Christianity as Dystopia

The Secular Dystopian Myth

There’s a chronic misconception in most people’s imagination about Christianity and the Bible today. It’s the misconception that Christianity is dull, rote, and oppressive. Compared with the digital flash, noise, and surface-level life of ‘liberated’ secularism, the black and white of the Bible and Christian tradition can feel like a splash of cold water. 

In the growing narrative of post-Christian culture, it’s agreed now that Christian heritage and ideology is (ironically) the root of every kind of evil and oppression in society. It’s the old guard—the utopia that failed. In a culture bent on personal freedom from any control at any cost, Christianity gets assigned the role of the oppressive regime, bent on breaking the wills of its beleaguered citizens and sapping them of personality for the sake of religious uniformity. (You’d be surprised how many Christians tacitly accept and believe this narrative as well.)

Every culture in history has their great myth that shapes their stories. Over the last hundred years in the west, our great myth has been the secular dystopia. It’s the modern myth of the individual breaking free of the prison of tradition and oppression. This has become a classic dystopian archetype for beloved books and movies in our culture, like 1984, Brave New World, “The Truman Show”, “The Handmaid’s Tale“ and even the “Lego Movie” (yes, that’s a fantastic dystopian movie too!) I’m not saying every instance of dystopian storytelling is evil (quite the opposite!), but its popularity and usage in many secular stories exposes a deep root of something sinister in the public mind. 

You know the kinds of stories I mean. Where a free-spirited individual faces a harsh grid of rigid, dispassionate (often implicitly or explicitly religious) society that stands as an obstacle between her and some forbidden desire or enlightenment. Through many trials and tribulations, our hero finally throws off the shackles of bondage and emerges into the bright open air of freedom and the promise of a future as the credits roll. 

Honestly, I’d be lying if I said this kind of story didn’t touch me on a deep level as well. The secular dystopian myth reaches deep into every individual who finds themselves in the grasp of a system they cannot control and which they find meaningless. It awakes the longing for purpose and simulates the ultimate experience of freedom in the end, which often wears off thirty minutes after leaving the theater.

Still, I can’t help but feel there’s something fishy about the success of this story archetype. If you do a little digging, you will find in cultures and ages untouched by the good news of Christ, these kinds of stories are incredibly rare. The secular dystopian myth, ironically enough, owes nearly all of its success to the Christian gospel. Let me explain why.   

The True Christian Dystopia

It’s a story that’s almost become lost to time in the West, buried under an avalanche of secular rhetoric and storytelling. The gospel itself is a dystopia—rather I should say it is the dystopia! Secular storytellers only impressive ability is how they can twist the gospel of salvation to suit their ends. The story of the gospel haunts the modern secular imagination like a tune we just can’t get out of our heads. Rather than sing that ancient song that all of creation is humming (or groaning, Rom. 8:22), it has become more lucrative to set that tune to new words. But this reinterpretation of the beloved old song always leaves us wanting, and in the end, only the original words will do. 

Our dystopia, like those we know today, begins with an underdog trapped under the boot of an oppressive system. Everything in his twisted and darkened world reminds him both of the freedom he has lost, and the vice-grip of the dystopian government that rules him. He lives in miserable subsistence, falling in line and following orders like everyone else. The government calls it freedom, but in reality, our hero is a slave. Then, a turning point comes. Something happens that shakes the concrete empire to its foundations and cracks open a fissure into a world of freedom and future outside. Once our hero has seen this, he cannot be stopped until he escapes the warped system of oppression that makes up his world. He overcomes countless challenges and obstacles, and finally breaks free from the shackles of oppression to bask in the radiant glow of freedom. 

Put another way: humanity was made for freedom—free from the threat of death and the oppression of their own wills without God. This freedom evaporated when the oppressive regime of sin took the place of freedom in God. Ever since, humanity has been trying to reconstruct heaven on earth, building hollow simulations of beauty, life, and freedom that always leave us empty and deeper in bondage than before. Underneath the surface of our ‘freedom‘, the persistent government of sin hammers everyone into equal submission. The more humans dig for meaning and freedom without God, the more they fall in line with the system the denies their freedom and meaning.

Then, a crack splits the impenetrable walls of sin. Someone defies it and rises against it, revealing that the power and freedom of God’s old order is still in control. And once that old freedom is revealed and called back to memory, no power of the regime of sin can stop this open-eyed humanity until they are immersed again in the freedom of the kingdom of God.

Throwing off the chains of the old order of sin takes all their strength, desire, and will. But they are possessed of a singular, passionate, revolutionary vision—to enter completely into the original life and love of God, and to defy the dystopian government of sin to their last breath. Finally, by God’s grace, our hero emerges into the morning light of a heaven and earth reborn, never again to submit to the whip-crack of sin’s fallen government. 

Defy the False Narrative With Christ

The reason this gospel drama doesn’t immediately strike us as a typical dystopia is because the gospel adds an essential ingredient that is left out of every secular dystopia. It’s the hinge on which the whole narrative pivots, and which secular stories substitute with self-expression, romance, power, societal representation, and other good but non-pivotal things. The story hinges on the person of Jesus Christ.

“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. ” (Gal. 5:1 ESV)

Jesus Christ stands as the central obstacle to the designs of the dystopian empire of sin, exposing it for what it is. He single-handedly starting a cosmic revolution that would swiftly be extinguished if it were not for his constant life and power. Like the secular dystopian tales, he stands as an individual human underdog confronted by a behemoth system that is sure to crush him. But, unlike those stories, Jesus Christ is no anti-hero. In fact, to the secular mind set on personal power and freedom to sin, you could not ask for a less relatable hero. However, anyone who has seen Christ and glimpsed the kingdom beyond this dark empire finds him to be the only really sympathetic hero (1 Cor. 1:18). Outside him and the life he reveals to us, there can be no freedom, no life, only bondage and oppression under the boot of our own self-destructive and insane sinful wills. 

Conclusion

I wanted to write this as a warning to myself and to others, not to buy into the lie that the gospel is a threat to freedom, and that personal liberation is the solution. The gospel is the only crack in the prison wall, and a very narrow and challenging crack to crawl through at that. Like the heroes we admire so much in stories following the classic dystopian schema, we have to take a bold stand against all the towering machinations of ‘the System’ that wants to control us. We have to fight back, or submit to a lifetime of slavery to sin under the facade of ‘personal freedom’. 

Die to the corrupted narrative, and embrace Christ, the only one who knows how to escape the infectious government of sin. Confront this system where you see it in your life, even if it feels like screaming at tidal waves, because Christ has already overcome the world (John 16:33). This is no utopia we live in, and the offer of unrestrained personal freedom outside of Christ is an oxymoron. Our only chance of escape and freedom is through submission to Christ, following him down the challenging roads he leads. Stand firm, brothers and sisters. There is another kingdom.

“We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” (Rom. 6:6 ESV)