I went to a dollar movie last night and saw a film most people probably saw before Christmas: The Martian.
My husband and my brother in law, and lots of other people are fascinated by outer space, and space travel in general. I live less than 20 miles from NASA, and I couldn't care less! Space doesn't fascinate me at all. If someone offered me the chance today to go into space for free, I'd pass. So when I realized The Martian wasn't a sci-fi adventure about aliens, I was a little disappointed.
If you haven't seen it, don't go into it thinking it's a film about God. It's not, not really. I'll be giving lots of spoilers below too, so read it at your own peril. But, know that the movie mentions God only one time, in passing, and the reference is to "an Authority," I think. One small character asks another small character if he believes in an "Authority," meaning God. The second guy responds that one parent was Hindi and the other was Baptist and they first says, "That's okay, we'll take all the help we can get." Or something like that. That's it. No other mention of God or anything spiritual. It's not a religious film, and yet, I have been thinking about it in the perspective of my testimony all day. I finally decided to put my thoughts down here.
If you're like me, you watch movies like Vertical Limit (a mountain climbing movie about a group of people who go to save one guy, and like half of them or more die in the effort), and you groan. I'm a lawyer. Many in my profession spend a reasonably large amount of time quantifying the value of a human life. But no matter how you value it, one life is not worth two. Or four, or ten.
In the Martian, Matt Damon's character is one of a space crew of six. I love that they don't give him a wife or kids to make his character any more sympathetic. It's a nuance, but they don't make his worth contingent on his value to anyone else. He's simply a human, and therefore of value. In any case, due to a storm, he's left behind for dead. Only he didn't die. The crew doesn't know that, and NASA doesn't figure it out for a month or more. He's in a temporary building intended to last only two months or so, and he has enough food for 40 days for six people. A return trip is not planned for four years, and it's heading to a totally different location on Mars. He's on a hostile planet where mere nanoseconds of unprotected exposure to the environment would kill him.
Oh and did I mention, the reason he got left is that a piece of equipment was rammed into his body? He's impaled, his suit is breached, and he was left to die. So yeah, I'd just take my helmet off and step outside. Because starving? Dying of blood loss? No thanks.
Now in his favor, he's got his training and education. He's a botanist and a trained NASA astronaut. He's got lots of equipment and a little food. Unlike me, he doesn't give up. He performs surgery on himself, and then sets to work setting up a big room to grow potatoes using his own fecal matter as fertilizer. Crazy, right? But it works. He's doing it. He's trying his hardest to make it out of this thing alive.
He knows people are alive and well on Earth and he takes the information he has and plunges ahead into a dangerous trek to find an old piece of space junk so he can communicate with the people back home. After a sequence of unfortunate attempts, one in which he blows himself up, he succeeds and now he can talk to the people back home.
Eventually, against all odds, and after overcoming lots of problems, he gets back home. He does this only because his crew of five sacrifices almost two more years of their own lives, and risks their lives entirely to go back and snag him. The government, and an altruistic Chinese government, also sacrifice untold resources and time to make it happen.
Now, was this a good use of resources? Certainly not. At first this bothered me. But then I realized...
Our situation is just as dire.
How are we any different than one lonely human on Mars? We are imperfect, we are fallen, we are the natural man, each of us. The task set before us, to become like our Heavenly Father, to grow and improve, to do better, to be better, it's insurmountable, an impossible task. We will all fall, we will all "die." We may as well give up now, right?
Just as much was sacrificed to save us.
We would all, similarly, perish, except, we have someone, a perfect someone, willing to live His life perfectly, and then sacrifice that life. Now, He did it for all of us, but we all have our agency, our free will. So by definition, it's possible only one of us will make use of this sacrifice. He would have done it just for one of us, sacrificed Himself all the same. He loves each of us enough to do it for us alone. Furthermore, we each have to effect our salvation ourselves. No one else can do it for us.
We could give up so easily. Many of us do.
We could all give up, and many of us do. We could give in to the natural man, and take the easy path. Or, we could look around at our resources, and make use of them. Just as Matt Damon did, we all face starvation of our spirit, but we have prophets who have provided us food, if we will partake of it. Read our scriptures, listen to conference, go to church. It's all the normal answers that are easy to think of, but hard to actually Do.
We have setbacks, but we don't let them end us.
In the movie, in one part, the end blows off his temporary housing, exposing his entire shelter to the elements. It destroys his farming operation and seemingly annihilates his chances for survival. But he doesn't give up. He despairs, he sobs like a baby, but he goes (figuratively) on his knees and communicates to NASA and tells them what happened. He has done all he can, and he has failed. Now NASA has to change its plan to save him. And they do. In the same way, we can do our best, and sometimes we will fail. It may be circumstance that conspire against us, or it may be our own mistakes. But if we go humbly to our knees and we pray for help, God will answer. He will revise His plan when he needs to and He will save us just the same. It may not be easy, and it wasn't for Matt, but if we don't give up, it won't end us.
One small point here, too, is that Matt's character didn't expect NASA to do it all, or even do most of the work required to get him home. He didn't expect his crew to save him. He did everything in his power, and the crew did what he absolutely couldn't. He lifted 200 pound machinery, moved things around, repaired stuff, drove for months on end, almost starved with rationing, and in the end, he poked a hole in his own suit to close the gap between where he was, and where his crew had made it to pick him up. He sacrificed and worked, and toiled at every turn. We must all do the same, our very best, give our all, because otherwise, we won't become who we must to get home.
I just love the themes of the movie. The worth of one person, and his capacity to hope. The importance of believing in others. There is one line I guess I'll close with. It was hilarious but it also made me think. In one spot, he's contemplating this task that he's not sure he can complete, to travel for weeks on end in the Rover that was intended for short trips, in order to get to the other launch site across Mars. He says he's glad that he literally has the greatest minds on Earth working on this problem. Unfortunately, all they've come up with is that he should drill some holes in the top of the Rover and hit it with a big rock.
Sometimes when we ask for help, God will give it to us, but it won't be in the glorious, amazing, or miraculous ways we expect. It won't be glamorous. It probably won't be easy, and it won't be elegant. But we need to remember that God knows and loves us and he's guiding our steps, even when they aren't down a gold brick road. If we will listen to Him and trust that He loves us, He will be there for us every step of that path. He will get us back home.
