Conformity to His Image and Into His Body

A Christian is a member, or “organ” of a composite spiritual being, or “body,” whose director or “head” is Christ in heaven.

Eph 4:14-16

14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;

15 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:

16 From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint [ member of the body ] supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part [of the body], maketh increase of the body unto the edifying [ building up ] of itself in love.

(KJV)

1 Corinthians 12:12-13

12 For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.

13 For by one Spirit are we all baptized [ immersed ] into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.

(KJV)

Acts 9:1-4

1 And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest,

2 And desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.

3 And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:

4 And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

(KJV)

Hmmm. I guess if you are a Star-Trek(TM) fan, that does sort of look like the Borg Collective. But if you are not a Star-Trek(TM) fan, or indeed even a fan of science-fiction, then I will have to explain what the Borg Collecitive is, so I can explain to those who have watched Star-Trek(TM) why Christianity is not the Borg Collective.

For those of you who have been living in a cave for the last twenty years or so, Star-Trek(TM) is a science-fiction television show about a future space-ship that explores the galaxy and runs into all different kinds of “life forms” during its travels. This television show is so popular that many people have been influenced by it, even if they are not fans of the show. And that can be a problem.

The problem is that there is a depiction of an alien civilization in the series that contains a libel against one of the spiritual aspects of Christianity that becomes apparent as one progresses in prayer. So I must address this issue.

This alien civilization in the Star-Trek series is called “the Borg Collective.” “Borg” is short for “Cyborg,” which is in turn short for “cybernetic organism,” which is defined as something that is partly human but also partly computer and machine. In the Star-Trek(TM) series, the Borg are organic beings from various alien civilizations who have had computer and machine parts put into them so that they can be linked by computer into one, central “brain” that controls all of them remotely. This has been done involuntarily, and the process is called “assimilation.” Indeed, it is a process feared by those have not been “assimilated,” because the process involves turning a living, independent being into a “drone” - an ugly, expendable half-person/half-machine “robot” who no longer has any individually. As the Star-Trek series progressed, it became apparent that the Borg “brain” was inside the head of a “queen.” The Borg Queen. The head of all authority in the Borg Collective.

Both casual viewers of Star-Trek, and the fans of the series, have taken the Borg Collective for being a metaphor of the evils of conforming to the demands of any collective society in real life: corporations, social classes, political parties, fraternities and sororities, fraternal orders, the armed services, etc., etc. The underlying message Star-Trek viewers pick up from episodes involving the Borg is: Conforming to anything is bad.

But an early episode of the series from the 60’s demonstrates another kind of conformity that Star-Trek(TM) encourages resistance to. In an episode called “The Return of the Archons” (Season: 1 Episode: 21, Air Date: 02.09.1967, Stardate: 3156.2), the crew of the USS Enterprise encounters a planet of people controlled by a central computer named Landru. Landru has a group of “enforcers” called “lawgivers,” who enforce conformity to its will. When the lawgivers encounter people who are not under the control of Landru, they react by saying to them, “You are not of The Body. You have not been converted,” and then zapping them into enslavement unto Landru. It is fairly obvious that this early episode of Star-Trek(TM) is the DNA for what later became the Borg Collective in the later episodes.

And this is interesting because a close look at this early episode shows that it is Christianity that being maligned by this portrait of tyranny. The “lawgivers” wear cloaks that are similar to monks robes. “Landru” is obviously from “Andrew,” the name of one of Christ’s disciples. “You are not of the Body” is an obvious reference to the doctrine of the spiritual body of Christ, as the verses I’ve quoted above make plain. And “You have not been converted” gets to the meat of what the episode has a problem with: Christian spiritual conversion into the spiritual body of Christ, where Christ is the Head.

One of the biographies of Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star-Trek(TM), reveals that Roddenberry was a devotee of the anti-collectivist and atheist philosophy of Ayn Rand called Objectivism. Like Ayn Rand, he believed ethics to be objective and not culturally determined. That is a good thing.

But he also hated collectivism because he believed collectivism suppressed individual creativity. Well, that can be true sometimes, but not always. But he also came to hate Christianity because he thought that its doctrine of the spiritual body of Christ was collectivism par excellence.

And that is a bad thing and something that has infected a goodly number of people who have watched the Star-Trek(TM) series as it has unfolded. The Borg Collective is only the most recent manifestation of this early attitude of Gene Roddenberry

Christianity, contrary to the picture of the Borg Collective, it not a going from beauty and individuality and into a uniform ugliness and roboticism. Rather, it is a going from the robotish ugliness of conformity to the world system of things that is in opposition to God, and a returning to the true image of God - who is Christ - whom man was originally made in the image of.

Heb 1:1-3

1 God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,

2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;

3 Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;

(KJV)

Gen 1:27

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

(KJV)

Rom 8:28-29

28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

(KJV)

In Christ, one is being returned back from (redeemed from) the ugliness and roboticism of the world system of things, to the image of Christ one was meant to have in the first place. God likes to have unique individuals looking back at Him in worship because they each worship Him uniquely. Put another way, God likes to see Himself in us, but He also likes to see a unique kind of “Himself” in each one of us. It is not so much that He wants to see the same “photograph” of Himself in each of us, but that He wants to see Himself in different “poses” in the “photographs” of Himself that each one of us will come to have.

And again, unlike the Borg Collective, this is all completely voluntary at each stage of the process, because the end (or intention) of the process is the full and complete worship of God, which can only be voluntary if it is to be real.

Now why have I gone to the trouble of mentioning all this? I am mentioning all this because its possible for you as a Christian - at some point in your life - to be ...