Frakkin Toasters!!!” Couldn’t start a chapter on “Battle Star Galactica” any other way, sorry. The themes found in BSG are so universal; the search for identity, loving beyond prejudice, but what we will be hitting in this section is the idea of finding home.
If you aren’t familiar with the series (again, props to all of you who actually read this blindly), there is a long standing war between Humans and Cylons. Cylons are these sentient robots, some in basic metallic bodies; others are “skin jobs,” that look and feel human. After a long period of “cease fire,” the Cylons pull a surprise attack and destroy the human’s home planet of Caprica. The humans went from a population of 50,000,000,000 – 50,000 in one day. By the end of the series there are only 38,000. They lose their planet, homes, families, and almost entire race all in one moment. A small fleet of survivors are left hurtling through space with no idea where they are going.
“We're a long way from home. We've jumped way beyond the Red Line, into uncharted space. Limited supplies, limited fuel. No allies, and now, no hope? Maybe it would have been better for us to have died quickly, back on the Colonies with our families, instead of dying out here slowly, in the emptiness of dark space. Where shall we go? What shall we do?” – Adama.
The concept of not knowing where you are going or where you belong isn’t alien to us. God told Abram way back in Genesis 12:1 “The LORD said to Abram: Go out from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house, to the land that I will show you.” God told Abram to uproot everything and he went; now
granted Abram had promises from God, but none-the-less, in verse 4 we see “So Abram went, as the LORD had told him.”
He had no idea where he was going, but at least he still had God guiding him. The poor fleet of Galactica had no guidance other than desperation and fear initially. It’s so hard for us to really feel safe, or secure without a place we can actually call home. In the episode titled “33,” not only are they homeless, but they are being attacked every 33 minutes, no matter where they go.
This actually feels pretty familiar to me. One of the best things about going home is the “sanctuary” of it; the concept that you can shut your doors, turn off you phone and just be safe and quiet for a while. Sadly, that’s something neither Galactica or a lot of people in our world today have. Even Jesus echoes this “Jesus told him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.” – Matthew 8:20. The crew of Galactica was looking for home, not just any home, but Earth itself. All of us have a place we truly belong, but it can feel a million miles away. The survivors eventually come across a planet they dub “New Caprica.” This place is not where they belong. I think everyone knows it. I think everyone wants to protest settling for this place that isn’t their home, but they don’t. They are so desperate to have something below their feet that they truly do cling to the first hunk of rock they can.
It really doesn’t go very well for them, even the good days are sucky, and it just progressively gets worse until they ultimately have to flee. The same thing happens to us when we try to become at home with things and in situations we are never meant to be. The people of Galactica were looking for Earth, nowhere else would do, and when they settled, when they gave up, when they compromised, when they fought, it always ended poorly, because it was the wrong place for them. Jesus shows us in Matthew 7, that in Him is the only place we are truly home, that anywhere else we trying to build foundation is faulty.
“24 “Therefore, everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them will be like a sensible man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house. Yet it didn’t collapse, because its foundation was on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of Mine and doesn’t act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 The rain fell, the rivers rose, the winds blew and pounded that house, and it collapsed. And its collapse was great!”
We put our hearts into relationships, money, art, and so many other things to try to give us that sense of home, but it ends up like “New Caprica” every time. The thing about a home is that it isn’t just something we set up, it’s a relationship. I love the concept in John 14:23 “Jesus answered, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.” I love knowing that we don’t just serve, worship, or seek after God, but that we make a home together. That place where we truly feel like “this is what I’ve been searching for.” When I look up on a dark starry night I often think of what it would have been like to be in that fleet as a hopeless wanderer, but I’m so grateful I don’t have to live my life that way.
So Say We All.