What can I say about super-hero movies? Easy... I never get enough of them. The guys are hot, the girls are hotter, the action is fast, there are funny lines, and the themes are universal. True to type, that's what the latest X Men, Days of Future Past delivers, so it definitely gets 2 thumbs-up from me. One review termed it excellent, entertaining and relevant. I agree. Though trying to change the future through time travel into the past isn't exactly novel (think Terminator), the story of X Men undertaking it was superbly told and brilliantly executed.
Actually, if we knew what the future holds, would we, could we change it? As Prof X puts it in the movie, "So many battles waged over the years... and yet, none like this. Are we destined to destroy each other, or can we change each other and unite? Is the future truly set?" Guess where these other words about the future come from ? - "wars and uprisings where nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom...great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places... fearful events and great signs from heaven.... many will be offended, betray one another, and hate one another....lawlessness will abound..... People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken...a time of desolation when heaven and earth shall pass away".
Nope, these words are not from the next sequel of X Men Apocalypse. They are from the Bible. Even as Prof X proclaims the future as a 'bleak desolate place', it is the Bible that already tells us to "Mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God"(2 Tim 3:1-4). These words were written some 2000 years ago in the past. Is it not reflective of the current times as we know it?
How depressing. Why is it that almost every movie about the future all portend disaster, destruction, desolation and despair? I wonder if Hollywood realizes its portrayal on the subject mirror so much the biblical accounts of it. Or maybe the simple reason is that disaster sells more tickets at the box-office. Actually we don't need the Bible to tell us about the future. We don't even need to wait that long for it to come crashing in on us. Just google "current state of planet earth". It's not the church but learned clever scientists, enviromentalists, activists, all the expert '-ists' that rate the future of earth variously as precarious to doomed. But how can that be when technological, medical and scientific progress continue to advance through the generations? Unfortunately that's only a small part of the picture.
We who can't live without our so-smart phones and gadgets, who are so connected that the whole world will soon be able to know when we do our business in the toilet, who have access to so many of this, that or the other fantastic app find it so easy to forget or ignore the rampant warnings about environmental and ecological disasters around the world, resource depletion and unprecedented atmospheric changes. We go about our own lives, either oblivious to or unable to do much about social, political and economic issues - over-population, corruption, oppression, exploitation, conspiracy, injustice, violence and persecution of man against man. We are looking at a world here and now riddled with division, conflict, terrorism and mutual distrust.
So it is that a young Charles looking into people's minds and experiencing all the trauma of their lives screams out "I don't want your suffering, I don't want your future...so much pain". But Logan the hero puts the finger on the pie telling Charles, "It’s not their pain you’re afraid of; it’s yours. And strange as it may seem, the pain will make you stronger…to bear their pain without breaking" And then he added something so profound - But this is only possible with hope. Hope...the flimsy 'tingy' that whispers consolation to despairing hearts cloaked in the darkness of dead-ends, the uncatchable, unfathomable wisp of seeming nothingness that enables one to carry on in spite of not seeing, not hearing, not feeling, not knowing for sure, but trusting that there is indeed a better tomorrow.
Hollywood used super-heroes willing to risk their lives to change the course of history, to put the past on a different track so that a different future would result. An older and wiser Prof X looking at a younger rebellious version of himself says, "Just because someone stumbles and loses their path, doesn't mean they can't be saved." How true, we can and do make wrong choices, but as long as there is life, there is still hope to return to the right path, hope to be saved.
Indeed it all starts and ends with choices - our own. But it doesn't stop there. Our choices affect not just ourselves in the here and now but for generations to come. It's one thing to watch a 2 hour Hollywood spin but it's another to read God's warning that the whole earth and mankind itself is actually, as Prof X puts it bluntly "on the edge of extinction". Why would God show us such a horrible future? I guess it's only for 1 reason - to make us realise the enormity of the consequences of our choices now.
Hollywood and man will always prefer to do things their way, extolling 'good' (men's) efforts to make the universe a 'better' place to survive and thrive once again. But God isn't interested in survival, He's interested in salvation. He goes beyond tomorrow into forever. X Men went back into the past to re-direct the future. God had already done it 2000 years ago, when He sent Jesus to die on the cross and 3 days later resurrected Him. He secured the future for those who choose to believe, even if and when the future implodes upon itself, which at the rate and way it's going, is a foregone conclusion.
Mankind's hope is anchored in ourselves; because that panders to our insatiable human ego as we figure we don't need God to help us. But Jesus calls us to a different path - to anchor our hope in Him, "the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe" (1 Tim. 4:10). How can one individual's death 2000 years ago in the past affect the future of all other individuals, of generations and of the world? Well, if Christ really rose from the dead, then the impossible has become possible; that's how can. The only big issue is the 'if'. God gave us 2 gifts; one is choice, the second is chance...the choice of a good life and the chance it make it the best. We are not X Men; we can't go back in time to the past to change our choices, unlike Raven the heroine who was given a second chance. Nor can we wait till the future rolls around, because no man knows when his days on earth end, when tomorrow immediately becomes today, by which time it will be too late.
At the end of the movie, Prof X gives the answer to his own question, "We are the sum of our choices, as what we do now defines what we will do. Infinite decisions mean infinite consequences, for the future is never truly set." I am sure Hollywood didn't realize how accurate they were scripting those words into the mouth of a make-believe super-hero. For the choice to follow or reject Jesus now will affect not just our future, but 'infinitely' ie eternally, without end. That's a sobering thought.
"See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction.... This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live." (Deuteronomy 30:15,19)
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