Dune
The latest film version of Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi novel Dune was released in October. In the story, “great houses” maneuver against each other and against the emperor for wealth, power, and influence. They use money, armies, and religion as their tools of manipulation.
The book of Revelation in the Bible shows Dune to be an insightful and accurate description of the real-world mechanics of human history—all governments and empires (including even our own) really do work this way. But Revelation challenges these real-world politics of empire’s manipulative uses of economics, army, and religion. And Revelation goes further, to unmask the dark spiritual forces behind human civilizations who are pulling the strings in a thousands-of-years long plot to unseat God. The message of the book is about the ultimate failure of those dark spiritual powers and their human allies. Revelation assures us, “Babylon is doomed! Nothing is more certain. The Day is coming when God will disarm and unseat all opposition permanently so that his people can flourish together peacefully in his presence.”
In the novel, the emperor has created a trap and ordered Duke Atreides and his family to move from their Earth-like homeworld, Caladan, to the desert planet called Dune. In the midst of the drama the Duke tells his son, “On Caladan we ruled with sea and air power, but on Dune we must cultivate desert power.”
In the midst of our real-world drama and the political machinations going on around us, what is the power we must cultivate? Revelation chapter 5 reveals that is is “Lamb power.” In that chapter, St. John hears about a Lion from the tribe of Judah who is the only one worthy to unfold God’s plan for vanquishing his enemies and establishing universal peace. But when he turns around to look at this Lion, he instead sees a Lamb looking like it had already been sacrificed. The message is that God does not reign through power (although he certainly could), but through weakness. The Lion who is a Lamb has conquered the spiritual forces of evil through his weak, sacrificial death.
Human beings, even apparently faithful Christians, too often want an almighty deity who will rule the universe with power, preferably on their terms, and with force when necessary. But the central image of Revelation and of all Scripture is that Christ conquers, not by inflicting violence, but by absorbing it; not by killing, but by being killed. The kind of power the true God exercises—Lamb power—is nonviolent and non-coercive. When we faithfully and consistently follow that Lamb, we can also expect to absorb violence, the losing end of economic deals, and religious attack.
At the end of the book Dune (2021’s movie is only the first half), the hero wins by harnessing a greater economic power, a greater military power, and a greater religious power than the emperor. But does that make him a hero? He has not broken the cycle of empire or the method of power. The Bible, rather, teaches that we are not our own saviors. Our hope is in the promise that Lamb power is ultimately the greatest power, and that Jesus will reign eternally.