\u201cThe hearts of the sons of men are full of evil and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives\u201d (Ecclesiastes 9:3)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Our most recent family movie night at home culminated with a viewing of \u201cThe Death Cure\u201d, which is the conclusion of James Dashner\u2019s apocalyptic dystopian vision launched by the \u201cMaze Runner.\u201d One particular feature of the stories sticks out for me as a metaphor of the human condition. <\/p>\n The \u201cflare virus\u201d, and the desperate search for a cure for it, constitutes the dominant backstory upon which all of the action, and all of the emotional moments among the young friends, is plastered. I will limit the remainder of my comments to a further discussion of this issue.<\/p>\n The premise of the \u201cMaze Runner\u201d movies (and the books upon which they were based) is that a terrifying engineered virus has been unleashed upon humanity. It is an aberration of nature, created by a lab in secret, and released with the intent of destroying part of humanity. The Mazerunner wikia<\/a> describes the effects of the infection:<\/p>\n It is a virus that slowly eats away at the brain, eventually turning its victims\u00a0into bloodthirsty and irrational humans who consider cannibalism an everyday objective. People who have the Flare are commonly called Cranks. <\/em> <\/p>\n The \u201cFlare\u201d darkens the minds of those who contract it. They exhibit rage and act irrationally and violently. They experience physical and psychic pain. Eventually they succumb to the effects of their affliction and die.<\/p>\n Most of humanity has become infected by the \u201cFlare\u201d. Even the powerful government agency, WCKD, the elite remnant of humanity living and working in the \u201cLast City\u201d in gleaming high-rises, barricaded behind heavily defended walls, has discovered that their defensive measures are futile. The virus is now airborne and residents of the \u201cLast City\u201d are becoming infected.<\/p>\n Sin is like the \u201cFlare\u201d. We are all affected by it. Sin is an aberration from God\u2019s intended order. Sin robs us of our happiness, our dignity, and our wits. Sin puts us out of our right minds, causing us to commit acts of evil and violence.<\/p>\n St. Paul opened his letter to the Romans with a catalog of the devastating effects of sin. People have suppressed the truth about God, and God in turn has \u201cgiven people over\u201d to their debased thinking and behaviors:<\/p>\n They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God\u2019s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.<\/em><\/p>\n Much has been written about the \u201cnoetic effects\u201d of sin\u2013the consequent darkening of the human mind. Echoing Aquinas and Calvin, philosopher Alvin Plantinga states:<\/p>\n we human beings have indeed fallen from a pristine state into sin, a condition that involves both intellect and will. It is an affective malaise, a malfunction or madness of the will. But it is also a cognitive condition<\/em><\/p>\n Tim Keller, using the example of King Nebuchadnezzar, speaks of pride\u2013one form of sin. What caught my ear was the following turn of phrase, in describing what pride does to us: \u201cIn seeking to become more than human, he became less than human.\u201d<\/p>\n We all find ourselves in a state of having become less than human by the deleterious effect of sin. We are all \u201cCranks\u201d. And the affliction is universal.<\/p>\n What is the cure for the \u201cFlare\u201d? The movie hints that the blood of the main character, Thomas, possesses something that can reverse the effects of the virus. This has been used successfully on his friend, Brenda. His friend (and traitor) Theresa, takes some blood and pipettes it into a batch of virus, and the virus is killed. The cure is in the blood. At one point, Thomas decides to give himself up self-sacrificially to WCKD, so that they may extract it (painfully and at great cost to himself).<\/p>\n Likewise, our cure is in someone\u2019s blood. In Christian theology, Jesus gave himself up, to his enemies, at great pain and cost to himself, in order to provide a cure for the virus of our sin. His blood is our death cure.<\/p>\n For more information:![\""Death](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/IMG_1854.jpg\")
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\n\u201cThe Noetic Effect of Sin\u201d is an essay by Christian writer\/educator Steven Cook, available on his website<\/a>.<\/p>\n