“Put your sword back in its place. Everyone who takes up a sword is destroyed by it” (Matthew 25.52).
Albert Einstein, as best I can verify, once stated that while he had no idea the weapons that would be used in a third world war, the fourth “will be fought with sticks and stones.” I can’t pin down when he said this, but I’ll bet he would have liked this week’s movie. At least, he would have thought its message was good.
Rocketship X-M was released in May 1950, and has a tie to producer George Pal, who we talked about previously. Pal was working on Destination Moon, an ambitious portrayal of the first mission to the moon. But when his film ran behind schedule, the producers of this week’s film saw an opportunity and rushed to shoot (in eighteen days) a movie that could take advantage of the press and excitement surrounding Pal’s movie.
Made for $94,000 ($1.2 million in today’s money), the film made $650 million; so, it’s strategy appeared to work, at least as far as making a successful box office movie. As to making a good movie, that’s debatable.
Rocketship X-M (short for expedition moon) is the first American rocket that can take humans to the moon. Four men and one woman board and launch from Earth, but encounter an issue not long into their journey when the engines suddenly cut out. After pulling out their slide rules and paper (and the female character being told she must have miscalculated when her numbers differ from one of the guys), they remix their fuel supply and relight their spacecraft.
But something goes wrong with the mix (perhaps the lady had the right answers after all), and the crew speeds past the moon on course for Mars. After successfully landing, they find a world of decaying cities and, eventually, a stone-age population of very human-looking Martians who attack and kill several of the crew with sticks and rocks. Atomic war, it’s surmised, destroyed the Martian civilization, and the remaining crew must make it home to warn humanity of the dangers of such weaponry. But with their fuel so low, will they be able to return and warn Earth about the danger our atomic weapons present?
This is not the last movie that’ll attempt to warn us of the dangers of atomic, and later nuclear, weapons. The big bug movies of the fifties like Them with its giant ants would do something similar. The sixties and seventies give us films set in the aftermath of WWIII, which then culminate in the 1980s with the British film Threads and The Day After here in the States.
Einstein’s quote above is part of a larger statement. The full quote is “A country cannot simultaneously prepare and prevent war. I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. The distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force.”
As a Christian our response, based on Jesus’ teaching should be “Well, duh.” It’s, basically, what Jesus said to the disciples the night of his arrest. Matthew doesn’t name who pulls a weapon, but who did it doesn’t matter as much as that it happened. That, after all their walking and talking with Jesus, violence was their first reaction.
There has been and remains plenty of opinions on how or when (not so much on if) violence is an acceptable response. Yes, God in the books of the Torah, Joshua, and others seems to demand it. And the frightening Lamb of Revelations seems to have no issue with violence. But Jesus holds a different opinion. And, if we believe he is the Incarnation of the Holy One, it seems like it should carry weight.
But let’s put that argument aside for a moment. Let’s just take this one statement and what Jesus is saying in this context. In reaction to the violence that’s taken place on his behalf, the Anointed One says to those with him to put their swords away. Those who draw swords are destroyed by them.
In its immediate environment, this warning seems quite pertinent. If the disciples begin fighting, the soldiers present will draw their own weapons. Even if some of them manage to survive a confrontation with trained military, none of the disciples will ever live in peace again. The State will hunt them down, likely using cruel and deadly means against those closest to the survivors’ families and friends. To stay alive, there will be more killing, more bloodshed. As long as they live, they’ll never be able to spend a day without a sword in hand.
That’s no kind of life. It’s certainly not the full, rich life Jesus said was the reason for his mission. And, sure, it’s a statement that can seem to fit into a micro situation alone, but is it merely an admonition, a command for a unique circumstance?
Currently, there are almost ten-thousand nuclear weapons held by seven countries across our world. In 1950, when Rocketship X-M was released, there were just over three-hundred in two countries. And the past twenty-years has seen all manner of violence and negotiation attempting to prevent the numbers from growing. Supposedly, that was one reason why our own country went to war this year.
It certainly seems that Jesus words hold true even when applied to the scale of states and nations. Our unsheathed weapons, despite how many or how deadly, seem to keep begetting more weapons in response. They seem to consume more resources than we have available, leading us to debt, which appears to create needs that bring more violence. It’s almost as if these weapons are steadily destroying us.
If only someone would have warned us.
Prince of Peace, transform our hearts and minds to not just sheathe our swords but to throw them down and away. May we be people of peace who walk along a new Way.