Not long before buying a new Chromebook last summer, I watched Lexx, a sci-fi series that I more and more think may be the best description of humanity and our foolishness since the Books of Samuel. The savior in Lexx is a young man who is thousands of years old, being not really alive but not really dead, either. His name is Kai, and he can conveniently be put into cold storage when he is not wanted, but he is willing to do his friends' bidding when they want him. I decided that since my lap top functions much like Kai, sleeping until I want it, and since it was black, i decided to call it Kai.
I have been thinking of some of the more interesting parallels between Kai and religion this Easter Sunday. Lexx of course can be seen as a play on Lex, the law. It is a space ship that is the most powerful thing in the universe. Kai is a cognate of Chi, the abbreviation for the holy name of Christ, the abbreviation that so offends modern sorts who don't know why some people think Xmas is more reverential than Christmas. Like the Christ of Christianity, Kai was killed by the evil empire, only to be brought back to life by a creator character, a god-head of sorts. Kai has all sorts of cool super powers, which he never uses for his own desires--he says that the dead have no desires--but in the service of the god-head, or, after the god-head is killed--this is a post-Nietzsche story, after all--in the service of those whom he calls his friends.
Yesterday I watched a video of Tom Wright, one-time Bishop of Durham, describing his understanding of Christ and the resurrection. ( https://youtu.be/1WjKdBWFl24 ) It is a compelling explanation of Christ in what seems to me the most orthodox and biblical understanding of the resurrection, an understanding that I explored six years ago as I looked at palingenesis. It is also an understanding of Christ and the resurrection that seems to have no place in Christianity. I am not claiming that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead, something which seemed very unlikely even to his disciples, as Wright points out, and which is claimed far less in the New Testament than one might expect. Wright, however, does make that claim, and says it means that there is work for us to do. I am merely acknowledging the inconvenience of such a person in the everyday lives of human beings who want to find sex and riches, the goals of Kai's friends on the Lexx. The achievement of the goals of Kai's friends is made much more difficult because they keep using Lexx to destroy worlds that might be good homes for them. Again and again, Kai reminds them that their choices will probably not bring about their ends, but they again and again argue that the ends justify the means, and Kai answers their prayers.
The parallels between Kai and Christ are not perfect, but the conclusion does involve his sacrificial death, one from which he is not expected to return, and a new creation, a new Lexx. There are parallels to other myth systems working here besides Christianity.
But out what really struck me today is the convenience of a savior whom one can put in cold storage to bring out as needed, whom one feels comfortable asking for help as one thinks one needs it but who's suggestions one feels comfortable ignoring. Indeed, the history of Christianity might be described as the development of more and more ways in which Christians can ignore Christ and still claim to use his power for their own desires. (Thinking about writing this rant, I re-read the letters of James and Peter and John, the New Testament writers who are the most likely to have been eye-witness to whatever went on. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about how their understanding of Christian action compares to the activities of Christians IRL.)
What can be more convenient than a savior one can put in storage to bring out as needed? Kai had his cryochamber, Christ has his chair at the right hand of the Father. I have hesitated to write this little rant, and I don't know if there is really any use in sharing it. But, I do wonder, having my Chromebook Kai open and reading about what us folk are doing to one another, whether it might be possible for us to start again, to forgive one another. Probably not. Probably the best I might hope is that someone else will find the sci-fi series Lexx and get to chuckle along with Puck and me, 'What fools these mortals be',
Now you're meddlin' preacher! ❤️
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