Bread and Circuses
Remember, I’m a geek and a nerd so I don’t only like sci fi, I will watch reruns of it. I was watching tv the other day when the Star Trek episode, Bread and Circuses, (s2, e25) came on. True Trekkie’s will already know which episode I’m referring to. But in case you do not, the Enterprise (the star ship) is sent to investigate a missing space ship from 7 years ago (for true lore fans, I believe they comment that this was before subspace communication was invented. That’s why it took so long to respond to the lost ship).
When they got there, they found a planet almost exactly like Earth (different land masses), and a population developed to around the 1960s (convenient, right?). The exception was that on this planet, the Roman Empire had not fallen and was the government of the entire planet.
Warning - spoiler alert. I can’t figure out how to put this detail in the devotion without spoiling the gotcha in the episode, so I’ll just explain it. When they arrived, they saw a tv news broadcast discussing a slave revolt over son worshippers (they thought they said sun worshippers and continued with this understanding until the end of the episode).
They found the captain of the missing ship. He had integrated himself into the Roman ruling style and turned his crew over to be barbarians in the arena of the gladiatorial games. The person he gave himself over to was a Roman called Proconsul Marcus who oversaw the gladiatorial games.
There is lots of details I’m leaving out (it is a favorite episode of mine) but eventually Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock (yes, it is Mr. Spock, Patrick), and McCoy eventually get back to the ship. They were comparing the parallel nature of this planet’s Roman Empire with Earth’s Roman Empire. Dr. McCoy thought it was illogical (that word usage was meant to irritate Mr. Spock) that they should worship the sun (the comment was made that our Roman Empire didn’t have any sun worshippers). This when Uhura corrected them that they weren’t talking about the sun but the Son of God. They became very optimistic to imagine the potential positive result with the Way just then being spread throughout the planet with their technological capabilities.
Gene Roddenberry, the creator and producer of the Star Trek franchise, has been quoted as wanting to create a platform to promote hope and optimism regarding the future of mankind. This would definitely been in vogue in the mid 60s as the Vietnam war controversy and the free love cultures were a huge impact. It seems to be evolving in the opposite direction but we know what the ultimate end will be.
The reason I shared this was the thought experiment of the impact of government and the sovereignty of God. If God sat back and intervened at the edges of the world, then the outcome of the episode certainly could have happened. But when you think about all the things that happened between the Roman Empire and today - the printing press, Martin Luther and the reformation, the establishment of the United States and its constitution, the atomic age and all the associated technological breakthroughs are just a few that popped in my head - you wonder what we might have lost in our faith and ability to discipleship.
Thank God he is sovereign and his plan was for Christ to sacrifice himself for our sins and the resulting Good News to spread throughout the then world exactly when it did. Unlike the expected optimism that ended that Star Trek episode, I don’t believe that the Word starting to spread in a 20th century society would be better than it spreading in early AD time (in fact, I suspect just the opposite would happen). God has his sovereign plan for the universe and everything operates according to that plan. Even horrible things like WWII and the holocaust ended with the United States developing the atomic bomb which was critical to almost all our current technology (medical imaging, etc.)
God’s plan is perfect.
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? “Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’? “Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place, that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth, and the wicked be shaken out of it? It is changed like clay under the seal, and its features stand out like a garment. From the wicked their light is withheld, and their uplifted arm is broken. “Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness? Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare, if you know all this. “Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness, that you may take it to its territory and that you may discern the paths to its home? You know, for you were born then, and the number of your days is great! “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail, which I have reserved for the time of trouble, for the day of battle and war? What is the way to the place where the light is distributed, or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth? “Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain and a way for the thunderbolt, to bring rain on a land where no man is, on the desert in which there is no man, to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground sprout with grass?” - Job 38:4-27 ESV
We tend to think of God as being the aquarium owner where he feeds them and maintains the environment but not everything is under his control. We think this way because we do not have any understanding of any other possibility. Our God not only feeds and maintains the aquarium but made it and everything in it and more.
