Artificial Place

I recently watched The Island (2005) with Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson. It was a good film, definitely worth seeing if you enjoy sci-fi that is of the Aldous Huxley variety. There was certainly nothing that was entirely original in The Island, but I thought that the movie was well put together and the narrative and characters were compelling.

The setting for the film is in an artificial world. There are a group of people who have been rescued from the toxic poison of the outside world and now live in a safe, artificial environment. All things in this world are sterile and white. But this world is not the real world. Two of these people (McGregor and Johansson) eventually escape and discover that there is another world outside of the artificial one. The couple also finds that they are clones who have been purchased for their body parts. Those who paid for their cloning have no idea that real people (i.e. withe real consciousness) are being manufactured as products. The clones are brainwashed with talk of "You are special...You have a very special purpose..."

For my purposes in this post, the interesting thing is that the world of the clones is an artificial one. The Place is manufactured and synthetic. If they escape, they find a sharp contrast between the artificial and the real. The artificial world is manipulated by standards and norms that are implemented for specific purposes: To produce homogeneous human beings. These are people who basically have the same identity and purpose in life and who behave in a regimented way so as to be used for the purposes of their creators. They are people, yes. But they are people who are manipulated by their environment so as to be useful for their ultimate purpose. Genuine self discovery and authentic sense of self is denied.

The Place is not authentic. The Place is artificial.



The idea of Place is important in relation to the church. Things like atmosphere, culture, norms (spoken or especially unspoken), forums for teaching/preaching/discussion, et al are very important. Place within the context of the church determines what kind of community that believers can become and the extent to which they can explore their faith or be indoctrinated (or brainwashed, as the case may be).

Question: Can the church become an artificial place?

Of course it can.

A church that becomes artificial is disconnected from the realities of the outside world. Just like in The Island, many church buildings in America teem with religiously minded folk who together create a kind of bubble from the world. Regardless of how bad you have screwed up in the past week, you can always exit the real world of struggle, go down the rabbit hole, and enter into the wonderland of church on a Sunday morning. Here you do not need to face the reality of your life, or, if you choose to introspect and examine yourself, you can repent and promise in your heart that you will try harder and do better. Along with your resolve comes a sense of having received God's grace. (Grace, of course, is never given by God unless we promise him that we will try harder, or, translated into spiritual-speak, that we will "rely on God more to help us overcome the flesh.")

The problem is that it is all artificial. We all exit the church doors and proceed to make the same screwups and live the same lives. In many ways, I think the problem has to do with Place. There can be no genuine or authentic change within the artificial world of church.

Another problem with creating an artificial church environment is that it renders the personal exploration of faith nearly impossible, except in very rare instances. This is one of the reasons why real life-change does not take place.

The current Place of church comes out of the mindset of mass marketing. Faith is something pre-packaged for the masses. It is similar to a McDonald's in that we can all come to church, get our spiritual fast food and be on our way.

One of the things that I have previously mentioned on this blog is that words mean things. What words mean has to do with how they are used. As such, I suggest that the word "Church" is, by definition, an artificial Place. Church is associated with a synthetic environment: a building, a budget, a way of smiling and saying, "Hi, how are you, I'm fine thank-you-very-much," and going through the motions of religiosity. This is true, I believe, as much for the "good" conservative Bible believin' churches as much as for the "evil" liberal or postmodern churches.

What is very rare (oh, so rare!) in Christian circles is an authentic Place.

Only in an authentic place can there be authentic expressions, experiences, and explorations on the part of the faithful. But it all starts with Place. If you have an environment manufactured for the masses, then do not expect substantive lives of faith. Having an authentic Place does not ensure that there will be people of faith; this is a given. But without an authentic Place real faith simply does not exist.

This all begs the question: Like the heroes of The Island, should we who are serious about faith all make a break for it and try to escape?!!? That's when it gets really scary, because the real world is never safe, and we are only human, after all, we would rather be safe than real; artificial people in our artificial worlds.