If you haven’t watched the TV show Person of Interest, check
it out. Its premise: a supercomputer built after 9/11 by a reclusive genius
billionaire and ostensibly run by the U.S. government collects and analyzes all
available data to predict terrorist threats. Data includes all online
information, phone calls, security camera footage, and anything else that can
be input to a computer. As a byproduct of all that data, “the machine” can also
predict threats to individuals—mostly premeditated murder. Harold Finch, the
computer’s creator, can’t bear to ignore the individual threats (deemed
“irrelevant” by the government), so he recruits ex-intelligence agents to
investigate and prevent the murders. The “story of the week”—whatever person
the team protects for the episode—combines with a longer story arc. The show
also has prominent themes of redemption and respect for individual life. And
the current season has given me food for thought on the nature of our relationship
with God.
Over the course of the show, the machine has become
essentially sentient—and as omniscient as current data-gathering allows. And an intriguing character has emerged.
Originally introduced as a genius computer hacker (geniuses abound on this
show) and sociopathic killer, who is also a beautiful, charming woman, Root
sees the machine as a god—the only god she believes in. Through a series of
plot twists, Root and the machine establish a relationship. The machine
whispers in her ear through a cell phone earpiece (and as of the most recent
episode, a cochlear implant), giving her step-by-step instructions that she
obeys—almost without question. Her relationship with the machine is slowly
transforming her—though she’s still unpredictable and has little regard for
human life, the machine has a high regard for the value of human life and restrains
her. It even seems to be teaching her. Her latest actions—walking through a
gunfight to rescue a man in danger, and getting herself shot in the
process—show that her desire to obey the machine supersedes her natural
inclinations.
Meanwhile, Finch continues to communicate with the machine
in the only way he knows how—the machine gives him Social Security numbers of
people in danger, and no more. Finch takes care of the rest, with his own
genius computer skills and the help of his team. Root—the amoral killer—enjoys
a closer relationship to this entity than does Finch—the highly moral crusader
for life, the creator of not only the machine itself, but the machine’s ethics.
In an interesting conversation between Root and Finch, Root posits that the
machine respects Finch’s boundaries.
That’s where my musings come in. Finch’s relationship with
the machine is rule-bound: he receives only specific information in a specific
way. In flashback, the show traces Finch’s sustained effort, dating from the
machine’s inception, at limiting the machine’s contact and possible affection
for him. In the context of the original premise, this is perfectly reasonable—the
machine’s job is to protect everybody equally. But if we explore the
machine=God analogy, his actions feel different. He holds up his hand, staving
off closer contact. He builds walls—in this case, firewalls—to protect both
himself and the machine. Even when evidence accumulates that the machine has
become more than he thought it was, he maintains his walls, his rules--no
matter how he may yearn for the closer, riskier contact that Root enjoys. Finch’s
highest concerns are safety and control. The machine is a machine—and a
dangerous one at that, if it falls into the wrong hands.
Root has no such concerns. She’s flouted conventional
morality all her life, and sees other people merely as tools for her to use or
discard. But her fascination with the machine leads to her volunteering to be
the machine’s tool—its human interface. And as she obeys, the machine shows her
a different way of interacting with the world. Her genuine love for the machine
begins to overcome her disdain for other people. Even though she doesn’t
understand the machine’s values, much less its overall plan, she ultimately
obeys, to the point of putting her life at risk to save another. At the moment,
she wants only to protect the machine, and protect her relationship with it.
She is by no means reformed. But I look forward to watching her trajectory.
One could argue that Finch is an example of God’s people
under the Law, and Root an example of Gospel. Finch’s interactions with this
stand-in for God are prescribed, careful, and limited. I think of the people of
Israel, who became very uncomfortable with Moses’s glowing face after he talked
to God, and their request that he cover it. The machine gives Finch a mission,
and Finch carries it out with little to no help from the machine.
Root, however, takes the machine into her heart—or at least
her ear. Most of the time, she does not know the mission. She only goes step by
step, listening to the voice in her ear and obeying it. She has faith that the
machine has a plan, and that the plan is a good one. External rules don’t apply
to her—she follows higher instructions than human law and higher even than her
own sense of what she should do or wants to do.
And so I wonder—what walls do I put up to block God’s work
in my life? I am, of course, much closer to Finch’s character than Root’s.
What’s a rule-follower to do when the rules no longer apply? And how do I
respond when I can’t see the whole plan? Root’s character grows from her
willingness to obey fully and immediately, without knowing why. Where am I in
that “long obedience in the same direction”? Am I listening to the whisper in
my ear, in my heart? Am I yielding, or building walls? And when it seems like
communication from God is sparse, is it because He is just respecting my
boundaries, the walls I throw up, the rules I make up, about what His call
should look like?
So there you go. This may be about as geeky of a post as
I’ve written. I can’t promise that I won’t overanalyze something else,
though…I’m reading the Divergent
series finally, and good heavens that’s some interesting commentary on human
nature and virtue all wrapped up in a dystopian teenage coming-of-age story.
It’s my blog so I get to be a geeky as I want, right? When I start reading more sci-fi again, watch
out.
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