A Disruptive Witness
The robot Wall-E is one of the most compelling pictures of evangelism that I’ve ever seen. If you know the Pixar movie, Wall-E makes his way onto the spaceship which is carrying the last remnant of the human race. These humans, in their waiting to return to earth, have become inoculated to the non-stop stimuli of their screen-mediated world to the point where their bodies deform, they only drink through a straw, and their entire existence is managed by machines.
The weird thing about this image is that everyone is seemingly happy. But as we watch on, we see that it ain’t true happiness. French Theologian Jacques Ellul, writing in the 60s, warned of this effect of a technological society: the people are “happy in a milieu which normally would have made them unhappy if they had not been worked on, moulded, and formed for just that milieu.” (The Technological Society, 348). It might feel happy, but it’s not the “life that is truly life”. The itch hasn’t been scratched, only numbed.
Enter Wall-E.
This little robot and his robot friend Eve are literally carrying a seedling of life which will result in the ship’s rescue and return to earth.
Wall-E drives along outside the tracks of the humans’ hover-chairs and bumps into John. John falls off his chair and no one sees. No one helps. They all just move around him, waiting for the system to correct itself.
But not Wall-E. He lifts John up. In a world where distraction reigns, Wall-E looks him in the eye. He speaks his name. He disrupts John from his numb existence.
After this encounter, John lifts his eyes and sees beyond. He experiences the world afresh. “I didn’t know we had a pool.”
Alan Noble writes,
“The challenge for Christians in our time is to speak of the gospel in a way that unsettles listeners, that conveys the transcendence of God, that provokes contemplation and reflection, and that reveals the stark givenness of reality.” (Disruptive Witness)
In our distracted age, let’s be disruptive witnesses. Let’s live lives that are not conformed to the pattern of the age but are transformed, provoking questions, and displaying the words of life in Christ. As Paul writes to the Philippians,
“Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.”
– Philippians 2:15-16
We have the life of Christ. Let the light of Christ shine, Westies.
Written by Oli van Ruth, Interim Pastoral Support