Apollo

I’m a geek. I’m not quite old enough to have watched the original Star Trek when it aired on NBC, but I am old enough to have started watching it when it was played on PBS in reruns. It came on a Saturday night. To me, all the episodes were new and I couldn’t wait for each one. However, I do remember the first episode that philosophically bothered me.

The crew arrived at a planet where an entity forced a landing party to come down. This entity was Apollo, the Greek god. The premise was that the Greek gods were really space travelers that had come to Earth, found a primitive but developing culture and got them to worship their advanced technology. After a time, we earthlings got tired of worshiping flawed gods and stopped serving them. They left earth and, after an extended period of time, left existence to whatever higher-level plane of existence they were bound for all except for Apollo. It’s been many years since I read my Greek mythology but if memory serves me, Apollo was born of a relationship between a god and a human, so neither man nor god. Anyway, Apollo explained that he had been waiting, knowing that mankind would eventually reach for the stars and find him. Except, he wanted them to give up their life, raise sheep and goats, gather laurel leaves and worship him. The rest of the episode was Captain Kirk and the crew finding a way to foil Apollo’s plan. At the very end of the episode, after they forced Apollo into leaving for the higher-level plane of existence that the rest of the Greek gods had gone to, Captain Kirk lamented that perhaps they should have gathered a few laurel leaves (worshipped Apollo) for the cultural and technology advancement they could have obtained.

The reason that this episode bothers me so much is the personal conflict I struggle with giving myself up to God. There definitely is a part of me that wants to rebel and be independent of God. I want to be able to say that I can succeed or fail on my own. Thank God the Holy Spirit has convicted me that, even though my sinful nature wants to rebel, I can’t make it on my own. No matter how much I try, how good I try to be, it will never ever be enough to save me from my sin. That acknowledgement gives me freedom and allows the Holy Spirit to continue to work in my life to actually make me a better person.

“The righteous man perishes, and no one lays it to heart; devout men are taken away, while no one understands. For the righteous man is taken away from calamity; he enters into peace; they rest in their beds who walk in their uprightness. But you, draw near, sons of the sorceress, offspring of the adulterer and the loose woman. Whom are you mocking? Against whom do you open your mouth wide and stick out your tongue? Are you not children of transgression, the offspring of deceit, you who burn with lust among the oaks, under every green tree, who slaughter your children in the valleys, under the clefts of the rocks? Among the smooth stones of the valley is your portion; they, they, are your lot; to them you have poured out a drink offering, you have brought a grain offering. Shall I relent for these things?” - Isaiah 57:1-6 ESV

“For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” - Romans 8:2-11 ESV