modern hubris – Lee Duigon

I had a yen today to watch Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. It was the fourth film in the series, and it’s one of my favorites. It’s very refreshing to see a lot of rich fat-heads choking on their hubris. The world needs more of that in real life.

Fallen Kingdom, like all the others in the series, is a parable. “There was once a man, or group of them, who thought he could do absolutely anything…” We know where this is going–to the Land of Nothing Works. Just a couple of minutes into the film, we see an elevator door that doesn’t work. It’s telling us what to expect.

And it’s not just the machines that fall down on the job. The shambles, the disaster, is caused entirely by Real Smart People blinded by their own reflections in the mirror. But we know from history that most of the really stupid things done by the human race–Original Sin, in fact–are done by idiots who think they’re geniuses.

Our world already has too much of that.

Image result for images of jurassic world

I watch Jurassic Park movies because I love to see dinosaurs. I also appreciate them as a form of escape: cooling my brain down for a bit.

So we watched Jurassic World today, and grooved on the special effects. Even if their Mosasaur is as big as the Chrysler Building, it’s still way cool.

But the thing is, these movies have something important to say. And that is… At some level, we modern people know we’re whistling Dixie, playing with dynamite, and totally full of self-delusion, thinking we’re in control, we’ve got it covered–and then the dinosaurs get loose. These movies, and others like them, would not be made if we did not know that.

And yet we act as if we know nothing at all. We keep on playing with fire. Ooh-ooh, genetic modification! Ooh-ooh, brain implants! And so on–no end to the folly. Professing ourselves to be wise, we become fools (Romans 1).

We do keep God busy, don’t we? Busy diverting us from self-annihilation.