Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World outlines a future society that has reinvented life with the use of advanced technology. Having been bred in a test tube, delivered without a physical womb/mother, and then conditioned and bred by the state, humanity has achieved a nearly painless existence with the chief goal of immediate and continuous pleasure. No disease. No pain. No waiting. As a high-ranking official announces to some young men: “Fortunate boys! …No pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy — to preserve you, so far that is possible, from having emotions at all.”
The existence of the vast multitude in Huxley’s prophetic and prescient analysis of his culture’s future, are semi-sedated, brainwashed, childish men and women that cannot see beyond the present. Whatever they want, whether vacation, sexual experimentation, or any other quick fix, it is theirs. Life is nothing more and nothing less than unfettered hedonism.
The painful dynamic here is that I know there is so much wrong with the scene that Huxley paints. People are not just bodies; life is not purposeful if the sole point is blind happiness at every turn. I know this. I can feel Paul’s words, “Many walk…whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.” (Phil 3:18-19) However, if I am being very plain with you part of me longs for the total abandonment of the difficult to gain the easy. There is a tug within me for the immediate so that I don’t have to wait for something that will come later.
It is certainly a confusing feeling to desire the very thing that a social commentary describes as the great evil. But why do we?
In part, I think it is easy for us to desire a bastardized view of utopia because we were created for perfection. There is a natural longing for something more (See Ecclesiastes 3:11). We were created by the perfect One to be perfect and to enjoy Him in perfect unity in a perfect environment. Yet you and I are nothing close to perfection. We are broken and distorted, as is our world and our connection to God. We have nothing but imperfection and brokenness around us and within us, but our deep desire for perfection remains.
We have an internal need for something bigger and better than what we can accomplish; so we substitute. Our substitute does not fulfill us, so we use more of it, or run until we find something (or someone) that might better fill the need… or at least distract us for a short while. Therefore, our wheels keep spinning, as we jump from vice to vice, from vain pursuit to short-term solutions and projects. We do this, or we become disenchanted with all of life, existing amidst a boiling cynicism and a rolling pessimism.
This dilemma leads to one of the most compelling solutions Christianity offers (from a completely practical aspect): The Bible gives us a dynamic understanding of reality and offers us a taste of what we truly need. Our Lord neither over-promises nor under-delivers in this life, whereas all other options do one or both. Scripture offers a sober perspective: pain, sin, broken relationships, discrimination, hatred, and even death are all abundant, realistic aspects of our broken world. Trying to run, evade, or ignore these realities is a foolish endeavor. These all exist, and none of them are particularly good, but that’s not the end of the story. There is hope, not only for the substitute of fallen desires, but there will one day be complete fulfillment. One day, those who hope in Jesus will have total reconciliation and perfection. The true heaven will be our reality, and it will not be achieved through quick, impulsive pleasure, but through sustained trust in Christ.
Proverbs 14:12 declares, “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” Perhaps it is our substitutes that are truly killing us. If they are not killing us, could they be the distractions that are making us unprepared for life… and eventually death? Statistics strongly and consistently point out that hook-up culture is creating long-term negative impacts, even if it fulfills a short-term desire. A society replete with obesity might suggest that the convenience of fast-food chains on every corner has negative consequences. Might it be that the solution to the urge looks a lot like the murder weapon? If these two examples of quick-fix results offer insight into the world, how does ignoring the reality of death affect us? What is the fruit of evading our own broken, sin-stained hearts for the expediency of self-care and self-help? What will be the outcome of blindly living like there is nothing after our last breath?
Could it be that the very bandaids that we are using to cover our symptoms are the very perpetrators that are most afflicting us?
In a chilling scene, one of the minor characters in Brave New World is lying on her deathbed. She has spent the last chapter of her life blindly intoxicated in a sublime stupor. She has not recognized her son at her bedside as she lucidly dives back and forth into consciousness. As death approaches her doorstep, a sober terror pours over her. Gasping for air that she cannot catch up to, the character begins choking and convulsing, sobering up enough to lock eyes with her son. Huxley describes the setting: “The look she gave him was charged with an unspeakable terror—with terror and, it seemed to him, reproach. She tried to raise herself in bed, but fell back on the pillows. Her face was horribly distorted, her lips turned blue.”
This fictional character has been lulled and drugged to the point of death. She has spent her time on earth trying to outrun the sober realities of life and death. At a certain point, the pace was just too fast for her to keep ahead. Her life of inebriated, pain-free days came to its end with the abrupt shock of a reality check. Hers was not a lifetime of happiness traded for a moment of fear. Her concluding picture was an eternity of fear being entered into without the foreknowledge of what was to come. The avoidance of reality for all that time made the uninvited guest that much more petrifying! Running from pain, death and reality made its invasion exponentially worse when it finally arrived.
This frightening image should be inexplicably timely for us. Day by day, we continue to lull ourselves into a state separated from God’s reality. We have to look the truth of the world in its face, by looking Truth Himself in the face. We need to ask ourselves what we are using to push these encounters away. We cannot run forever.