This blog is a working translation from the original.
Have you ever wondered why on earth everything that’s happening under the sun must be pervaded by some tension and strife? Whether it’s liberals vs. conservatives, employers vs. laborers, East Coast vs. West Coast rappers, this football club fans vs. that football club fans, school class divided in groups which goad and insult each other, or philosophers which separate themselves into continental and analytical camps, and then honor each other with ‘intellectual insults’… – wherever we turn, we see tension and strife. At times, we can discern which side is right, but at other times we face the reality that none of those sides is fully right, or even that both are pretty wrong. Sometimes, there are attempts to resolve these combative tendencies through external joining of essentially non-joinable parties (often by uniting against the ‘third enemy’), so that for some time apparent peace is kept between them – until the water of strife, that continued to seethe, eventually blasts off the cover which concealed it, and boils out with full vehemence.
Does it make sense to get involved in these conflicts and choose sides, or is there some larger, more significant conflict behind all this?
Parallel with social turbulence, nature is also in a struggling mode – and that an increasingly intensive one – whether it’s innovative mutations of deadly viruses, spectacular but unwelcome volcano eruptions, merciless hurricanes or ever more frequent earthquakes, not to mention those ‘ordinary’ plagues such as infected ticks (one neighbour died from it). But even all that is not the whole picture. Let’s take a peek into our personal lives. There are periods when we sail through our lives bathed in a nice sunshine and pleasant waves. And then, suddenly, we fly into a storm or a storm runs into us – or erupts inside of us – and we can feel the vehemence of a severe conflict in our own life. Just before writing this blog, I felt an increase of this storm in my own life. Potential conflicts showed their teeth on the level of personal relationships, in the area of work tasks and there where it’s hardest to bear it – in my own heart. Yes, our reality is comprised also of conflicts with our own self. All of you know it too well. Just remember that homework or studying that you need to get into, but you just can’t overcome your inability to get moving. Or that situation when someone complained about your weak spot or fault, provoking a severe struggle with anger which, fuled by your pride, erupted in you with the intent to consume that person – and if you did let it out, afterwards you probably struggled with a sense of guilt. In addition to these usual struggles, there are those harder ones, such as struggle with depression.(1) What does all that mean? Why can’t we, as individuals and as a civilization, be at peace? Why do we have struggles with our own self and with others? What are the causes of our social schizophrenia? Why does even nature resemble us more and more?
The answer is so obvious, and nevertheless so often elusive: our dear home, planet Earth, is involved in a war – a war that is going on for millennia already. It is not a war between the political left and the political right, Tommy & Jerry, or even warsers and trekkers (or trekkies if you will). However, the latter two have come into touch with this war through their favourite fantastic universe – at least with the core idea: war between two forces of radically opposed principles. Everyone of us is thrown into the fire between two forces – into the war between good and evil. Between truth and falsehood. Justice and injustice. Freedom and oppression. Peace and violence. Love and selfishness.
Why do we even have any sense of discernment between those opposed principles? Where do they come from? Without any beating about the bush, I’ll tell you that the answer to this question lies in the ancient book whose name in English is formed by an abbreviation of the following phrase: „Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth“. Yes, you’ve connected the letters well. You’re not mistaken. The result is BIBLE. “What? Bible?! Are you serious?” Before I show you that I’m serious, let me first apologize. I apologize in the name of those who don’t want to apologize – and that is by far too large majority of those who call themselves Christians. I apologize to all, and especially to you, dear SF and fantasy fans, that we have made religion boring to you, that we have made God a repulsive character, and Bible a confusing dead letter. I apologize that, because of our lukewarmness and unbelief, we have failed to present you the most exciting narrative which the Bible describes, a historical and ongoing narrative – the great controversy.
In describing this fail of Christendom, the following dialogue nails it:
“On a certain occasion, when Betterton, a celebrated actor, was dining with Dr. Sheldon [then archbishop of Canterbury], the Archbishop said to him, ‘Pray, Mr. Betterton, tell me why it is that you actors affect your audiences so powerfully by speaking of things imaginary.’ ‘My lord,’ replied Betterton, ‘with due submission to Your Grace, permit me to say that the reason is plain: it all lies in the power of enthusiasm. We on the stage speak of things imaginary as if they were real; and you in the pulpit speak of things real as if they were imaginary.’”(2)
While we Christians were asleep, the power, the epics, the appeal of the motif and narrative of the great controversy were all employed by the SF and fantasy works, and have expectedly attracted the people. Each and every one of us have an innate desire to be part of something big, something epic, something of a cosmic importance. We have a feeling that there is something more. And that feeling does not deceive us. The success and the appeal of SF and fantasy lies exactly in the fact that it corresponds to those feelings and desires of our being which have been ingrained and developed for millennia in the hidden genetic chambers of preceding generations who had experienced the reality of the great controversy. Despite the materialistic worldview which has taken precedence in the last century and a half – and has pulled on a thick veil over our minds, disabling us to perceive the invisible realities – this innate awareness in a human being that there is something more, this desire for cosmic vastness, has found its discharge valve in the flourishing of SF and fantasy. But, while in SF/F the reality is only glimpsed – though with powerful imaginative and emotional support – fiction contains only scattered motifs and fragments of the great controversy narrative. Those fragments at times give good clues and at other times misleading ones. Although fiction contains conceptually (and visually) brilliant works, to learn the truth about the historical great controversy, you’ll need to introduce yourself to the Bible. Behind all side conflicts, there lies the conflict of conflicts – the one whose beginning the Bible describes with those fateful words: “And there was war in heaven”.(3)
As of the traditional conceptions of spiritual and invisible realities: a featureless immaterial heaven as a blend of pale clouds and even paler spirits entirely indifferent to any eagerness and emotion; God as an uninvolved beardo which now and then throws a thunder or two, and that’s all of his connectedness with the world; spirituality which doesn’t have any links to the real life (except maybe with politics) nor with sound reason and conception of a physical world; Christianity contrived as a dry hypocritical formalism or on the other hand uninformed and unintelligent fanaticism with inner language that is harder to understand than Klingon – all such ideas you can dissociate from the Bible, for they didn’t proceed from it. They were contrived by the later ‘religious luminaries’. Biblical narrative of the great controversy is inseparably interwoven with the history of humanity, as a whole, and individually. If you want to dive into the reality illuminated by this narrative, you can expect many profound and thorough surprises – though raised in a Biblical Christian family, I myself have experienced incredibly deep upheavals in my understandings when I finally scratched a little deeper, so you can certainly expect it, too. There will be moments when you’ll be asking yourself, astonished: is it possible that the reality is so much more interesting, so much more beautiful, so much more epic than what the majority suspects or even imagines within the SF and fantasy masterpieces? But, the evidence will be here – open to anyone for inspection. You can expect “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined”.(4)
However, I will not give the Bible a go just like that. I don’t ask you to believe it blindly. To consider it a reliable source of information, it must be tested. And since it claims to describe a part of human history, recorded history naturally presents itself as one of the best ‘litmus papers’ by which we can test the reliability of the Bible. Consequently, you can expect a fair amount of historical content on this blog, both for the purpose of testing the Bible, as well as for presenting the great controversy on the pages of human time. History is often more incredible and more intriguing than fiction, and it’s a shame to not know it. You can also expect occasional analyses of fragments of the great controversy narrative or of flashes of Edenic perfection shown in fiction – and their elucidation by help of the source narrative. Having this in mind, you can guess that the blog will have a geek flavor – but at the same time, it will be quite serious. Life is not a game, and this is something that we, who used to spend hours and hours watching SF and playing video games, have to learn intentionally. Furthermore, don’t expect from this blog to deal only with the phenomena around us. I won’t ignore the great controversy when it’s happening on the personal level. That would be a hardly excusable failure, because knowing how to choose the right (or light, if you prefer 🙂 side – that’s something of an utmost importance. In one Stargate episode, Oma Desala said it right: “The Universe is vast and we are so small. There is really only one thing we can ever truly control… whether we are good or evil.” (5)
And finally, for whom is this blog?
If it seems to you that it’s a little inclined towards the SF/fantasy fans and gamers, you’ve got a correct impression. Since I myself spent so much time in it, my heart remains connected to all who are getting around in those sferes (misspelling intended :). I understand these kinds of thoughts and emotional flows (and I still enjoy it, though now I feed it with other, ever fresh and inexhaustible sources). However, since all of us sense or at least wish for something more, there lies in each one of us a fan of a greater, more exciting, more epic, more complete reality – the very thing that enthuses the SF and fantasy fans. Therefore…
If, while absorbing a majestic sunset or a wonderful symphonic composition, you have ever wondered if there is a better world, a more beautiful reality…
If, while observing the starry sky in an attempt to grasp – at least for a moment – a sense of those endless distances, you ever wondered if we’re truly alone, if we’re cosmic orphans or there is something happening in the recesses of those galactic and intergalactic expanses…
If you ever wished to live in Minas Tirith, on Bespin or Alderaan, in Lothlórien, on Endor or Pandora, wondering how is it that the present uninviting world and the dull daily routine cannot satisfy the deepest desires of your being…
If, getting chills while listening to the “Duel of Fates”, you have ever wondered how can it be that this feeling of a cosmically momentous battle, and the desire to join it, are just a product of a figment…
If you ever wondered which direction this world is heading to and what do all these turbulent events and movements in society and nature mean…
If, after certain intensive and strange events in your life, you have wondered whether there is some invisible battle raging around you and for you…
If, under the sudden rush of some kind of a muted anxiety or an ominous feeling of emptiness, you have ever wondered where does it come from and how to solve it…
Even if you just want to know how to make good decisions, how to not waste your best years, how to choose a life journey which you won’t regret…
…welcome.
Whatever of those questions is yours, this blog is surely for you. Here you can relax and continue wondering about those things, without being mocked and told that those are irrelevant and moony questions. On this blog, those questions are important – and soon, the wider community will also wish that it had considered them important.
Welcome to the great controversy narrative. Welcome, not only to the story, but the history – in whose creation you have a part.
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(1) Number of suicides commited by those between 10 to 20 years of age has increased drastically across the globe in the last 50 years, and the main cause is depression (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General, p. 150-152)
(2) Ellen G. White: Mind, Character and Personality, p. 582
(3) Revelation 12:7
(4) 1 Corinthians 2:9
Conflict of Ages 