Pastor Darren: You know, I've had a little fun with this series just with people uh coming and finding me and saying, Hey, you know, I I decided I was gonna go and I was gonna watch that that film that you're gonna talk about.
Pastor Darren: Just thought that would be helpful for me.
Pastor Darren: And every time you guys come find me and you say, I don't know what you're gonna make of that one.
Pastor Darren: So I will admit sometimes I say that initially as well.
Pastor Darren: But uh usually we find our way to some uh a good message that is coming from uh, or at least a conversation coming from these modern movies.
Pastor Darren: Uh, you know, these are all other than uh wicked, but uh part one actually was really well thought of, and I think that part two they kind of felt like they'd given all their good awards for the first part.
Pastor Darren: Point being they're all really good films, and there are reasons they're good films, and so hopefully you're finding that and enjoying that and understanding that uh part of what makes them a good film is that they are dealing with some interesting underlying questions and subtexts that uh are actually pretty relevant and and fairly easily related to questions we ask in faith, which is why we do a sermon series like this.
Pastor Darren: So today, Frankenstein.
Pastor Darren: How many of you read that in sophomore English class?
Pastor Darren: Yeah, me and Michael, that's it.
Pastor Darren: All right, Fred, so uh John did it too.
Pastor Darren: All right.
Pastor Darren: One of I I generally appreciate that that uh um that book, especially for the questions that it asks.
Pastor Darren: You know, when I became an English major, it wasn't that I loved reading as much as I loved ideas, and Frankenstein is great with ideas.
Pastor Darren: So uh I'm gonna jump right in here.
Pastor Darren: I'll start with the book itself and just give a little bit of a uh a rollout, a summary of it.
Pastor Darren: Mary Shelley was trying to write a good, scary story.
Pastor Darren: As simple as that.
Pastor Darren: Uh in fact, she was in conversation with another author, and they were uh uh trying to challenge each other to do this.
Pastor Darren: So her story involves this scientist, Dr.
Pastor Darren: Frankenstein.
Pastor Darren: And uh he all right, it's gonna get graphic.
Pastor Darren: Are you ready?
Pastor Darren: Well, you all know the story of Frankenstein, right?
Pastor Darren: This can't be new to so he uh uses body parts to create a assembled body, a human body, uh, and then is able to animate this body, basically to bring it to life.
Pastor Darren: So pretty amazing.
Pastor Darren: But what he doesn't understand, or what he doesn't anticipate, is that uh this being that is created is in a sense a person, a person with feelings and emotions and thoughts, and uh not having anticipated that, uh all of a sudden he's got this this presence that wants the things that we all want.
Pastor Darren: Affection, connection, help things to think about.
Pastor Darren: And so this monster, as he called, as he's called in the uh book, uh uh is starts looking for those kinds of connections.
Pastor Darren: Unfortunately, he is clearly stitched together human being, and not only that, as the story goes, uh Dr.
Pastor Darren: Frankenstein, Frankenstein, he only used really big parts because it was easier to work with those parts.
Pastor Darren: So this it was this massive monster human being that is now going out and looking for human connection, right?
Pastor Darren: And so you can uh um understand the conflict that tends to play out there, right?
Pastor Darren: As this monster's, he's looking for this human connection, uh, and the townspeople, the other folks are just appalled, they're they're scared by him because of that uh uh appearance.
Pastor Darren: And so we end up actually having pity for this monster.
Pastor Darren: And it leaves us with this question uh to ask ourselves: if we're going to create life, right?
Pastor Darren: If we're gonna progress in a way that we are creating human life, well, what do we owe that life?
Pastor Darren: As the creator stepping into that role, what do we owe this presence, this being that we are creating?
Pastor Darren: So now I bring you into the modernized version, the movie.
Pastor Darren: Did some of you go see it or pull it down on Netflix?
Pastor Darren: Some of you did, all right, a few of you.
Pastor Darren: It's a very good film.
Pastor Darren: I, you know, there's some graphic parts, just to warn you, uh, but uh there's a lot more graphic movies out there, so it's not uh as bad as some, but there is uh some on there.
Pastor Darren: Now, as we go into it, the director is a man named Guillermo Del Toro, right?
Pastor Darren: And he um a little bit about him, he is fascinated by monsters.
Pastor Darren: I don't know if you follow him as a director, but one of his famous films is Pan's Labyrinth, where they're walking through these uh uh um kind of monster-ish beings.
Pastor Darren: And then some others of you might even be more familiar with the more recent Shape of Water.
Pastor Darren: Uh, did if you saw that, it actually won Best Picture uh uh Academy Award in its year.
Pastor Darren: Now, what we also learned about Guillermo del Toro is that he is not above treating monsters not as monsters.
Pastor Darren: He will very easily humanize these monsters.
Pastor Darren: In fact, in the shape of water, for those of you who saw it, you might remember that there is this fishman that is sort of the main character that's part of things.
Pastor Darren: Uh, and he turns out to be the romantic love interest in the film.
Pastor Darren: So I don't know how we can humanize a monster any more than making them the romantic love interest.
Pastor Darren: Um I'm gonna show you, and hopefully that makes sense a little bit.
Pastor Darren: This next picture, I'm gonna show you, but this is the monster that Guillermo del Toro chose to be his Frankenstein.
Pastor Darren: Do we have that first picture?
Pastor Darren: Yeesh.
Pastor Darren: Are you scared?
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: If that thing came at you, you know, you might step back.
Pastor Darren: Just no, I'm kidding.
Pastor Darren: I think there are many, many young ladies in our world that would love to storm this guy's castle.
Pastor Darren: I wrote that myself.
Pastor Darren: That's my line right there.
Pastor Darren: No, this is Jacob Elordi.
Pastor Darren: He's one of the newer uh uh heartthrobs in the Hollywood establishment or the film establishment.
Pastor Darren: He is our Frankenstein, uh uh, but uh I will show you uh at how he looks actually in the film.
Pastor Darren: So you can see, right?
Pastor Darren: You can see he's kind of stitched up and and uh you you can see to play in the course of the movie and to fit the theme.
Pastor Darren: Yeah, he looks not quite human uh and and yet still human.
Pastor Darren: I think we got another one here where he's uh you can see uh where he's out in nature.
Pastor Darren: So he's he's clearly looks different, uh right.
Pastor Darren: And and to suit the uh the book a little bit too, Jacob Alordi is a pretty tall guy, six foot five, so so they're they're living out uh some of that Frankenstein thing.
Pastor Darren: Uh but what really drives everything in this story, similar to the book itself, is the shunning that comes from the creator himself.
Pastor Darren: Dr.
Pastor Darren: Frankenstein comes to a place where he believes he's made a huge mistake, and so he looks to undo it.
Pastor Darren: But it's done with such aggressiveness, right?
Pastor Darren: He really tries to blow them up and and to kill the monster that we're we're frequently needing to ask ourselves who's the real monster here, right?
Pastor Darren: As Dr.
Pastor Darren: Frankenstein begins to regret his decision and he tries to destroy this monster, we're we're looking at you know who really is the one that is less human or less ideal.
Pastor Darren: So uh at this point in the film, there's this big pivot.
Pastor Darren: And now we hear the story of all of this, but now through the monster's eyes.
Pastor Darren: And uh we're able to look and see how uh the doctor tried to kill him.
Pastor Darren: We're able to see how the townspeople tried to hunt him down, or we're so scared of him that they tried to take him out too.
Pastor Darren: And again, we're invited to ask ourselves who is this real monster in this story?
Pastor Darren: So, as we're bringing it to our Christian context, uh I picked our scripture from Genesis today with uh this this the focus on this theme as the driver.
Pastor Darren: You know, the doctor, Dr.
Pastor Darren: Frankenstein, he puts himself in this position as creator of life, right?
Pastor Darren: He gives himself, he rationalized this place of I am going to make life.
Pastor Darren: Uh and our scriptures, this one included, many of them point to the problem with that.
Pastor Darren: When we start putting ourselves in the position of God, right, and and the creator of life, there are problems that come from that.
Pastor Darren: In the story of Adam and Eve today, all right, uh the building of the Tower of Babylon, these are all instances where we see humans reaching a little bit beyond themselves, right?
Pastor Darren: Adam and Eve, they defy God, who told them not to eat of the forbidden fruit.
Pastor Darren: And then what do they do?
Pastor Darren: They eat of the forbidden fruit.
Pastor Darren: And what comes of that is they move into this place of awareness of our world and how our world works, that they are not ready to deal with.
Pastor Darren: Now they're understanding good and evil and all the depths and complexities, and they were not ready for that.
Pastor Darren: In the case of the story of Dr.
Pastor Darren: Frankenstein, this doctor wasn't really ready to take on the job of creator, the full job of the creator when he made this creation.
Pastor Darren: He wasn't able to offer what is critical to any creation, anything that has life.
Pastor Darren: It's something we Christians would call love, has that all-encompassing theme for all that is to care for another being as much as we are able to care for ourselves.
Pastor Darren: Others might call it empathy.
Pastor Darren: That's the problem that the good doctor doesn't uh have, or he has this problem, the problem that he doesn't have this empathy, he doesn't have this love.
Pastor Darren: And these are essentials for a creator to have if they're going to create this creation.
Pastor Darren: And so the absence of this capacity, it really puts the doctor in over his skis, so he tries to backtrack on what he did.
Pastor Darren: He tries to uneat the fruit, as it were.
Pastor Darren: The problem is with that is that uh the being is there, the monster is there, and it's this being with heart, it's emotions, it's it's essentially human.
Pastor Darren: So uneating this fruit means to kill this being.
Pastor Darren: Hopefully, you're hearing the weight of that and the weight of uh of uh this human being getting out and ahead of himself, which is really what the director's playing with and what Mary Shelley was playing with.
Pastor Darren: Our director, Guillermo Del Toro, of this latest film, he's giving us some things to think about in life today.
Pastor Darren: It's not just a monster movie, which I think is what most of us anticipated it would be.
Pastor Darren: Oh, I watched the monster movies from the 50s.
Pastor Darren: They're a lot of fun, but I don't know that I need to watch that.
Pastor Darren: And then you get in there and you think, oh no, he's doing more than that.
Pastor Darren: He's talking about some modern day challenges that we have, modern day opportunities where we're getting in out over our skis, right?
Pastor Darren: We we don't necessarily see ourselves as creating monsters because the things we're creating don't look like monsters.
Pastor Darren: But there are plenty of ways we're venturing into unknown and uncontrollable awareness, and often this includes the creation of a kind of life in our world.
Pastor Darren: Most of our movement into the world of technology would probably qualify here.
Pastor Darren: Does it ever hit you that we've created a system of what you might call omniscience?
Pastor Darren: Omniscience being uh uh the capacity of knowing everything.
Pastor Darren: Omniscience.
Pastor Darren: This is a bit of our internet, at least it's the full gathering of all the information that we've been able to accrue as a species, and we've created a way to have that world's content knowledge right at our fingertips.
Pastor Darren: I've got it right in my pocket as I sit here and talk to you.
Pastor Darren: Omniscience, it's a word we use for God, right?
Pastor Darren: We understand a God as Christians that knows everything.
Pastor Darren: That's a key part of a lot of our theologies uh uh here in this room and and outside as Christians.
Pastor Darren: But this idea of creating that in another being in the internet, does that give us pause?
Pastor Darren: Now, to be fair, the internet is not God.
Pastor Darren: There's more to knowledge than just pure content, but it's a pretty powerful monster in and of its own.
Pastor Darren: Are we ready for that?
Pastor Darren: Or are we more like the doctor, the good doctor?
Pastor Darren: And what will come of it if we are?
Pastor Darren: Aren't we learning this a bit with uh artificial intelligence?
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: We're all excited about this amazing tool that's going to serve us.
Pastor Darren: But what does it look like to have an omniscient and all-knowing servant?
Pastor Darren: The dynamic the dynamic there can feel a little bit concerning, potentially.
Pastor Darren: Artificial intelligence is essentially trying to add a layer of wisdom to our content.
Pastor Darren: So it's not just information, but it is a capacity to be able to synthesize information.
Pastor Darren: Are we walking forward with the awareness of what this fruit might bring?
Pastor Darren: Or are we letting the ambition and the desire for money and for power set this course?
Pastor Darren: The film itself, Guillermo del Toro as the driver, gives us an answer.
Pastor Darren: An answer that maybe suits this challenge that he's posing as well.
Pastor Darren: And it comes from the monster himself, actually.
Pastor Darren: The answer isn't to destroy the monster, as one might think.
Pastor Darren: In the case of technology, the answer is not to destroy the internet.
Pastor Darren: We wouldn't necessarily want to do that, and maybe we wouldn't be able to do that even so.
Pastor Darren: But if we go back to the story, it ends with the doctor dying in the book at least, and the monster heading off suggesting that he's gonna go kill himself.
Pastor Darren: In the film, however, in this final meeting between the doctor and the monster, Gamer del Toro, he has the monster offering maybe the most human moment in the film.
Pastor Darren: After they've both had a chance to tell their view of the tale, we've seen both sides of what went on between the monster's creation and then the doctors trying to take that creation down.
Pastor Darren: And this is a story that is pretty aggressive for the monster.
Pastor Darren: But he has that monster, and I keep using that term for lack of a better one.
Pastor Darren: The monster forgives the doctor.
Pastor Darren: This is not just uh forgiveness for the doctor having created him into this graceless state in which everybody around him is gonna either be afraid of him or want to kill him or both.
Pastor Darren: Forgiveness not just for that, but also for hunting him down.
Pastor Darren: For trying to kill him, the monster forgives the doctor.
Pastor Darren: It's a powerful moment in the film that doesn't happen in the original story.
Pastor Darren: And the irony, hopefully you're not missing, is that the monster is offering the most human moment, the most human act in the story is made by the monster.
Pastor Darren: I think the film comes with an invitation.
Pastor Darren: As we move into these new ages, especially with tech, this film is a cautionary tale towards our desire to play God, to bite the fruit, to move into arenas we may not be quite ready for.
Pastor Darren: And the answer isn't necessarily that we don't move into those areas, but it's something a little more nuanced.
Pastor Darren: His answer focuses on this need for humanity in our progress.
Pastor Darren: Right now, all of this movement seems to be driven by the most ambitious of us all.
Pastor Darren: You know, the modern, modern-day Frankenstein, Dr.
Pastor Darren: Frankenstein's, who've been blessed with these amazing capabilities to be able to not only generate things like AI, but to create the the institutional system to be able to move it forward, to make it something that the general populace is able to use.
Pastor Darren: But they're often driven by being the first to be able to capitalize on that capacity, right?
Pastor Darren: They're the first ones to be able to get there and to establish themselves and to begin uh establishing their presence in a way that they start making income, they start getting prestige, they start getting power, they start getting authority.
Pastor Darren: But it's not generally the place where we're asking the moral questions, the ethical questions.
Pastor Darren: They seem to be all of these uh uh drivers, seem to be leaving that question for others.
Pastor Darren: Or maybe it's just not part of their makeup.
Pastor Darren: And it begs the question for us here in our society are these also the people who can manage the creation?
Pastor Darren: Are they able to manage the foreseen and the unforeseen challenges that might come from creating this omniscient being?
Pastor Darren: Del Toro, he's asking us if we're true truly ready for our creation.
Pastor Darren: And by that he seems to be saying, are we good enough at being human to be able to manage the human progress with humanity?
Pastor Darren: I'll end us with that final bit of scripture from the Gospel of Luke.
Pastor Darren: And this is clearly something that uh a writer in Luke stole from the Spider-Man comic books.
Pastor Darren: But he asks us here, in words that Jesus says, from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required, and from one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.
Pastor Darren: We're invited to embrace the weight of that statement and to be intentional about walking with this progress and to be able to offer the humanity that our progress needs.
Pastor Darren: Amen.