[Deus Ex] The Gray Death

Today we start a series looking at the games in the Deus Ex universe. If you never played them or are a little rusty on the plot details, head on over to Wikipedia. If you haven’t played and still want to, beware of spoilers.

In this series we’re addressing the question presented in all of these games- How do we fix human imperfection? Today’s post looks at The Gray Death.

Deus Ex’s cyberpunk future presents a possibility of the cool things that may be in store for us. This future is also close to the brink of apocalypse, so there’s that. The world is being ravaged by a virus known as The Gray Death. The effects are deadly and no cure exists EXCEPT! this one company that just happens to have a vaccine. Since the cure is in short supply, the governments have taken it upon themselves to pick and choose who they think is worthy to survive the pandemic. This decision naturally leads to a revolt by the masses who want to live. They believe that the allocation of resources should be handled in a way other than just helping those who meet another person’s standard of “worthy.”

There is a common theme that appears in theses games which asserts that humanity is imperfect. The Gray Death functions as an analog for sin. It is something that we all must deal with and we are all affected by it. Sin and death are often spoken of together and are almost synonymous in scripture. So this Gray Death acts as an effective metaphor since humanity is and has always been looking for how we deal with the problem of sin. The difference is that we don’t call it “sin” but rather human weakness, imperfection, or frailty.

In the future, technology will be so prevalent that we will begin to look blocky and pixelated.

The Gray Death works in another way since- brace yourself- it turns out that the disease is man-made! The virus was intended to help people better use super advanced nano-augmentations (more on that later), but it was taken and re-purposed to be a lethal disease. An advanced technology that was intended to better mankind turns out to be mankind’s undoing.

Like the Gray Death, we brought sin on ourselves. Humanity was created to be perfect by God’s designed, people who reflect his image. The Fall in the garden came about due to man’s attempt to augment himself. Adam and Eve believed the lie of Satan which was that God didn’t really know what he was doing and we could do better by adding to our knowledge and eating the fruit. The consequences, like The Gray Death, continue to affect us at the most basic level.

Unlike The Gray Death, however, we cannot fix our own sin. The Gray Death was an elaborate way of weeding out unworthy people and gaining power over the world. But our sin issue is a hole that we have dug that’s too deep for us to climb out of. This is why we need a savior outside of ourselves.

It is fitting then that the name of the cure for The Gray Death is Ambrosia. In Greek mythology, this was a food of the gods used to bestow immortality on humanity. Likewise, our salvation comes from the one true God and brings along with it the hope of immortality.

Deus Ex presents three solutions to this problem. Come back next time to take a look at them.

[Sci-Fi and Scripture] Zombies, Part 3

This is the first series in a brand new category of posts on Reclaimer! The Sci-Fi and Scripture series will explore the connections between sci-fi/fantasy elements and Biblical stories and concepts. This first series will look at the various possible occurrences of zombies in the Bible. This post will look exclusively at Jesus, his death, and his post-death time on earth.

In the previous post we saw how Jesus’ death was so monumental that it caused the dead to literally walk the earth. His sacrifice blurred the line between life and death, and we’ll see this again in another example:

The Soldiers at Jesus’ Tomb

After Jesus was placed in his tomb, his followers went to visit him, only to find an unexpected scene. When Jesus’ followers showed up, Matthew 28 says that an angel had rolled the stone away from in front of the tomb. Jesus’ tomb had been guarded to ensure no one stole his body to claim that he had risen. The guards who witnessed this were said to have “trembled and became like dead men” at the sight of the angel who was only there to tell them about Jesus. As we’ve seen previously, when heavenly forces get involved, crazy things happen.

So what exactly does it meant that they became “like dead men.” This could be an interesting way of saying they died, or it could simply mean that they fainted from fright. But the scripture doesn’t say either of those things. It seems that what happened to them caused them to still live, but appear dead. Almost as if they convulsed violently and suddenly became catatonic. One might even say they became zombified by what they saw. But this was just a precursor to some of the crazy things that Jesus did during his post-death time

Night of the Conquered Death

Coming back from death is no small feat, but previous stories in this series have clearly shown how it occurred. God was ultimately the one providing the power over death, but the examples we’ve looked at so far involved a third party that God worked through to bring about a miracle. Not so with Jesus. Jesus rose from death only through God’s power. Since Jesus is God, he basically raised himself. It’s one thing to bring someone else back from death, but it’s something else entirely to be dead and bring yourself back. This powerfully illustrates that Jesus’ death and return from death means that he has conquered death for all of us. 1 Corinthians says, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” When Peter is preaching about Jesus’ death in Acts 2, he says that Jesus was so powerful that death could not hold him.

What seems to have happened is that Jesus resurrected himself, unwrapped himself from his dressings, folded them neatly, and then…..just left? The above passage at Jesus’ tomb shows that the angels removed the stone and that Jesus wasn’t in there. Since they witnessed the stone being removed for the first time, his body could not have previously been stolen, so how did he get out? Well as it turns out, Jesus came back with a new, glorified body. A body with superpowers.

Jesus, 2.0

If you look again at the above 1 Corinthians passage, it has a key phrase important to understanding Jesus in the time between his death and ascension- “When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written…” Jesus’ body after his resurrection was in what has been called a “glorified state” since it has put on immortality. This means that his body was different from before, and much better. He picked up some new skills which we will now take a look at.

Teleportation/walking through walls: This explains that “exiting the tomb without moving the stone” problem mentioned above. But that’s just one example. Luke 24:36-37 describes how Jesus’ followers were all hanging out and talking about what had happened when suddenly…Jesus! He just suddenly appears and starts talking with them. Of course they’re freaked out because they kinda just got punked by Jesus, who they thought was both dead and somewhere else. Perhaps he sneaked in the back door and they hadn’t noticed him yet, you say? Well if we look at the same story in John, it specifically says that they had locked the doors when suddenly Jesus was there. Clearly, Jesus is the original Nightcrawler.

I'd like to think Jesus was less blue and creepy.

Hiding in plain sight: After news of Jesus’ missing body began to spread, Jesus confirmed this by appearing to various people, although not at first. There are at least two instances in scripture (Luke 24:13-35 and John 20:14-15) where Jesus openly converses with people who knew him without them even being able to recognize him. He was able to look them straight in the face and somehow prevent them from seeing who he was. Jesus could have easily joined the Assassin ranks with the likes of Ezio Auditore…

One of these things is not like the other...

…except he wouldn’t need to fool with that tedious wall climbing and roof-hopping because of another ability…

Flight: When Jesus chose to leave this earth, he did it in the coolest way possible, he just flew up and away. You can call it levitation, telekinesis, or just straight up flight, but either way it’s a pretty cool ability that most of us have fantasized about at some point. Again, this was done by God’s hand, but Jesus must have had the power to determine when and how to do it. Luke 24:50-53 describes it as him being carried up into heaven. Even more curious is Acts 1:9 which says that he was lifted up and then a cloud took him away. I’m sure that seeing Jesus go up in a cloud was awesome, but with the cloud involved, I just can’t help but picture this guy:

I'm quite certain that Jesus did NOT throw spiked shells at his followers on the way up.

Jesus, the Good Zombie

What does all of this Jesus talk have to do with zombies? Well, the whole zombie phenomena says something quite telling about our cultural view of death. When we tell a fictional story about what might happen to us after our death, our view is that we become a mindless, decaying monster intent only on eating brains. Zombies reflect our deepest fears related to the unknown time after death. Jesus’ conquering of death and display of his physical state on earth shows that there is something good that can come after we die. Jesus shows us that through him, death can be the beginning of an existence much greater than what we settle for now. In that sense, Jesus and ourselves will be more like the Type H zombie in that our forms will be changed after the process of death.

So while our culture continues to fixate on the zombie hordes and the various means of killing them, God’s truth continues to speak to us about an alternative after death that promises redemption, renewal, and a new body.

[Dead Space 2] Fear

We’ll delve deeper into the Dead Space universe this week and look at fear, rebirth, and distorted reality. This first post will look at the theme of fear that extends across both Dead Space games.

What are you afraid of? What keeps you up at night? What troubles your thoughts throughout the day? We all struggle with fear on some level at some point in our lives. It could even be said that some of us set the trajectory of our lives in a certain direction based on our fears. The Dead Space games are able to tap into this because fear is something that we can all relate to. The very reason we enjoy playing these horror games is because they acknowledge the fears that we all carry. Many forms of entertainment have this horror genre that seeks to play upon our fears of both the physical and psychological. The Dead Space games have us experiencing three main fears. We’ll look at these three fears here, and in the next post we’ll seek out the answer to those fears and also discuss good fear.

Fear 1- Powerlessness

As the horror genre has carried over into actions games, it has spawned a slew of “survival horror” games. These include games like Bioshock, Resident Evil, and Silent Hill. The goal of these games it to dole out steamy bowls of fear through not only the content of the setting and story, but also through the gameplay itself. This is done by limiting the player’s resources and abilities, causing them to think more strategically and use ammo more conservatively. This causes increased fear and tension as the player is constantly in danger of running out of supplies, at which point they are completely vulnerable to an imminent death.

Another example is a gameplay component that Dead Space has mastered- the quick time event. At any point you could suddenly be attacked by who knows what and you’re only option is to frantically mash a button to prevent a gory death. This produces constant fear that control can be completely wrested from the player in an instant.

"Which button do I press to NOT die??"

Losing control of everything is a part of our everyday lives. This is why we have safety measures on our cars, insurance on our houses, and countless other services and gadgets to ensure that we maintain control over our lives.

At the broader level is the story of Dead Space’s background forces. The first game reveals that the government was behind the placement of the first Marker on Aegis 7. Dead Space 2 shows us that the ship from the first game, the Ishimura, did indeed survive that catastrophe. But not only has the government brought back the ship to be studied, but they have used Isaac’s mind to build another Marker. What’s their goal in all this? To learn more about the Marker so that they can use it to increase their power. They want to weaponize this mysterious alien menace. Does this sound familiar? Because it’s the meta-narrative of every Alien movie. Has this kind of plan ever ended well? The prevalence of this theme illustrates that those in power are willing to do whatever is necessary (no matter how ill-advised) in order to maintain or increase their power. They operate under a fear of losing control, which leads to some very bad decision-making.

Fear 2- Shame

The relationship between Isaac and his dead girlfriend Nicole is what provides these games with emotional depth. At the end of Dead Space, Isaac learns that she killed herself out of desperation to avoid a worse death at the hands of the Necromorphs. Isaac is tormented with guilt over not being able to save her in time. Nicole appears much more in the second game as she regularly terrorizes and antagonizes him. She is not real, but is actually a manifestation of the Marker’s presence in Isaac’s mind. There was one encounter in particular that provides insight into Isaac’s character. She tells him, “No one would ever know the guilt you feel, never know the dark thoughts you keep.” Isaac is afraid of having to come to terms with his internal feelings of shame and failure related to Nicole’s death.

This plays into our fears because we all have secrets that we keep. There are things that we think about or have done that we keep to ourselves. They serve as reminders of how terrible we really are. On the outside we put up a good front and act like nothing is wrong because we could not bear the possibility of others seeing the shameful things inside of us.

Fear 3- Death

These games have plenty of examples of death to haunt our fears. The gameplay deals not only death but with painful, gory, excruciating death. We have enough trouble mentally and emotionally dealing with the mystery of death and what comes after, but playing these games just makes it worse by watching Isaac experience a great deal of pain and suffering before finally kicking the bucket.

Isaac's battles have left him as only half the man he used to be.

When you fail, the game provides many opportunities to experience death scenes like the one pictured above. The difficulty level and abundance of enemies in the game means that this is a common occurrence and death is always following close behind Isaac. Likewise, we are constantly reminded of our impending death. This is why there’s always been a compulsion towards dieting, beauty enhancement, and medical advances, to name a few. These are all our attempts to soothe our fears about our inevitable death. Even the Necromorphs in Dead Space are an example of how someone’s attempt to cheat death backfired horribly.

So what do we do about all this fear? Come back next time to find out.

[Dead Space] Eternal Life

Mutated foes and dark themes dominate this week’s series on Dead Space. Grab your plasma cutter and come along as we discuss sin, religious cults, and those things that make us afraid. Last time we looked into this crazy cult-like religion called Unitology. In this post we’re continuing to discuss Romans 6:23 while looking more closely at the central part of Unitology- the Marker.

If Unitology is a prime example of bad religion, then the Marker is the physical symbol and embodiment of that religion. The Unitologists believe that the Marker will provide triumph over death and act as a key to the afterlife. If its secrets are unlocked, then access to heaven will be open, supposedly. But this is an erroneous view of how the world works. Trying to make salvation happen for ourselves yields a very bad result because our sin will always outweigh any good that we do. At the most basic level, we can all relate to this. How hard is it to break habits? How many times have we made the same mistake over and over? Is it possible to truly fix those mistakes?

The Marker acts as a representation of this sin problem we all have. Much like the Marker, sin can work its way in us and through us in two ways. The first way is through an external influence such as a tempting situation or direct influence from a demonic force. But secondly, those influences are only effective because of the other way sin can work, through the existing weaknesses we have as humans.

Pictured: Ruiner of everything.

The external origin of sin comes through temptation. This may be something inadvertent happening around us or it could be a more deliberate and sinister force at work. The Marker (appropriately colored red in the above picture) can be likened demonic forces. Ok, “demonic” has indeed shown up twice now, but yes, the assertion is that Satan and demons are real. They, like the Marker, can act as an outside stimulus that instigates sinful behavior. The Marker used visions of loved ones to encourage people along a path that would ultimately lead to their destruction.

Dead Space’ narrative would not have happened on it’s own, but was caused by the existence of the Marker. Additionally, the Marker provided for Isaac and other characters a false sense of reality in order to encourage people to do it’s will. Likewise, Satan and demons can provide opportunities for sin that would not have existed otherwise. It was through Satan’s presence and influence in the Garden of Eden that allowed him to put distorted ideas into the heads of Adam and Eve. He convinced them that they could be like God, or even better than Him.

These distortions led to our downfall and now our very nature is inclined towards trusting ourselves over God. The pattern of relying on our own efforts to achieve success or redemption is engrained into our very being. The Marker points to this fact in that it is even vaguely shaped like a human DNA strand. It is also revealed that the Marker emits a signal that interacts with the human brain. In fact, the symbols engraved on the Marker are decoded and found to correspond with the human genetic code. This all point to the fact that the Marker does not do it’s work alone, but through speaking to something already broken inside of us.

Sin’s ability to work on us from the outside in is only possible because we are already subject to the distortion of Satan’s lies in the Garden. Our very being is prone to twisted and sinful behavior. Paul describes his struggle with sin and says, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” The Marker promises to transform our bodies into ones that can live eternally, but our bodies are only capable of destruction and death. This is apparent even in the physical frailty of our bodies. If you haven’t experienced this yet, just wait a few years and you’ll see how quickly your body’s functions tend to go downhill on the way to the grave.

These bodies will not last forever because of the degrading effects of sin. However, our bodies were originally intended to be much better. When Jesus returns from death, he exhibits what we were meant to be and what it will be like to have a redeemed body. We will no longer experience death or sickness. We may even gain some superpowers on top of that! There are a few times where Jesus instantly leaves or shows up out of nowhere, presumably through transportation or by walking through walls. Then there’s that whole rising from death thing, which included busting out of layers and layers of funeral wrapping through sheer strength. And of course we can’t forget the power he demonstrated upon his dramatic exit from earth: flying.

In conclusion, the Marker is able to violently rewrite the human genome for evil purposes, but Jesus is able to remake our bodies from being sinful to being perfect, as God originally intended. Jesus effectively dismembers our sinful nature just like Issac Clarke dismembers the Necromorphs. Through this new body that Jesus provides we have access to eternal life, which is the gift of God as promised in Romans 6:23.

Questions:

When have you felt as though your body was frail or betraying you?

In what ways does sin distort your thinking?

What is in your life that prevents you from experiencing eternal life?

The story continues next time as we look at how these themes are expanded upon in Dead Space 2.

The Wage for Sin is [Dead Space]

Mutated foes and dark themes dominate this week’s series on Dead Space. Grab your plasma cutter and come along as we discuss sin, religious cults, and those things that make us afraid. This post is about Dead Space’s iconic and creepy enemies, the Necromorphs.

Nothing seems to go right in space. It seems the majority of fictional explorations into space end very badly. The story tends to be that the human characters can’t handle the vast blackness, there’s some horrible mechanical failure, or we stumble upon some horrific alien creature that seems to have come directly from our nightmares.

Our hero Isaace Clarke discovers the remains of a horrible incident which has killed and mutilated an entire mining colony. The miners accidentally unearthed a strange artifact called the Marker which is somehow connected to the presence of the horrifying creatures infesting the colony. These monsters are the Necromorphs, a truly disturbing set of enemies that raise the tension and horror level of the entire game.

"Hi, my name is Jim. I will be visiting you in your dreams tonight."

Dead Space gives the player many opportunities for up-close-and-personal encounters with these Necromorphs. The game even kicks up the terror factor during some sequences by actually showing the process of a dead human corpse being turned into one of these distorted and deadly monstrosities. Couple that with today’s advanced graphics and the imagery is frighteningly clear. But beyond the visuals, Necromorphs, much like the Flood in Halo (and zombies in general), are so unsettling because they are a gruesome dis-figuration of what once was a person. They are terrifying on more levels than just their distorted and gruesome appearance.

Necromorphs remind us of the worst of ourselves. They are the embodiment of our faults and our darkest, most shameful parts. Dead Space strikes the deepest fears of  what we can become or even worse, what might already be inside of us. For all of us who have made a mistake, failed, or hurt someone they love, the Necromorphs provide a tangible image of our dark nature. The Bible calls this sin and it is the ultimate human problem. Sin penetrates our very being and dominates our every thought and behavior. Sin causes us to become as deformed and depraved spiritually as the Necromorphs are physically.

Just like in the game of Dead Space itself, our only response to sin by ourselves is survival. Even the game’s protagonist, Isaac Clarke, can’t completely get away from the horror since it pops up in every corner and continues to haunt his mind even after he escapes the colony. Ultimately, Dead Space presents no real solution to the Necromorph problem other than shooting and running away.

But Christians know differently, Jesus knew that the sin problem was beyond humanity to solve on its own. Romans 6:23 says “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God knew that sin would wreak havoc on us, just like the Necromorph outbreak destroyed the Ishimura and that mining colony. In order for this to be solved, God provided the only solution which was to have his perfect son become like us and sacrifice himself. By this free gift, God provides a way for transformation. He is able to take us twisted, repulsive creatures and change us from Necromorphs into new people.

Questions:

If your sin and dark secrets were to take physical form, what would they look like?