I got blocked by Captain Kirk. Yes, that one.
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Well, this wasn’t one I had on my bingo card. Growing up I never dreamed that one day I would be important enough to tick off Captain Kirk. But somehow I managed to pull it off.
A few weeks ago, I got a message from the editor at Not the Bee, the website that I write columns for sporadically. He informed me that it had come to the attention to some of the site’s readers that actor William Shatner (aka Captain Kirk from Star Trek) had blocked Not the Bee on his social media accounts. With many of the writers at the site being fans of Shatner, Not the Bee tweeted at him and asked what had happened. He specifically referenced a column I wrote as the moment he decided he wanted no further interaction with them.
The column in question was a response to Shatner’s comments after returning from his famous low-orbit space flight courtesy of Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin. He had commented to journalists at the time that the trip had given him a sense of loneliness and sadness. “My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration,” Shatner said, “Instead, it felt like a funeral.” The acting legend continued,
People ask about a legacy. There's no legacy. Statues are torn down. Graveyards are ransacked. Headstones are knocked over. No one remembers anyone. Who remembers Danny Kaye or Cary Grant? They were great stars. But they're gone and no one cares. But what does live on, are good deeds.
It’s ironic that Shatner was filled with sadness by his trip, because I was personally filled with sadness by his comments. I appreciate anyone wanting to do good deeds, but if that’s it? If that’s all you believe “lives on?” There's an unmistakable hollowness to it all. With nothing waiting on the other side of death, what does it really matter? If there exists no ultimate justice, no reckoning for our mortal choices, why make any effort to do something good for another? Why even pretend that there exists something called 'good' in the first place? Absent a transcendent, eternal justice, the concepts of good and bad are entirely personal, subjective, and irrelevant.
This is yet another instance, another example, where Christian thought not only offers a far more plausible and probable explanation for the realities around us, but it also presents a hope that doesn't depend on our meager efforts to do enough good deeds to leave a legacy for ourselves. It extends a salvation not based on what good we do, but is predicated entirely upon what has been done for us by the universe's ultimate Good.
To the man who, like Shatner, doesn't know the Creator through His Son Jesus Christ, this world is all there is, there's nothing but deep coldness beyond it, and therefore the thought of leaving it is ultimately agonizing. In short, he is living the only heaven he will ever know.
There is a better way.