Fighting Sci-Fi With Sci-Fi (read on, you'll see what I mean)

 In all of my major works of fiction, the character who most directly represents ME is Eric Joseph Havens, the dentist who is the adoptive father of the heroic Alipang Havens. I imagine Doctor Havens, late in life, writing a lengthy memoir of his long fight against the totalitarian collectivism which lyingly disguises itself as "justice." He titles his book "They'll Call This Hate Speech." Eliot Aristede Granholm, destined to become the superhero Grey Eagle, is born about thirty-five years after Doctor Havens' death, and as a young man has the good fortune to acquire a rare surviving copy of "They'll Call This Hate Speech." It becomes an inspiration to Eliot throughout his career, for the evils of the 22nd-century "Citizoic League" that Eliot has to contend with are the SAME evils that Doctor Havens denounced and resisted in his day.

Since Eric Havens "is" me (apart from my never having been a dentist), I naturally depict him as being a reader of science fiction. And because Doctor Havens is spiritually alert enough to discern the influence that anti-God ideas have upon much of sci-fi, he includes remarks about that genre in his memoir. Here is a passage which I imagine Doctor Havens having written, and which at some point I will depict Eliot reading....

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Within my lifetime, though Cecilia and I came into the world too soon to benefit by it, we have seen the new process of telomere preservation achieving a true prolongation of human life and health. As far as anyone can tell up to now, there are no adverse physical consequences attached to the process. There are potentially two negative SOCIETAL consequences; but both of these actually are problems which already existed anyway.

One drawback is that, with some people aging more slowly, the demand that "inferior" persons (like Cecilia and me, as Pinkshirts of the old Campaign Against Hate would have declared) should "just die and get out of the way" will grow more insistent. But this demand -- ALWAYS made by those who are confident THEY won't get euthanized without their consent -- would have been made in some form no matter what. It arises from crude human selfishness, which has been around since Adam ate the wrong fruit. Francis Schaeffer dissected it superbly in his writings; I thank God that at least a few of Schaeffer's books can still be found today.

The other drawback is more subtle, but again is really something that was only intensified, not originated, by the lengthening of lifespans. I'm sorry to have to say that science fiction, a literary genre which has given me much entertainment, has contributed to enlarging this other societal pathology.

Whenever secular authors of imaginative fiction envision science increasing human life expectancy, a specific assertion is bound to be made -- either by the author, or by fans discussing his or her story. The assertion is: "Marriage was invented back when people didn't live long, so there usually wasn't much time for any married person to get tired of their spouse. But if people start routinely living longer than a century, it OBVIOUSLY will become INEVITABLE that married couples tire of each other. Accordingly, it's just UNREASONABLE to expect anyone to be faithful for life in such conditions. Marriage as a permanent contract will need to be abolished, in favor of something like renting or leasing. Having one mate for ten years, then parting by mutual agreement, then playing the singles game for twenty years, then taking another mate for five years, and so on, is SO much more logical, isn't it?"

I can virtually guarantee that every supposedly sophisticated person who argues in favor of this "reasonable" change in human behavior ISN'T REALLY thinking only about a future when life expectancy is doubled or tripled. And here I include sci-fi authors who scoffed at marriage long before the first experiments in telomere preservation. Such a person really wants permanent marriage to be devalued NOW; he or she wants permission to be fickle and faithless NOW, or at least wants to be excused from any duty to rebuke the same selfishness in others.  

REGARDLESS of how long the average human life becomes, the real issue is unchanged. If you regard a sex partner as a purely superficial accessory; if you regard a sex partner as a minor side item, like a dessert randomly selected at a buffet; if you even THEORETICALLY accept the notion that it's "okay" to discard a mate who has done you no wrong, just because you FEEL a desire "to evolve and grow personally;" then you NEVER DID grasp what God meant about two becoming one. But if you marry for real, in God's way, then your spouse ISN'T an optional convenience, and your marriage ISN'T a temporary alliance with built-in ejection seats. In a Holy Spirit-led marriage, you would no more want to discard your mate than you would ask me to extract a perfectly healthy tooth from a healthy set of gums.

Cecilia and I will not be granted the opportunity to prove, through a mortal lifespan of two or three centuries, that we would never tire of each other; but we know in our hearts that we would not. As long as we both DO exist on the mortal plane, because God united us as one, we DON'T each think of ourselves as keeping the other at arm's length. It is AS A COMBINATION that we go at life, and splitting up that combination as a willing choice by either of us is unthinkable.

I wish that some of my favorite novelists DIDN'T regard breakups as SO VERY thinkable.  

At this point, my usual detractors will scream: "You want battered wives to be trapped at the mercy of their abusers! You want to give a blank value-pulse to the worst of patriarchal oppressors! You're waging war against women!" They will know themselves to be lying when they say this; for when THEY argue for THEIR preference that marriages should be disposable, they would furiously deny any charge that they wanted to take their position so far as to hurt any innocent person. Well, dear detractors, neither do I intend MY statement of conviction to be followed so rigidly as to hurt the innocent. OF COURSE an abused spouse has a right to escape from her -- OR HIS --abuser. But the general principle I advocate remains valid, and I am not ashamed of it.

Who knows? If Jesus doesn't return during the lifetimes of Chilena, Alipang, Melody, Harmony and Terrance [Eric and Cecilia's children in the Alipang Havens novels], perhaps my words, preserved by God's providence, will afford some encouragement to a future generation of long-lived beiievers who still want to do human love IN THE BIBLICAL FASHION.