Deep Thought While Watching Star Trek

My wife and I went and watched the latest Star Trek movie last night, not because we’re “Trekkies” but because we thought J. J. Abrams would do an amazing job.  The movie was good and J. J. Abrams did not disappoint.

But while I was sitting there I had a thought that I think would be helpful to share.  It’s hard to deny the impact that Star Trek has had on us as a society.  If you scour the internet there will be no end of articles about how the technology we “saw” in Star Trek has become what we use.  This article has a great summary of some surprising ways Star Trek changed what we do.  

But what struck me was how much the ideology of Star Trek has become part of our society, even more than the technology.  We shouldn’t forget that the point of Gene Rodenberry‘s show was to show humanity working together beyond their boundaries to better mankind.  This is why Star Trek was the first T.V. show to have an interracial kiss and why all the members of the Enterprise are from distinctly different nationalities.  Rodenberry also intentionally created a world where human beings had stopped believing in anything beyond science.  His depicition, no matter how comical at times, has very subtley shaped society.

So here’s my deep thought: This man created a vision of the future and sold it to the Earth in such a way that we have begun to build towards it.  How should our vision of the end of the Age and the Kingdom of God change the way we live in society now?  How shoud it cause us to live our lives differently?