It is a dark trail that leads me into an awareness of human suffering, desperate loss and mind-numbing grief. A darkness, a pain, that drives me straight to the Cross.
By pure coincidence today, I found myself watching a very moving episode of British Channel Four's celebrated series, "Black Mirror".
In Be Right Back, a young woman grapples with staggering grief and loss; out of that pain, she reaches for a surprising comfort: the Powers of the Digital Age.
If writer Charlie Brooker is correct, our new-found god-like abilities based on software algorithms, a constant matrix of recorded digital video, and amazing medical advances will lead us to "conquer death" in new ways in the very near future.
(Watch the video above, if you don't believe me.)
Synthetic Resurrections in this Brave New World will make it possible for us to connect with deceased loved ones as never before. Death frightens us, Loss enrages us. The sudden Disappearance of one we loved leaves a wound some never see heal.
So, will we be justified in seeking Eternal Life on our own terms?
Are we really Masters of our own digital destinies?
Or, might a truer hope be found in the well-documented case of a true flesh-and-blood Resurrection? The triumph of One who promises hope and meaning in this lifetime, and eternal life to all who lose their lives for His sake, in order to find it?
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| The Last Supper, by David LaChapelle |
Do our synthetic gods truly deliver what they promise?
Or is there perhaps more?
