RAY BRADBURY’S MESSAGE
Avid readers often will credit this or that writer for luring them into a lifelong love of a genre. For those who love science fiction, it offers grand, cosmic landscapes on which to project the boundless possibilities of life. Yet for one writer, Ray Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012), he showed that humanity would always be humanity — violent, cruel, self-destructive — whether on earth or anywhere else. In direct contrast to the original Star Trek and other utopian sci-fi worlds, Bradbury turned futurism on its head. Fahrenheit 451 warned about the power of passive technologies to destroy our minds and sap our political will. Even more depressing was The Martian Chronicles, which presented the red planet as just another venue for human colonization, war-making and bickering. Much of what Bradbury wrote wasn’t really science fiction, but was more properly described as (what we now call) imaginative fiction. In summing up his work, one writer described it that: "He showed me that the most exotic adventures in life always lead back to an examination of our original sin — the space in our hearts as inky black as outer space itself. (http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/06/06/jonathan-kay-on-ray-bradbury-1920-2012-science-ficitons-most-depressing-prophet/)
Jesus knew and suffered due to the reality of sin in the human heart. But when He physically left the earth, His message was not a pessimistic one.
(From a sermon by Matthew Kratz, The Ascension, 6/9/2012)