Sunday, July 31, 2011

Donna Noble

Donna is getting married on Christmas Eve.

It is her dream wedding. She’s marrying a very handsome man. Her dress is gorgeous. Her friends and family are all in attendance. Everything is going to plan—except for one thing.

Her fiancé betrays her at the last minute and brings her to the spider alien he has been working for (hang with me for a second). This empress has been conspiring with Donna’s fiancé and plans on using Donna to help facilitate an alien invasion.

Enter the Doctor. The Doctor is an alien himself, albeit one who has saved humanity again and again. This time is no different. He saves Donna. He saves the world and by the end of the night is making it snow for Christmas.

Before he goes, he asks Donna to join him, but it’s all too much for Donna and she refuses and then watches him disappear.

But when Donna wakes the next morning, she realizes that her life has changed in such profound ways that she can’t go back to the life she led before. The world—the universe—is so much bigger than she could have imagined.

She misses the Doctor.

So what does she do? She packs her bags and begins to look for him. She has no idea how long it will take to find him or if she will ever find him, but she knows that when she does, she’ll be ready, bags packed.

This story comes from an episode of Doctor Who, entitled “The Runaway Bride.” Though it takes an entire season, Donna eventually reunites with the Doctor.

Donna is just one of many characters from Doctor Who who find their lives changed in magnificent and wonderful ways, who find their knowledge of the world shaken to its very core by the intrusion of this man, the Doctor.

Unlike Donna who actively searches for the Doctor, the Doctor’s most recent companion, Amy Pond is known as the girl who waited. She didn’t go out looking for the Doctor. In fact, as a child, she wound up asleep in the backyard waiting for him when he promised to come back for her.

I think one of the reasons that people fall in love with science fiction and fantasy stories is that they tell the stories of our heart. They tell stories of longing. They tell stories of worthiness. Dorothy frees Oz from the tyranny of the witch. Lucy, Susan, Edmund and Peter help free Narnia from the White Witch. Harry Potter saves the world from the evil wizard Voldemort. All of these children are orphans, orphans of the war, or orphans simply because their parents are lost. All of them find love and acceptance. All of them find purpose.

Why do you think so many of these stories reflect those themes of longing and worthiness? Why do so many of these stories include saviors? Aslan, the lion, sacrifices himself to save Edmund and then rises from the dead. Harry Potter (spoiler alert), known as the boy who lived, must eventually die and then live again so that the world might be saved. Spock, from Star Trek, dies to save the Enterprise and is then resurrected—thanks to the appropriately named Genesis Device.

The reason that these stories appeal to us is that they all tell the same story, a story that was written into our very souls, a story two thousand years old, a true story, a real story, the story of God who loved us so much, He sent His only son to die for us on the cross.

Donna Noble, realizing that she has found a way to escape the shallow life she has been living, leaves her family, leaves everything behind so that she can be with the Doctor. Amy Pond, realizing that there is someone in the world who knows her better than anyone else, sleeps on her suitcase outside in the cold, waiting for the Doctor to return for her.

Donna is a reflection of the disciples who followed Jesus. Amy becomes a Mary Magdalene figure, waiting for her savior to return.

C.S. Lewis knew the power of stories. He knew that the stories he wrote could help us connect better to Jesus. Aslan, himself, tells the children that he is known by another name in our world, and that by knowing him in Narnia for a little while, they might know him better in their own world.

Fantasy and science fiction don’t tell the stories of worlds apart from our own. They tell our story. They tell the story of our world. They hold our world up to a mirror so that we might better see it and understand.

In many ways, they help us connect to the truth of who we are and what has been done for us through Jesus Christ.

Think about it for a second. Think about your favorite stories growing up. Think carefully about how those stories spoke to you. What did they reveal about the desires of your heart? What did they reveal about your connection to the one who loves you more than you can ever know?