Theology of Bioshock (Part III)

For we are in fact, spiritual by nature, something the game makes constant reference to.  When we enter Neptune’s bounty, the fisheries of the city, we see a most striking sight.  A man has been brutally killed and is hanging in a cruciform position.  The word “Smuggler” is written above him.  The punishment does not seem to fit the crime, but we decide to look at the items he smuggled, which are laid below his feet.  What we find is a bible and a crucifix.
In a city founded on atheism as the only unbreakable law, what is surprising is that smugglers risked their lives to break that law.  Grant it, these men tend to be made out to be criminals for a profit, but that is beside the point.  What is important is that there was a demand for crucifixes and Bibles.  We have seen this is countless societies in the 20^th century, but perhaps the scene that most brings it to the fore was John Paul II’s visit to Poland for his first time as Pope in 1979.  With a crowd well over a million gathered in Krakow, in the face of the leaders of that officially atheistic state, the crowd chanted “We want God!  We want God!”  No state, however conceived, will eliminate man’s need for God.

            All we have discussed now can prepare us for tackling the question of the interpretation of the sweat of our brow. Ryan praises the sweat of our brow, and claims that if we deserve anything, we deserve this.  What he is saying is not unlike Marx who says we deserve the fruits of our labour.  His critique of Democracy is that it taxes my money and gives it to the poor, who did not earn it.  His critique of Communism is that it takes my money and distributes it equally, which again erases what is mine.  We will not deal with those, but we will deal with his third objection, that Christianity (specifically Catholicism) states that our money is not really our own, but rather belongs to God, and thus must be given to His Church.  Ryan rejects these answers and claims full and total ownership to everything he earns.  Christianity seems to claim that this very work is a punishment, and should not be something prized.  Is that true?  What is the solution to this dilemma?

            First, let us examine what occurs to Ryan throughout the course of the story.  Ryan, with his own genius and money, builds the city of Rapture and brings people from around the world there to populate it.  It is a marvel of the modern age beyond reckoning.  The city flourishes at first, but over time we see the city deteriorate, both through cutthroat business practices, as well as the discovery of Adam.  A civil war breaks out, and the city Jack finds when we arrive is truly a shadow of its former self, now a husk of destroyed human beings wandering a forsaken city.  Ryan’s great plan has failed.  There are two incidents that will illuminate this discussion. When the Jack enters into Arcadia, the undersea forest that gives Rapture its breathable oxygen, Ryan contacts the player via radio.

On the surface, I once bought a forest. The Parasites claimed that the land belonged to God, and demanded that I establish a public park there. Why? So the rabble could stand slack-jawed under the canopy and pretend that it was paradise earned. When Congress moved to nationalize my forest, I burnt it to the ground. God did not plant the seeds of this Arcadia; I did.

Following this, Ryan uses the city’s pipes to spray toxin on the trees, killing them.

The second incident is this: when the Jack finally finds Ryan in the city’s central control, Ryan says:

Even in the book of lies, sometimes you find truth. There is indeed a season for all things…You can kill me, but you will never have my city! My strength is not in steel and fire! That is what the parasites will never understand. A season for all things: a time to live, and a time to die. A time to build, and a time ... TO DESTROY!

We find Ryan quoting Scripture, specifically Ecclesiastes 3:2-3, apparently as a defence for what Ryan does next, which is to set the city’s self-destruct mode on.  What are we to conclude from these two examples? We see that Ryan is obsessed with maintaining what is his, and when he is forced to share to give up a part of that, his only thought is to destroy.  At first he will fight, such as fighting Congress or fighting Jack in the city, but when his hand is forced, it is his own self who destroys what he built.  Thus the sweat of his brow, which he worked so hard to earn, is destroyed by his own hand.

What can we glean from this to further our understanding of the text from Genesis that has been so crucial for our understanding?  It is true that we see that God ‘curses’ Adam with having to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, something that Ryan is so found of, but there is something more important than this.  For we see shortly before this that God gives man the first commandment: “Be fertile and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.  Have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, and all living things that move on the earth.” (Gen 1:28) I propose that this venture of subduing the earth, which is the act of building up civilization, was never intended to be easy.  Man would have to work hard at it, as seems implied in the word subdue.  Then what changes after the Fall?  Precisely this:  The curse is not that we have to work when before we did not, but rather the curse is that our work becomes toilsome.  Sin separates us from God, which in turn makes the whole subduing of creation seem like a meaningless string of drudgery.  The genius in the text is this:  only by believing in God and being united to him morally will our toil have purpose and thus bring life and joy to our lives.  God is not the enemy of human endeavour, he is precisely the only thing that makes human endeavour not only possible but enjoyable.  Ryan built the city of Rapture by sheer grit and determination, but because he refuses to submit to God, his work ends up failed, and his only recourse is to destroy the very thing he worked so hard to build.  His work in the end is a meaningless toil, but for the man who lets God run his life, his work will be joyful and fruitful.

            Early in the game the player finds a model of the city that says: “Rapture: One man’s dream, mankind’s salvation.”  This statement, especially amid the wreck of the dystopia one finds oneself in, strikes us as quite ironic, but for more than just that reason.  Rapture contains only a few thousand residents, so how it is mankind’s salvation is difficult to determine.  But even if we pretend that salvation is only for these several thousand, we soon discover that the salvation they receive seems more like damnation.  A world destroyed by Adam, a society brought to its knees by its own selfishness; this salvation does not look very enviable.  In some Christian thought, the word ‘Rapture’ refers to the end times, when the just will be brought into everlasting bliss in heaven, while the wicked will be damned for eternity in hell.  The main difference between the two is that God is in heaven, but he is not in hell, which in turn leads to joy in heaven, but sorrow and despair in hell.  The sad fact of Rapture, and of every Utopian ideal that is applied to society, is that when you reject God and seek to formulate that endpoint of human destination in this lifetime, you do in fact get what you asked for.  Just don’t be surprised when you realize that it was not what you bargained for.