Greater Good and Greater Love: God in Life

Last week we looked at a familiar monster in the classic Frankenstein. This week I’d like to start with an different kind of monster.

The 2022 science fiction horror movie, Life, attracted much interest from its initial trailers. The story echoed earlier genre classics, such as Alien, but featured realistic science and a stellar cast. It garnered conflicting reviews but most people agreed that the story shone in its first act. I would agree. I would also agree that the movie’s end is a real miss. There are a number of things this story could have done wrong. What broke it for me is how the story forgot its themes. The body of the movie emphasizes the greater love the characters choose, again and again, to risk or lay down their own lives for the good of their crew, and humanity as a whole. The ending pulls the rug out from under us and relegates each previous death as a useless tragedy.

I might be a bit more sensitive to this topic than most, but I don’t think it would be wrong for me to say that the letdown, regardless of how good or bad the rest of the story is, ruined the movie for me. Why is the betrayal of this theme so damaging? Why do we, as Christians, have a resolution to the problem?

The Greater Love of Sacrifice. 

A central idea that Christianity, and much of culture following the establishment of Christianity, is built on is Christ’s words “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.” 

If you were to stick that phrase in a spaceship, crash land it into the international space station, and throw a xenomorph into the mix, you would have Life. 

The movie introduces us to a varied cast of astronauts, individuals from around the globe, as they collect a capsule of samples taken from Mars. Despite the relatively large cast, the story does a good job of making them stand out. 

Ryan Renolds plays… well… Ryan Renolds, as per usual. He is a bit of a cowboy with a tenacious will to protect the others on the ship even if he delights in risk-taking himself. Jake Gyllenhall is quiet and somehow damaged, far more at home in space than on Earth. Rebecca Ferguson is an intrepid leader, empathetic and deeply caring yet unbending in her observation of the rules. And Ariyon Bakare plays the scientist version of a kid in a candy store as he studies a single-cell life form discovered within the samples. 

It is this life form that is the titular object in the movie. Calvin, as the organism is named, is treated by the scientists with all the care and concern one should expect from a crew full of scary alien stories. There are multiple firewalls in place and a lot of caution around the creature’s handling with one exception. Bakare’s character is obsessed with the tiny organism. He informs everyone Calvin, which is growing with a diet of sugar and oxygen, could have been a top predator on Mars before its ecological destruction. Every cell on the alien creature functions multiply for vision, strength, and intellect. 

As you can guess from the set up, things go wrong from there. When the crew unintentionally mishandles and harms the alien creature, it breaks its containment and begins consuming any living thing it can find to grow in strength and size. Despite the cliches baked into the premise, the story manages to build tension and intensity, mostly because the audience gets more invested with each death. 

Many horror movies will kill off unlikable characters, set up the deaths as the result of the character’s bad choices, or simply slash through bodies without care to build up shock value. Life, on the other hand, makes each death a sacrifice. Because of that, each new death is not just an additional loss of a three-dimensional character, it is also at the cost of the meaning behind the previous character’s death.

Greater Love as Defined by Scripture. 

I often say, as a storyteller and developmental editor, that one of the most dangerous things you can do for a story is devalue human life. It’s not just a matter of morality. If you are too flippant you will lose the ability to fully impact your readers. When something that is supposed to cause the most emotional impact loses its potency, you’re more or less knee-capped in creating escalation. 

 You would think that, in a story where all of the characters die before the credits roll, you would have lost the emotional impact of death either way. If, however, every character had still died, but the alien had been defeated or contained, those deaths would have had meaning. The world population would have been rescued through their sacrifice. 

Life subtly influences the viewer to believe that Bakare’s character, will be the first to fall prey to the alien. When the injured scientist is locked in the containment chamber with the alien Renold’s character is the one who chooses to break the containment and rush to the scientist’s rescue. This results in him being locked inside, and subsequently being the first to fall. 

This character’s death confirms the value of every life he died for because those lives now carry his legacy. The doctor’s not the least. The movie makes it clear that he has willingly chosen to trade places. He did this even after witnessing proof of the type of death he might die. When his death is indeed agonizing and horrific, it becomes more important to us that his sacrifice is worth something. 

Throughout the movie runtime, one character after another displays the “greater love” scripture talks about. They willingly go to their death to stop the alien’s advance. Not only were they trying to save their friends and colleagues, they knew that this creature could not reach Earth. The movie takes its time to show that these characters not only died for the good of others but that they willingly chose to die in such a way. Most of them, if not every time, these characters might have been able to live a bit longer if they had put themselves first. During these events, the rest of the crew is actively fighting to save them. It would have been easy for them to escape, at least for a time. They would not have been judged for not making the sacrifice. 

Some of these characters use themselves as bait for the alien. One even holds the creature to his chest, choosing to be consumed to give his team more time to retreat.

We also see that the team is working together to keep the alien away from  Earth.  They actively work together, planning their own deaths and bravely arguing as to why they will be the ones to die. At one point another spacecraft docks onto the space station. While the crew starts to rejoice in the promise of rescue, Ferguson’s character informs them that the ship will push them further into space. They cannot, she explains, risk the alien reaching Earth. The crew agrees that it is essential to protect their home from the unknown threat they face.

The watcher cannot help but be impacted by each death. Characters are not simply being killed off for shock or because they made a dumb mistake. Each character’s choices are for the good of others, even when they are wrong. And each character’s death, as a result, is impactful. 

The movie betrays the sacrifices by allowing the last remaining characters to accidentally release the alien on Earth. Ferguson’s character was going to use one of the last two escape pods to reach safety on Earth. Gyllenhaal planned to trap the alien in the second pod and fly into the depths of space. He would have suffered a horrifying death but saved Earth and his own leader. Instead, the alien physically overpowers him and strikes the other pod. The viewer is tricked into believing the plan was successful, only to see Gyllenhaal on Earth, screaming at a rescuer not to open the pod, while Ferguson is helplessly flung into space.

In doing so it has betrayed the notion of greater love in exchange for a hollow shock factor.

Better That One Should Die. 

Utilitarianism is the moral structure where morality is decided by what is expedient for the largest majority in any given situation. 

Caiaphas used a utilitarian understanding of morality in John 11:50. He stated “It is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” 

Caiaphas was speaking about sacrificing Jesus Christ to the Romans. His justification was that Jesus’s teaching would result in judgment from God and from the Roman rulers. While scripture makes it clear that Caiaphas was speaking prophetically. Despite that, he and the other Pharisees are condemned by the gospels. 

I spent some time playing with concepts of utilitarianism in my own Science Fiction series, Malfunction. Through the process of writing that, I concluded that self-sacrifice may seem to support a utilitarian view. If we choose to sacrifice another for the “greater good”, we have abandoned the Biblical ideal of greater love. 

 Christ never sinned, and He is the only human being who did not carry a death sentence of His own. Those who crucified Christ may have been used by God to bring about salvation, they are still murderers. Christ, however, could have escaped the cross. He chose to humble himself to it for our sake. 

This indicates that utilitarian concepts may justify a willing sacrifice of self that might otherwise be considered suicidal.

Only God has the authority to decide if a life is worth more than the outcome of their death. Only He knows if their sacrifice will accomplish benefit or not. We act as God by deciding that we are better off killing someone than saving them. Choosing to lay ourselves down for others, on the other hand, mimics Christ and displays a trust in God to turn that sacrifice into good. . 

Christ’s death is called “the propitiation” for our sins. (Romans 12:4), a word that speaks to the appeasement of God. Christ’s death was more than just a payment. Scripture tells us this death is the path for reconciliation to God (Romans 5:10-11). It is the healing of our mortal wounds (1 Peter 2:23-24), our sanctification (Hebrews 10:10), and the sacrifice once and for all (Hebrews 10:11). Romans 5:6-8 gives us a clear understanding of exactly what Christ accomplished saying “God demonstrated His own love towards us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

This is a concept called “Penal substitution”. It is the theological concept that Christ, in his love, took the judgment of our sins. Now only love remains. 

 2 Corinthians 5:21 states it the most clearly “For He (God the Father) made Him (God the Son) who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

 It is no wonder the ending of Life, where all the sacrifices are wasted, is disappointing. We as humans hold the willing sacrifice of one life for another in great esteem. 

Being a Living Sacrifice. 

Of course, not every human needs, or should, lay down their lives in an act of greater love for another. Part of what makes it so powerful is that it is rare. I would argue the rarer the better. 

There are many practical ways we can still mimic Christ without physically dying. Scripture calls us to be “a living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1) and to “pick up our cross daily” (Luke 9:23). In small ways that might look like volunteering for the most menial chores at your place of work, letting someone into traffic ahead of you, or cooking a healthy meal for your family even if you don’t feel like it. In larger ways it may be passing over a promotion to spend more time with your kids, signing up to be foster parents, or caring for your aging parents rather than putting them into a care home when it is a healthier choice. 

Dying for Christ was an incredible sacrifice but it’s typically a short, momentary decision. Meanwhile choosing to live for Christ means the greater love of sustained sacrifice. 

We may not ever save the Earth from an alien entity. We can save the world for the people whose lives we impact

Join me this Friday, October 11, 2024, to look at the quintessential Science Fiction Series, Foundation.