Dr Who and the Dilemma of the Ordinary Life
The great heroes, fictional and real, do not simply command our admiration they become our inspiration.
Dr Who was always the thinking person’s hero, an English eccentric, the Sherlock Holmes of sci-fi. Not for him the wham-bam, paff-kapower of the traditional superhero, no, it was always brains over brawn. Still, if you’re his all too human assistant, or one of us, and you find yourself back in your own time with little to look forward to but your old job, your old friends and chips at the local café, you might well feel that nothing you would ever do would ever be so significant? Like a nineteen year old returning from a hugely fruitful gap year mission?
Rose, Dr Who’s assistant, faced precisely this dilemma of the ‘ordinary life’ in the last episode of the highly acclaimed come-back series:
“It was a better life. I don’t mean all the travelling and seeing aliens and space ships and things. That don’t matter. The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life – you don’t just give up. You don’t just let things happen. You make a stand. You say no. You have the guts to do what’s right when everyone else runs away.”
The good Dr could not pass his talent on to Rose, any more than we can pass on ours to another human being, but he did pass on his passion to do what is right. The great exterminators are not the Daleks but indifference and passivity.
Rose’s yearning to live a life that counts echoes the cry of millions of people in our country today – Christian and not. Travelling with a time lord, however, may not be an option for many of us but walking with the Lord of Time is.
Sadly, to many people Christianity looks from the outside like a police box – a museum piece, an antique one person jail. However, like the Tardis, the view from the inside is liberating, not only helping us see past, present and future in an entirely different way but involving us, Christ’s far from omnipotent assistants, in his epic purposes in time and eternity: Indeed, “you don’t just give up. You don’t just let things happen. You make a stand. You say no. You have the guts to do what’s right when everyone else runs away.” In all that, however, Jesus, unlike the good Dr, has the power to be with us, even to the end of the age.
This article first appeared in Christianity & Renewal and is reproduced by kind permission.
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