Star Treks and the Bible

When I was a very young fellow, the original Star Trek TV series was airing. I always liked it. Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock (I always wanted to call him “Dr. Spock”), Dr. McCoy, Commander Scott, the chief engineer, and others were entertaining. In what other series did Leon, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich man from Mayberry, appear as a small space alien? (If you don’t know about that, just skip it and keep reading.) The crew of the Enterprise was out to “explore strange new worlds.”

There have been many Star Trek movies and several other Star Trek series since then. One series I watched recently is Strange New Worlds (SNW). This series is set just before the original Star Trek series. It is amusing to notice how out of place it seems in relation to the original series. It should seem fairly contemporary to the original, but it does not and could not. It was created and produced about sixty years later, and this shows up often in the show. Sometimes these incongruities are just funny, but other times they reveal something important.

Recently, one character in SNW declared, “We explore space to find out about ourselves.” It was part of the conclusion of an episode that had focused on several characters “discovering” things about themselves—the kinds of things psychologists and counselors might explore. The original Star Trek did not focus much on the internal mental conditions and thoughts of the characters. However, unlike the original, SNW very much focuses on that.

In this, SNW reflects something that has intensified greatly in our culture since the original series. Our culture is very much fixated on the mental conflicts, thoughts, and struggles of people. This is sometimes the case, even to the point of overshadowing external reality. A strong emphasis in our culture tends to see each person’s “inner universe” as much more important than external reality.

This is not just a quirk of entertainment media. It reflects the priorities of many people’s worldviews today. This is something that can and does diminish the ability of people in our culture to understand the Bible. How so?

When people influenced by this emphasis in our culture read the Bible, something they do not find much of is an emphasis on the inner mental states of the people involved. Have you ever thought much about that? In Scripture, we have reports of what happened, but there is very little about what people thought about it, what swirled around in their minds as those events unfolded, or how they dealt with what had happened. It can almost seem to those expecting the SNW emphasis that the Bible is not telling us what we really need to know. Consider some examples.

Consider the Bible’s account of the entrance of sin into the world in Genesis 3. When it said of Adam and Eve, “the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked,”[1] it is impossible to conclude there was not a flood of emotions, tortured thoughts, and who-knows-what-else coursing through their minds. However, notice how the divine record has nothing about all that, not even a hint.

Then comes the account of God’s confrontation with the wayward first couple. Notice that apart from the brief and matter-of-fact statement that Adam was “afraid,” there is nothing about how Adam or Eve was feeling about all this. Were their minds not filled with regrets? They both offer brief excuses, but neither appeals to any inner mental state as an excuse. Instead, we have from Adam the excuse that “she gave me some of the fruit” and from Eve that the “serpent deceived me.” The inner worlds of the first couple are not explored at all. It’s “just the facts,” and those are almost completely facts about the external world.

We find the same kind of treatment of things in the New Testament. There is an account found in John’s gospel that is surely very emotion-laden. It is a notable episode of the death and resurrection of Lazarus. We are told, “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days” (John 11:5-6). What was going on in the minds of Martha and her sister Mary during those two days? We are told that both were sure their brother would not have died if Jesus had come earlier. How did that affect them internally, mentally? Were they at least a bit put out with Jesus over this? Did they have thoughts about that, but then feel guilty over those very thoughts? Nothing at all is stated about any of that. It is as though those matters are not of great importance. Those in our culture would see that as highly important. The Bible apparently does not.

This episode leads to something that comes close to telling us about the inner mental state of Jesus. When Jesus sees Mary and her friends weeping over the death of Lazarus, we have the simple statement, “Jesus wept.” While we can guess at exactly why Jesus wept, beyond the very concise statement that “He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled,” we have nothing. How can such important matters remain unmentioned in the Biblical narrative? Perhaps they are not of the paramount importance our culture assigns to them.

Consider Judas Iscariot. What was going on inside his psyche as he betrayed Jesus? All we have are the statements “Satan entered Judas” (Luke 22:3) and “he was seized with remorse” (Matthew 27:3). Our culture wants to have an account of what tortured thoughts Judas was thinking. The Bible gives us nothing.

When Saul, the prime prosecutor of Christians at the time, received a personal message from Jesus in Acts 9, he experienced three days of blindness and waiting. We can imagine a whole feature-length movie about what was going on in the mind of Saul during that time. The Bible reports absolutely nothing about that.

In the day-long journey of Peter to the house of Cornelius in Acts 10, what was going on in Peter’s mind? Peter, the Jew, was about to enter the house of a Gentile. There were surely some disturbing, troubling thoughts racing through his mind about all that. What were some of them? How did Peter “deal” with all that? We don’t even have a hint from the Biblical account.

These examples could be multiplied. However, if we did, we would just find more events that had to provoke all sorts of human emotional conflicts and mental agony. The Bible simply never focuses on any of that. That will make it seem incomplete and even lacking to people steeped in our culture. What can we do to help people with this?

One possibility is to supply what our culture sees as lacking with speculation about what must have been “going through the heads” of individuals in the biblical accounts. There is perhaps nothing wrong with this, to an extent, but that will always be speculation, not revelation. Even the Psalms, which might seem to come closest to addressing inner mental states, do not really explore what our culture demands.

The point here is that this creates a barrier to understanding the Bible for those in our culture. The Bible does little to address the inner mental conflicts of those in its accounts of all sorts of important events. The solution is not found in trying to squeeze modern sensibilities out of Scripture. The answer is found, rather, in helping those in our culture realize that their emphasis on individual mental crises is overblown.

We live in a culture that needs to understand that individual mental conflicts are simply not nearly as important as they are assumed to be today. To understand the Bible, we need to focus on matters external to ourselves. We are not the centers of little universes. In Scripture, the important things are what God did and said and how we respond to that. What happens in reality is more important than all our feelings about what happened. Until we start looking out, and not so much in, we will find it difficult to connect with the Bible.

* Kent B. True is the alter ego of Harold N. Orndorff, Jr., a retired campus minister who has taught college and seminary courses in the fields of apologetics, philosophy, ethics, and logic. Lately, he enjoys studying his grandchildren, who are very interesting ones and all. Contact him, if you must, at hnoii@hotmail.com.