Christianity Today

Two years ago was the 25th anniversary of one of the most epic movies of all time. Every American not in a coma or an Amish community has seen Steven Spielberg's Back to the Future, and if they haven't, they can easily catch it on television, as TBS and TNT seem to rerun it every few hours.

The last time I caught a rerun of the 1985 science-fiction adventure, instead of switching the channel, I lingered and watched. I realized that the 25th anniversary was significant because Doc (Christopher Lloyd) had planned to travel 25 years into the future—to 2010—before those pesky Libyan plutonium dealers opened fire in the mall parking lot, sending Marty (Michael J. Fox) speeding off in the DeLorean back to the year 1955.

Once he arrives in 1955, Marty has to make his way "back to the future," and must avoid any contact with any person to avoid irrevocably altering the future in a single encounter. But it just so happens that Marty has already befriended his dad and, oddly, has become his mom's crush.

When Marty explains this to Doc, he asks to see the 1985 family photo Marty carries with him. Examining it, Doc points out that Marty's oldest brother is already disappearing from the photo. Now that Marty's mother has a crush on Marty and not on George (his father), his brother is being erased from existence. Marty must do all he can to make sure his parents fall in love in 1955 so that he might not disappear from 1985.

A Frightening Analogy

I had seen these scenes dozens of times before they solidified as a frightening analogy for my own family's story. Just months before my own wedding, I sat with my mom in the living room of the home I had grown up in, as she explained that divorce was the next exit on the highway of our family's history. It had been several weeks since she had told me that her and my father's marriage was in serious trouble. Now, she told me more: They had gotten married way too young, noting that if she could do it all over again, she would have chosen another route for her life, someone other than my father to share life with.

I couldn't help feeling a shadow come over me. I looked at our family portrait hanging on the wall across from us, and wondered if I might be disappearing. I glanced at my hand, wondering if I was becoming translucent like Marty did. My parents' impending divorce made me feel thin, as if now that my parents' marriage was disappearing, the divorce was becoming our shared identity, and I too was disappearing.

I existed only because my mother and father had become one, creating me out of the abundance of their covenant community. Now, standing amid the debris and shock of the collision that ended their marriage, all this felt up for grabs. If I was through their union, who could I be in their division? If I was because of their coming together, who would I be if they nullified the community that gave me life? Could I be at all?

A Triune Relationship

As so many psychologists, philosophers, and theologians have stated—most recently cultural commentator David Brooks and sociologist Christian Smith, but also theologians Dietrich Bon-hoeffer, Karl Barth, and Stanley Grenz before them—we are social animals with the mental ability to ponder our existence. The community of people we call family—those who made us and welcome us into their community of love—assures us that we rest secure on safe ground in this world. It is no wonder that so many happily adopted children will nevertheless embark on intense journeys to find their birthparents, whom many of them call their "real" parents. We desire to be found, to know and encounter those who brought us into the world.

See comments

Single Page

Page:123Next