Assumptions and worldviews
Posted at 6:17 PM
It’s always interesting watching stuff by Russell T Davies (most recently known for Doctor Who and Torchwood) because quite often his worldview seems to rise to the surface of the script. Take this example from the current Torchwood miniseries:
Rupesh: My first case – my first death – was a suicide. D’you know why she did it? ‘Cause—she’d written all these letters; she’d been a Christian all her life – and then, alien life appears. She wrote this bit: she said “It’s like science has won.”
Gwen: Lost her faith?
Rupesh: More than that. She said she saw her place in the universe – and it was tiny. She died because she thought she was nothing.
Gwen: I went through that. Even now I get terrified. But at the same time, it is brilliant, and beautiful, and … magic. It’s bigger you know. It’s like the whole wide world is bigger. My life is bigger.
(From Children of Earth – iPlayer link will no doubt expire soon.)
Ignore the fictional aliens for a moment. The underlying assumption is that science and Christianity are in conflict – the case for this isn’t argued, it’s merely assumed. Often Christian truth isn’t argued against; our society’s base assumptions are such that there is no longer an argument.
Without God, our significance is lost – and that leads, in this story, to an increase of suicides. Davies goes further, though, by trying to put something on top of this nihilistic view. The world is nonetheless brilliant, beautiful and magical – which makes the pointlessness, the smallness of it all irrelevant. Perhaps we can make our own significance.
Maybe I was the only one who was struck this way, but it seems that this is Davies making any need for God seem both unnecessary and incomprehensible. God doesn’t fit the worldview of the Torchwood universe. This recurring theme comes up in so much of both Doctor Who and Torchwood: the universe is huge and beyond our understanding, but isn’t it just marvellous anyway? Scientific advances, new planets – these are the things we wonder at and take delight in. Doctor Who is like a small child making discoveries. In this Torchwood scene, Gwen is similar – but also, her final sentences read like a convert speaking of new spiritual life to an unbeliever, but with this new big universe in the place of God.
The worldview of Torchwood and Doctor Who strikes me to be making an idol out of science – and as such, is very in keeping with the zeitgeist. How many people hold these sorts of assumptions? I don’t know, but we absorb them from the things we see, hear and read. It’s in scenes like this one I feel that Davies is pushing something onto us. (Let’s pray for more Christian writers for TV!)
I’ll try and close this rambling entry. There are certain ideas that are almost in the air we breathe; even Christians can be influenced by the worldviews and values portrayed in entertainment, news and comment. We need the revolution of theology. Mike Reeves (quoted in the entry just linked to) is excellent on this:
Theology is the “true research: as we re-search reality afresh in the light of how God has revealed it to be. It’s walking through life with a torch on. It’s refusing to drift with the zeitgeist”. We Christians need to “wash our brains with the Mediator, rather than being brainwashed by the media”.
Another way of putting this is: we need to critically engage with what we’re watching, hearing or reading, and not be mindless consumers.
With regards to the worldview portrayed above – well, I love science and scientific discovery, but science is too small. I can say about life with God: “it’s like the whole wide world is bigger. My life is bigger.” We were made for something bigger.
Comments