What This Life Is For

 

There is this great song by Creed, song by Scott Stapp that goes, “What’s this Life For?!” It’s a introspective piece meant to urge the listener to take stock of their own life through self examination. I recently watched The Neon Genesis Evangelion Rebuilds (1.0, 2.22, 3.0, and 3.0+1.0), four movies, not the original bleak series. While I was put off at first by Lilith and the Kabala elements with the angels, the overall message of the story is very profound and Christian. Shinji, the main pilot of Eva 01, a mecha Kaiju (giant robot monster like Godzilla) like creation to fight the angels bent on mankind’s destruction is traumatized by having lost his mother at three years old, and his Father Gendo ignores him except to exploit his prowless in Eva mechs. As I watched the series of Shinji doing battle with the angels I could not help but wonder do we Christians not fall for the same trap? Feeling our higher purpose is to do spiritual warfare and make war against the angels that fell (Relvelation 12:9) with our Evangelion (gospel of Jesus). In the process of us taking on this role as guardians, we lose our humanity as Shinji and many others in the story of Neon Genesis Evangelion did. Because we were not meant for war, even spiritual warfare, God created us to be a family, to be his children, and to have our own children; but more than this love and be loved by someone else he put on this Earth just for us and we just for them as Evangelion’s final film, 3.0.-1.0 shows with Shinji discovering the woman he is meant to be with is Mari Illustrious Makenami. 

We fall for a deception in this world, believing that we are meant for some greater purpose than family and love. We insert ourselves in Evas, putting ET Barriers up with people and let LCL (Lucifer’s Corruptive Lies, not what LCL means n the show, but cool how I could make it an abbreviation for that to make a point) flow around us as we tell ourselves that we have chosen a more noble route, a greater role in this world and the Kingdom of God. The Church very dangerously supported this concept of eunuchs for the kingdom, taking Jesus’ words out of context and forgetting that he said, “quiet Peter, not everyone can accept this!” (Matthew 19:11).  Indeed because the same God said, “The LORD God said, it is not good for man to be alone.. so I shall make a helpmate for him (woman),” (Genesis 2:18) and “be fruitful and multiply,” (Genesis  1:28) and. “It is for this reason a man leaves his parents and cleaves (loyally hold fast) to his wife.” (Genesis 2:24 and Matthew1 9:5). The Church bought into another rotten apple of monasticism, asceticism (see Colossians 2:23 ESV), anchoritism, and hermeticism, that a greater love was to only love God, and forgo family, but the fatal flaw in this thinking is that it leads to the Extinction of the Church if everyone followed it and the apostle Paul preached against it, “ “Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind,” (Colossians 2:23 ESV), woah that sums up Neon Genesis Evangelion Rebuilds well! Do not become worshippers of angels or obsessed with them and do not become ascetics denying having a spouse and family. Now I am not saying some aren’t called to be spiritual eunuchs, and to remain celibate, but the church in Circa 250-1535 A.D. taught erroneously that holier was the virgin, and even The Orthodox Church taught sex within marriage was a sin! A sin! How absurd! (See a Little Lower Than The Angels, Diamand McCulloch). 

What Neon Genesis Evangelion Rebuilds got right is that we need someone to love and to be loved by. Shinji recoiled from the advances of all women in his life, which was actually sound, Misato was too old and loved someone else, Asuka was more broken and bitter than he, Rei was a clone of his mother.. so Oedipus  issues.. only Mari Makinami was the healthy choice, she being catalyst for change in his life, but not a controller, never judging he was trapped as child in his Trauma, but asking him in final scenes of the last movie, “you smell nice as usual, the smell of an adult?” Shinji embraces her flirtation and invitation and runs off hand and hand with her into a “beautiful world,” (listen to the song, Beautiful World by Hiroku Atada) to build a life together; this is the ultimate message of Anno’s Neon Genesis Evangelion epic, at least in the Rebuild Films, that at end of day we need to wipe away the angel fighting machines we have become symbiotic with and get back Garden of Eden mandate, “its not good for man to be alone,” and the “be fruitful and multiply,” or to put it more simply grow up. 

What this life is truly for is not to fight angels, yes we caste out demons (Mark 16:17), but its not the focus. What this life is for is not about just seeking God, and preaching the gospel, sure we do that, “love the Lord your God with all your are,” but second part is, “love your neighbor as yourself.” If God wanted us to be monks and nuns just focused on him and forgoing family, we’d never have been born into this world. We’d be in heaven singing like Cherubim and Seraphim, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Indeed, lest we forget God has host of angels, Satan only has one third of them (Revelation 12:4-12), and so God has plenty of angels to battle the bad ones; so that is not our chief purpose. Our chief purpose is love, as Jesus in the Ben Hur 2016 filmy says, “Hate, anger, and fear are lies they teach you to turn against one another, when you set aside your hate, you realize love is our true nature.” Amen.