Can we undo the damage we cause?

The Core Rating: 14A: For sci-fi life/death situations and brief strong language

All is not well with planet earth.

Weather patterns are erratic. Birds are so disoriented that they crash into people, reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s landmark film. Numerous people, all with pacemakers, suddenly drop dead. Dr. Keyes (Aaron Eckhart), a young professor at University of Illinois, links these events and discovers the earth’s core has stopped spinning. Keyes and five other terranauts journey to the centre of the earth to set off a massive explosion in the hopes of kick-starting the core. If they fail, earth’s magnetic field will fall apart and the planet will literally cook to death.

At first, Keyes believes mankind is to blame for the impending disaster. “This wasn’t a fluke,” Keyes says, “We killed the planet.” But later, Dr. Zimsky (Stanley Tucci), one of the terranauts, reveals that a covert government doomsday device is to blame for the earth’s imminent destruction. It is through no fault of their own that the crew and the rest of the planet are on a collision course with environmental disaster. The crew embarks on their mission to save the planet in the hopes of reversing the unintentional side effects of a plan gone wrong.

The Core reminds us of one of life’s difficult ironies; namely, that sometimes the innocent suffer for the mistakes of others. In the movie, the military did not account for their ‘Destiny’ project going so awry and certainly never wanted the core to stop spinning. But nonetheless, the devastation begins. In one scenario the sun burns through an opening in the electromagnetic field and destroys part of the Golden Gate Bridge, killing everyone on it.

In life, the innocent are no strangers to disaster. We live in a world where we both inflict damage on other people and where we are the victims of damage caused by others. Even when we never intended any hurt, our words, our actions and our attitudes can inadvertently cause countless pain towards others. This is why we should follow David’s prayer to ask forgiveness for the wrongs we don’t even know we’ve committed (Psalm 19:12).

By now we’ve all seen enough sci-fi movies to know that not everyone who starts out on a maiden voyage will return. Like the doomed extra in a Star Trek episode we know somebody is not going to make it back. The Core uses these life/death situations as opportunities for characters to struggle with reconciling over the damage they have caused in each others lives. Some of it was intentional. Some of it was not.

But the key issue in any relationship is not about determining who is to blame. Fault-finding missions, as the film shows, rarely do more than create anger and hostility. The chief aim in a relationship marred by sin or carelessness is restoration. This is why I admire the crew of The Core for taking it upon themselves to be part of a solution to a problem for which they were at best only partially responsible.

Hopefully we have the courage to do the same in the relationships and circumstances that require a similar attitude from us.

Paul H. Boge is a writer and an engineer. He attends North Kildonan MB Church in Winnipeg.