming.
In some stories, this hope is reflected in the unusual connections people can make with others very different from themselves. The Last of Us centres on the relationship between a hard-bitten bereaved dad and a teenage girl a similar age to his lost daughter. Sweet Tooth teams up a vulnerable hybrid orphan with a former terrorist and a young freedom fighter. Where these situations locate the ultimate hope of humanity in our ability to connect with people very different from ourselves, Threads shows how the human race will have no hope if every connection we have breaks down and all our relationships perish.
It is always helpful for Christians to think about how popular culture is informed by the gospel. In the church we have reached the year’s longest season: Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity centres on the idea that God is a relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Relationship is fundamental to the nature of God and humanity is made in his image, to relate both to each other and to him. In our apocalyptic stories, it is the relationships forged between people which provide the solutions. The central characters are always grouped together and are never just individuals; much of the drama is unpacked in the relationships between them. In the dehumanising world of The Handmaid’s Tale, the human ability to hold on to your true identity when it is being denied by your society holds the beginning of hope. If God’s identity is three-in-one, each person the same but different, then humans can find our true purpose in the connections we make to those who are in many ways different from us, but similar in some essential ways.
The Handmaid’s Tale also describes a tension between a fundamentalist and authentically Christian response to catastrophe. Faced with a worldwide collapse in the birth rate, fundamentalists argue that the cause is the sexual revolution and its rejection of God’s laws for marriage and sex. God’s punishment is the withholding of children. The solution is to embrace pseudo-Biblical relationships based on a very partial reading of some texts in the book of Genesis, centred on fertile women becoming ‘handmaids’ – effectively vessels for the ruling class to use to give birth to a new generation. The ends justify the means: the mass enslavement and institutionalised rape of women is necessary to return to God’s values in relationships. Thus faith becomes a vessel for colossal double-think. At the same time, a simpler faith is alluded to in the protagonist June, where as part of her journey, she remembers the God she was brought up with and the dignity and grace he brings. This points to a different kind of faith: one which wrestles with the difficulties of life rather than accepting the harsh, straightforward answers of her rulers.
In the face of catastrophe, Christian faith inspires us with the example of Jesus, who was persecuted, unjustly tried, tortured and executed. If he could go through all this, how much more should his followers be able to? World-shaking situations are not to be feared or fled from; they can be embraced and our lives lived to the full in the middle of them. Equally, dystopian stories point us to worst-case scenarios which can help us to make good choices in the moral dilemmas we face in the present. Jesus’ people believe there is always hope and a future, so any apocalyptic tale which suggests we are all doomed cannot be the last word.