“The primary philosophy in Star Trek, stripped of everything else," David Gerrold once wrote, "was 'Love one another.' I think Jesus might have said something like that once too."

Indeed he did (John 5:12, John 5:17).

And the really important part of that is the words "one another." In The Gospel According to Star Trek: The Original Crew, in the chapter entitled "Last Battlefields and Neighbor Love," I wrote about the importance of moving from "othering" to "one anothering," from an embattled, competitive mentality to seeking to create a reciprocity of love by being the first to choose the way of Love.

Love is often thought of as warm, snuggly, happy feelings, or romance, or attraction, and all those things can be a part of it. But Love is a choice. It is active. Love is a commitment. Feeling love, or the emotions we associate with love, is fine, but failing to act on those feelings--or to act in spite of our feelings--is not love.

When Paul talks about love, he talks about what love does, how it behaves. It exercises patiebce and kindness, avoids envy, doesn't brag or boast, turns away from rudeness, refuses to serve itself, moves away from anger and resentment, rejoices in the truth, bears, believes, hopes, and endures. 

​Jesus began this narrative, saying that the greatest love is defined by the action of self-sacrifice. 

I posted last year about why the death of Spock is perfect for Christmas. "As we celebrate the coming of Christ," I wrote, "we celebrate not only his birth, but the bringing of salvation--a salvation wrought through sacrificial death. Certainly, his birth takes precedence during this season and his death and resurrection have their times of remembrance as well. So, it could be said that this is perhaps a more appropriate Easter (or at least Palm Sunday) ornament."

Surely, this stands as an ultimate depiction of love. But maybe it's easier to think about sacrificing ourselves in this way because we'll probably never be called upon to do it. We can feel pretty self-assured in our loving nature when we can say to ourselves, "I'd die for someone I love." But how would it be if we gave ourselves in the sense of not getting what we want? Of sacrificing our comfort, our self-importance, our security, or--and this is particularly salient in our current cultural climate--the idea (or illusion) that we are right?

What if loving meant, not doing good things to those for whom we already have warm feelings, but doing good to those who we dislike or disagree with, to those who annoy or irritate us? Jesus calls us, not to just love those who love us, but to love our enemies. It's amazing how much of an enemy we can make of opposing viewpoints, or those with whose words we take offense. 

Last night, driving home too late in the cold, I was nearly sideswiped by someone who had decided that my desire to not drive 20 miles per hour above the speed limit was inexcusable. I can't tell you the hostility I felt at such gall, such recklessness. Why would someone endager another human being because they were obeying traffic laws? I don't know how to love that person. I may never know.

It's exceptionally difficult to love in spite of anger--to show patience and kindness to someone who is awkward or irritating, or infuriating, even in very small ways. How can we ever, as Star Trek VI invites us to do, love our enemies? How can we sit down to dinner with the Klingons and not fight? How can we put aside cultural differences? How can we be civil, let alone (gulp) forgive?

Like all real love, it isn't easy. It takes work. But if Love can be born among us, can live fully with us, can endure mocking, shame, disgust, torture, and death, then maybe Love can be born in us too. 

This time of year, many of us gather with our families. This can be a particularly difficult place to show love. Maybe it's hard for a parent to not be critical of their adult son or daughter. Maybe it's difficult to hear a passive agressive comment and not lash out. Maybe political, cultural, or religious differences are in tension around the dinner table. But, whatever the difficulties, sometimes love looks like enduring them in all the kindness and peace that we can muster. Sometimes it can be far more difficult than loving our enemies to love our own families.

Even harder may be forgiving ourselves for the hurt we cause and feel.

All we can do, whether for friend, enemy, family, or even ourselves, is remember that Love is a choice we make. Love is doing good to others whether we think they deserve it or not. It's having the heart of a servant and a peacemaker, as best we can muster it. Becase, in the end, none of us deserves love, but all of us badly need it. Rather than focusing on our own need, though, the best way to have love is to engender it.

As I've contemplated this week's Star Trek Advent theme of Joy, I started wondering (a little flatly) what examples of joy we have in Star Trek. Two moments came to mind. (Here there be 35+ year-old spoilers.)

The first was the climactic scene at the end of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home as the whales are released into the ocean. It's a moment of absolute celebration such as we rarely see in the somewhat emotionally restrained worrld of Star Trek. Spock even smiles and laughs, for goodness' sake! In my chapter on the film in The Gospel According to Star Trek: The Original Crew, I liken the scene to a kind of group baptism, recalling this gloriously joyous scene from the 1973 film, Godspell. The scene in Star Trek IV is a celebration of the salvation, restoration, and renewal of the Earth. In that sense, it also recalls the culmination of salvation through the gospel of Christ. 

But, as I thought further, the next scene that came to mind was less loudly celebratory, quieter, more reverent, but nonetheless joyful. At the end of the previous film, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, the crew stands silently as Kirk talks with a newly resurrected and restored Spock, hoping for some sign that their friend has truly returned to himself. "Jim," Spock says, after a brief re-enactment of the pair's then-final conversation from the previous film, "Your name is Jim." At this moment, a smile spreads, slowly, but surely, across Kirk's face. Spock remembers him. The joy Kirk experiences here is the reward for the sacrifice og his career, his ship, and his son. He sees recgnition again and the light of life in his dearest friend's face.

This joy of restored relationshop spreads as the entire group gathers around Spock. As the camera pulls back and the film comes to quiet, serene completion, the feeling of joy is as palpable as it will sequel.

The disparity of tone in these two scenes, combined with their remarkable similarity of feeling, caused me to think again on what, after all, joy is. Is it happiness? I don't think so. I think joy is something deeper, something more fulfilling. It can come at a time of exuberance, like the Star Trek IV scene, or in quiet stillness, as in Star Trek III. I also sense something more than an emotional moment to joy. There is a liveliness, a vitality in joy that causes us to celebrate, to resonate with the goodness of something that is truly, deeply good.

And it also occurred to me that these two scenes involve people--a kind of family--coming together. This seemed to illustrate to me that joy often (if not always) has something to do with togetherness, with a communion of the spirit. That joy can come in the presence of other humans, or as we find it alone, in the presence of God. Really, in both instances, God is present. And I can't help but feel that it is the interwoven working of the Spirit of God that energizes and gives life to joy.

How, then, does Joy become a theme at Christmas? The word "JOY" adorns at least as many lawns at Christmastime as the words "Peace" and "Merry Christmas" and "The Reason for the Season," if not more. But the images that bear this word are often quiet and peaceful, not exuberant and festive. But joy encompasses both of these expressions. It is the delight, the relief, of knowing that we are recognized, we are seen by God. We can have Hope. We can be at Peace. Love has come for us. Not just to be found by us, but to pursue us. To seek us out and to save us, though we are lost.

"Long lay the world," the great Christmas hymn "O Holy Night" says, "in sin and error pining, till he appeared and the soul felt its worth." That knowledge, that understanding of the soul feeling its worth is the knowledge that we are not alone, that God has not forgotten us. "We're not momentary specks in an indifferent universe," Benedict Cumberbatch recently told Entertainment Weekly, "We're momentary specks within a very caring, loving universe." 

Last week, I shared the first Star Trek Advent post on HOPE. On my Facebook page, I shared a way you can bring hope to the world. Read my Facebook post here for your opportunity to contribute to real HOPE.
This week's theme is PEACE.

Tomorrow, Tim and I are getting back into our UCP Audio Commentary Series, sitting down to record our commentary for Star Trek Beyond. It's a fitting film to be discussing this week, as our Star Trek Advent meditation points us to Peace.

Peace is a central idea in the film, as the film's villain, Krall, seeks to destroy the "snow globe in space" of the Starbase Yorktown. Yorktown stands as the ultimate symbol of peace in the Federation, a place where peoples from across the Federation dwell together in harmony. It's an incredible visual representation of Star Trek and Roddenberry's dream for the future of humankind.

Of course, in a Christian worldview, such beautiful and complete peace comes only with the ultimate reign of Christ. There is a recognition in the Christian gospel that, much as we work toward and encourage peace in our world today, we as human beings will not achieve its fullness on our own. The film itself, like much of Star Trek, highlights the fragility, even of the Federation's great achievenents, and of humanity itself. It also asks whether working toward an essentially unattainable goal is worthwhile.

In today's world, peace is accutely hard to find. When we can't even conduct civil discourse between friends on social media, when our Christmas and other holiday gatherings can have the potential to break forth into wars of words and injured feelings between family members, when our nation--and indeed, our world--seems so hopelessly divided, peace seems an idea that should be comfortable alongside Santa Claus. It's nice to think about, but it's a myth. "Hear it every Christmastime," the U2 song says, "but hope and history won't rhyme."

But one thing Star Trek and Scripture both highlight is the importance of refusing to succumb to resignation.

In my chapter on Star Trek Beyond in The Gospel According to Star Trek: The Original Crew, I note that the harmony seen on Yorktown "is carefully cultivated and maintained" and that "the paradise we see is the result of years of diplomacy and hard work, not just interstellar warm fuzzies." Peace takes negotiation and maintenence. It takes humility and sacrifice. And peace--whether in international treaties or across family dinnertables--is a thing worth working toward because, even if we never fully achieve it, we will never have it at all if we don't work like it is possible.

​Thankfully, we can have Hope because Peace has come, to reside with us, and to be birthed within us. Peace in our own hearts, peace with ourselves, begins with the understanding that we can have peace with God. In Christ, God demonstrates his love--that he loves us as we are, before we change, with all our flaws--and he offers us peace. We need no longer be set at enmity with God. We therefore no longer be set at enmity with ourselves. If God is for us, who--including ourselves--can be against us?

We can't earn this peace with God. He makes it happen, offers it freely, even as we set ourselves against him. If, then, we can be the recipients of such peace, we can also be the instigators of peace, including and especially toward those with whom we most heartily disagree. It's not easy, and it's not complete. But we join together in the hope of peace--that peace has come, is coming, and will come for all, and that we are a part of the advent of peace in the world in which we live.

If you ask most anyone who loves Star Trek what’s special about it, they will most often say that it’s hopeful. Despite (or perhaps in some ways because of) its genetically modified megalomaniacs, evil twins, and world-consuming cyborg zombies, the message people most often carry away from Star Trek is that there is hope—hope for tomorrow, hope for today, and hope for humanity’s future. “There is a tomorrow,” Gene Roddenberry said, “It’s not all gonna be over with a big flash and a bomb.” At the height of the Cold War, this simple idea that humanity was not going to destroy itself was vitally important.

Hope is still vitally important to humanity, as it always has been. In today’s world, perhaps, it may seem more necessary and more difficult to find than it has in a long time. While it may be true that we won’t destroy ourselves with bombs, there is a fear among many that, if their lives are not destroyed, their way of life will be. The development of social order and culture is part of what makes us human. Often, though, the growth of our culture seems to involve a constant tearing at its fabric. That which we seek to grow, preserve, and nurture is often that which we also must question and distrust, constantly dismantling and rebuilding our sense of purpose and security.

This is a frightening process and one that can make us feel there really is no hope. So, at times like these, it’s important that something like Star Trek exists to help us find hope. But I think we can make a mistake when we look for that hope in the place Star Trek says (in practical terms) we will find it. The hope of Star Trek’s future rests largely on human unity—on laying aside differences and working together. This, in itself, is a good thing and one toward which we should all be moving and to which we should all be contributing.

But the specific idea that humankind will unify as we work together to reach out into space has always seemed to me to be the weakest element of the Star Trek universe’s mythos. There are a number of reasons for this, the most essential of which is perhaps that it’s unrealistic, though it is at least looking for the right things.

Hope rooted in a peaceful future for humankind is a good thing. Hope rooted in generosity and kindness is a good thing. Hope rooted in the vital nurturing of the human soul in a quest for understanding is a good thing. But hoping that we will find these things when we all work together to reach out into space is at odds with human history and human nature.

As it has been said, “No matter where you go, there you are.” Even as we reach out beyond this planet, we are still us. And we will take ourselves—including our limitations, our failures, our weaknesses, and our pride—with us wherever we go. Even if all of us could work together to venture to the next star (and we can’t; only our best scientists and engineers can), we would fight the whole way about how to do it. The project—like every other human endeavor—would and will be fraught with greed, competitiveness, politics, and disagreements.

It’s nice to think that working together to find humanity’s future in space will cause us to grow beyond all that, but there’s simply nothing inherent in the process of space travel that will cure the human condition. Going to space isn’t magic. While it is wonderful, important, and worth doing, it is—like most things—an exchange of one set of complications for another.

As Star Trek itself often shows us, once we go into space—even if we have solved many of Earth’s practical problems, like poverty and disease—the project of cooperation and survival only becomes more complex. Our international political issues soon become galactic and intergalactic political issues. No matter how much we think we have it together here on Earth, there is no accounting for what—or who—we may encounter beyond our solar system and the condition of the human heart will not change just because we’ve carried it to another location.

“The final frontier,” Star Trek writer David Gerrold has said, “is not space. The final frontier is the human soul. Space is where we will meet the challenge.” Gerrold is right that the real future of humanity lies within. And surely, if we go further into space, our outward journey must be an expression of an inward journey, but the challenge of cultivating the human soul is not something we have to travel to space to encounter. We find it every day, right where we live.

Maybe that’s why the Biblical narrative says our ultimate destiny lies, not floating on a cloud somewhere, but on a restored, renewed Creation, as human beings, on Earth. Maybe that’s why humanity’s ultimate hope comes, not in a starship, but wrapped in cloths, small and helpless, snuggled in the embrace of a human mother’s arms.
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As we embark on interstellar voyages in Star Trek, let’s always remember that the real hope for humankind is living inside us, that it came from God in human skin and that it comes for us, to find us wherever we are, whether far beyond the stars, or right here on Earth. So let’s look to the stars, as Marley says in A Christmas Carol, and remember “that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode.” Let’s marvel at the wonder of humanity and hope for our future, but let’s always remember that hope is with us where we live because God is with us, because Immanuel. Because while we were yet hopeless, hope came for us, that we might hope again.