Voices In My Head Episode #250: The Gospel According To Star Trek with Kevin C. Neece

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Have you ever thought to yourself, man, I'd like to host my own podcast? Well, guess what? You can go to podbean.com/voices and get everything you need to create, manage, and promote your podcast. I use Podbean every week for Voices in My Head. There's easy uploading and publishing tools, stunning templates, custom domains, social and promotional tools, an embeddable podcast player, monetization tools and more. It is your all-in-one podcasting solution. With Podbean, you can create professional podcasts in minutes without any programming knowledge. Best of all, everything is mobile ready right from the start. So go to podbean.com/voices, and when you sign up, use the code voices and you'll get a sizable discount. Podbean, for your home podcasting. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer-songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is your source for discussions on music, literature, movies, pop culture, theology, and more. Now sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of the Voices in My Head podcast. And don't forget, to let the voices in your head be heard by following me on Twitter @RickLeeJames and sharing your thoughts about today's show. Hey everybody, welcome back to Voices in My Head. Today is a great episode. I just had a conversation with author Kevin C. Neese, and that's N-E-E-C-E, Kevin C. Neese, just to make clear when you look him up online. He has written a book and is in the process of writing a series of books about the Gospel according to Star Trek, and it was so great to have him for a conversation. Just before I get started, there's a couple things I want to let you know about. I'm going to be at the National Worship Leader Conference May 7th through 9th in Nashville, Tennessee at Trevecca Nazarene University. That's the college I graduated from, dear old TNU. So I'm very excited about that. And National Worship Leader Conference, they actually, with Worship Leader Magazine, have given me permission to give out a code on my podcast for you to get 30% off if you want to go. And that code is simply HAPPYNEWYEAR. So if you go to worshipleader.com, you'll be able to find find a link on their site when you go to the events page where you can sign up and just put in the code for 30% off your ticket to get there. Happy New Year! Now, the National Worship Leader Conference is organized by the National Worship Leader— sorry, the National Worship Leader Conference is going to take place from the 7th of May to the 9th of May in 2018. And as I said before, it will be at Trevecca Nazarene University. They're gonna have some really great artists there this year. I know that our guest from last week is going to be there, Andrew Osenga. So we can get to hang out with people like him, and you get to have roundtables. They're going to have— Crowder is going to be there. I believe Matt Maher is going to be there this year, and they've been announcing people left and right. Brothers McClurg is going to be there, so I'm looking forward to getting to hang around with them again. So if you go to worshipleader.com and put in the code HAPPYNEWYEAR, just for listening to the podcast, you can get 30% off. So I just wanted you all to take advantage of that. Now speaking of Brothers McClurg, who I am making an album with currently— well, not currently, I'll go back in March to finish it. But right now I am in fundraising mode fully for it. Unashamedly, I'm talking about it all over the place online. You're probably going to be getting an email from me if you subscribe to the email list. We have 25 days at the time of this recording left to raise our $10,000 for the studio to finish up the new project. We are already almost over the $1,000 mark, which I'm really excited about. And we have quite a bit of time, but we don't have, you know, a ton of time to raise that kind of money. But you get some really exciting perks with it. I'm I'm giving away my very first guitar at a certain level if you donate to it. There's levels of donations where you get autographed books of Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth autographed by Andrew Greer. There's level where you can come to my house and we'll make pancakes together. There are rewards like I'll pick out something for you specifically and customize a gift. There are rewards like come to the studio and spend a couple days with us while we finish recording the album in Buffalo, New York. So there are a lot of great things. So the best way I can tell you to get to the page, because Indiegogo doesn't have like an easy link to just to get to for me to spout off, so I made my own link. If you go to rickleejames.com/thunder, you'll find a link right there that'll take you to our funding page. Even if it's just a couple bucks that you can swing our way, every little bit counts. If you pay a minimum of $5, you can get the recording that we did of the Rich Mullins song Thunder right away. So please don't wait till the last minute. The more donations we get, the more traffic we get, the more visibility we will get online. So if nothing else, just go to the website and click on it through to the Indiegogo page. Even if you're not going to donate, the web traffic helps us to be seen more online. So rickleejames.com/thunder, or you can go to indiegogo.com and look up Rick Lee James. I'm sure you'll be able to find it. Well, that's it for advertisements, and we're going to get into my conversation with Kevin C. Neese. The Gospel According to Star Trek. It was a really fun conversation. Even if you're not into Star Trek, I think you're gonna find a lot of benefit to our conversation today. We go some interesting directions with it. So with that being said, thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. I hope you all have a wonderful week, and I really appreciate you listening. Welcome back to the Voices in My Head podcast. As always, I am your host, Rick Lee James, and today I'm very glad to have Kevin C. Nies with me today. Kevin is the author of The Gospel According to Star Trek. It's a series, and this book that we're going to be discussing today is the first in the series, which deals with the original crew. The Gospel According to Star Trek: The Original Crew. Kevin is a speaker on media, the arts, and pop culture from a Christian worldview and perspective. He's the founder and curator of the Undiscovered Country Project. Kevin C. Nies, welcome to the Voices in My Head podcast.

Well, thanks very much, Rick. It's good to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Well, I'm thrilled to have a fellow Star Trek fan to talk with today, but I know that you're so much more than that. You're a speaker and you're really into meeting people. You're into doing all kinds of Q&As and just meeting all kinds of different audiences today. So we're here to talk Star Trek, but I'm open to letting the conversation go anywhere we want to go today. So welcome to the show. We are so glad to have you.

Well, thank you very much. I'm excited, and you know, I think Star Trek is— you know, I've been writing and speaking about Star Trek for the last, you know, almost a decade now, and I enjoy talking about it. But the reason I wrote this book is because of all the things that I saw in Star Trek that were valuable to me as I was developing a Christian worldview more thoroughly than I had before. And so that makes this material really accessible to even people who aren't Star Trek fans, I hope.

Yeah, well, I, I think it will be. I think it's a book that— well, I enjoyed it, but I am a Star Trek fan, so I have to admit that first and foremost. But it really is a well-written book, and I think it really lends itself to maybe some Bible studies and some different things that could be very conversational for a lot of different reasons. And I want to start out by asking you a question, and I'll ask you the question first, and then I'll answer it on my end just to give you a moment to think about it. I know you've thought about it a lot, you even wrote about it in the book, but I want to know about your first encounter with Star Trek. And I'll tell you, mine was— I remember just being a kid and falling in love with that original series and reruns. I would watch Star Trek with my dad. It would be on a lot of times at dinnertime in the evening whenever I was elementary school age. And you know, I just love when, when Captain Kirk would fight the Gorn, or what, you know, is it a Gorn, the lizard guy? I think it's called Gorn. It's been a while since I watched that episode. Or, you know, the time travel episodes were great. But I was always a huge fan of Captain Kirk. And so when I was a kid and I would play outside, I would want to play Star Trek, and I would always want to be Kirk. You know, you always wanted to be the hero. But that's sort of where I started. So I've been a Star Trek fan from way back. So maybe tell our listeners a little bit, your first encounter with Star Trek.

Well, my first encounter probably was also the original series, seeing it on late-night television and not being especially impressed with it because it, you know, it looked a little hokey to me. You know, you refer to these things as data tapes, but they're actually, you know, clearly painted wooden blocks, and it just didn't really resonate to me, you know, as very realistic or very credible. And of course, you know, I was, you know, 6 or 7 or 8 years old, you know, so I didn't really appreciate the artistry of the original series, which of course I do now. I see obviously the technological limitations, but I mean, I recognize that it's exceedingly well made. And, but it was later that I really got into Star Trek because when The Next Generation premiered in 1987, I was super excited about it, which is weird because I remember kind of disparaging Star Trek V when it came out, like, oh my gosh, you know, will they ever stop making these movies? Which actually, I think that was in, um, yeah, no, that was, that was actually in '89. So that was after, um, after Next Generation started. So maybe I was still like anti-Original Series or something at some point. I don't know. I don't have a clear memory, but But yeah, that year that I started in '87, I got really excited about it, and eventually I got into the original crew movies, Star Trek I through V at the time, and then went out to see Star Trek VI in the theater. That was 1991, the 25th anniversary. That was probably when I just became a huge Star Trek fan. But yeah, that was my, that was my first exposure.

Well, it's interesting that you mentioned that about The Next Generation. I remember not knowing what to think about it. And, you know, what is this thing going to be? I remember distinctly a Honey Nut Cheerios box that I had at the house. Oh my gosh, yes! Yeah, you remember that?

And I'd like to know what you think of it. Was the thing where you could get a guest spot on TNG?

Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh, yes! Somebody remembers this!

High five across the podcast! Yes, exactly.

Internet high five. Yeah, so it's such a strange thing to remember all these years later. I think I was maybe around 4th grade around that time, and I just remember I remember like before school eating cereal and looking at this and I'm thinking, well, that's not Star Trek. Who's this bald guy? And now that I am a bald guy, I don't have as many qualms with him being bald. But I did back then for some reason. But I remember being intrigued and I kind of thought when it first came out, I was kind of bored with the first, you know, like few episodes of the series because it just didn't feel like a lot was going on. But you know what, we stuck with it, and I remember that was again one of the things I enjoyed doing with my dad in the evenings. A lot of times it would be on in syndication, and we would just watch those old episodes. So lots of great memories for me, and I guess I connect family time with Star Trek in some ways.

It's very interesting. Yeah, that's really cool.

Well, you know, many fans of Star Trek, they'll know that that religion doesn't play necessarily a huge role in the show. And matter of fact, there's a lot of different things that have been written about Gene Roddenberry. I've read a few of those books, and, and, you know, he was a pretty, pretty much against organized religion, I think, in just about any way. And it was interesting to read some more in your book about his upbringing and the way that he was brought up and kind of left his faith behind him. But with that in mind, And with Star Trek being sort of a show that kind of, I guess we could say, overcame the need for religion in some ways, at least that's the worldview that it's presenting, like we're so far advanced we don't need religion anymore. With that in mind, what's the, the particular connection that you find between Star Trek and Christianity?

Well, on the one hand, I would say that religion, spirituality, faith These things are actually really prominent in Star Trek. And just to point out a simple example, the character that anybody who knows anything about Star Trek knows is Spock. Maybe even they don't know Kirk, but they know Spock. And Spock is— Spock, you know, Leonard Nimoy always got more fan mail than Bill Shatner during the series, and somewhat of a point of consternation, I think, for Shatner.

I was gonna say, I bet that drove him crazy.

Yeah, just a little bit. But, so, you know, Spock is this figure, but in this sort of essentially post-religious series, Spock is a religious character. I mean, you look at the whole Vulcan society, and yes, it's based on logic, but they treat logic as a religion, and everything that they do is very kind of spiritual and supernatural. Spock is a meditative, monastic character in many respects. And there's the whole, you know, and so spirituality and faith and even religion are still in Star Trek, and they don't really ever go away. I think Next Generation probably gets away from it more than most, but even that establishes Klingon religion and discusses other, you know, ideas of spirituality with the Traveler and all that stuff. So So I think even though Gene Roddenberry, you're right, had a very strong distaste for organized religion, primarily because of his experience with Christianity as a young man before his teen years. You know, in his family, he was born in East Texas, in El Paso, which is a particular point of pride for me as a Texan. But his family was, Ostensibly religious. His mother insisted on going to church every Sunday and taking the kids with her, but his father was very suspicious of that sort of thing and tended to not necessarily discourage it. He said, you know, you can learn a lot of good things there, but be careful of what the ministers say. Sure. And so he, without having a lot of explanation or understanding of a lot of Christian doctrines, he just kind of on their face thought, "Boy, that sounds superstitious," or "That sounds silly," or "That sounds magical." "It sounds like nonsense. I don't really believe it," and just kind of abandoned it at that point. But at the same time, he still credited his religious background in part for his moral formation. So, um, so there's even, even as Roddenberry rejects religion, he still has very much a relationship to it. He never really became an atheist. I talk in the book at length about Roddenberry's actual theology as best I can sort of find it, as best I can understand it. Because he did have a theology.

I was just going to say, yeah, a lot of that is sort of taken out of context. It was really interesting reading about the research that you did to find sort of this original interview where something he had said disparaging religion ended up being not as disparaging as it originally sounded because just the way that things get twisted over time and people grab a quote of what they think it said, taking it out of context. Not that we ever do that in a Twitter society or anything like that. But I did, I found that fascinating. I didn't know anything about that. But sorry to interrupt you. Oh no, that's fine.

I mean, that was kind of a real jumping off point for me to explore Roddenberry's actual worldview because It's the quotation. If you read anything that claims that Roddenberry is an atheist, there's usually one quotation that they grab, and it has to do with, you know, religion being a substitute for a malfunctioning brain, which is not what he said. Half the quotation as we have it is accurate, and the other half of it is a complete mishmash of actual words he said, but reordered so that they say something else. I don't know who made that version of it, but it's the version everybody quotes as the truth, and it's not the truth. And even when I first heard it, it didn't sound right to me. And so as I explored that further, that was when I really discovered, oh, Gene Roddenberry is not an atheist. Okay, wow, that's really interesting, because I started all this on the assumption that he was. So that kind of leads us back to where Star Trek and Christianity come together, because I didn't start this because I said, "Oh, look at all the religion that's discussed in Star Trek." "Oh, look at all the spirituality and all the faith that's discussed in Star Trek." Or, "Hey, look how Gene Roddenberry wasn't an atheist." All that stuff was stuff I discovered later. What hit me about Star Trek was that, well, originally I saw a parallel between Data and Jesus, and I wanted to go through Next Generation and see if I could see that thread throughout the character. And then I started seeing a parallel between Spock and Jesus. But as I started going through Star Trek, at the same time that I was having what I call my worldview conversion process, where I just started to see my life and my faith in a whole new way, and see that the distinction between the sacred and the secular is really kind of a false distinction, that everything belongs to God. One of the quotations that we toss around in my circles is from Abraham Kuyper, who said, "There is not a square inch of creation over which Christ does not cry, 'Mine.'" In other words, all goodness is God's goodness, all beauty is God's beauty, all truth is God's truth. So where you find truth, where you find goodness, where you find beauty, you're finding something of what God has to say through humanity in this world. And so, um, as I was going through Star Trek, I found things that not only were compatible with my faith but were informing my faith, were growing and deepening my faith, and were were helping me to see that connection between my intellectual life and my spiritual life. Because I think there's a great connection in Star Trek between intellect and spirituality, between, um, like scientific pursuit and the deep, uh, truth of what it means to be human. It's really an exploration of the human condition. But that's really what science is at its best too. And all the best scientists who love their work, whether they're atheist or Christian or Buddhist or Hindu or whatever they are, are, right? They are, when they're the ones that are really devoted to it, they're finding something about their own essential humanity and about our human story through science, and that's why they're doing it. So the idea that, you know, that all this sort of logical data and information is just sort of separate from our hearts and our souls and our spirits and our minds, that's, it's not true. It's not true. So as I started to see those things, I started to write them down, and it was going to be a paper for a conference. And then by the time I was writing the paper, I knew I had a book. And by the time I was almost done with the book, I realized I had a series. And that's where we're at now.

That's really great. And as a writer, that's an awesome thing to experience. You're like, hey, I have somewhere to go. It's great. Yeah, it's impressive. If you don't mind, if you can do it for just a second, you said something so beautifully a minute ago, and you were quoting someone about how Jesus says, "Mine." I just want to hear that again. It was so good, about every corner of creation. Can you quote that?

Yes, I will say that again. Forgive me if I speak too rapidly. If you want me to slow down, I can.

No, no, it was fine. It wasn't that at all. I just thought it was so good. I just thought it bared bore repeating.

Oh, well, thank you. No, it's a quotation from Abraham Kuyper, and it is that there is no square inch of creation over which Christ does not cry, "Mine." In other words, all things belong to God. Nothing is really truly separate from him because everything flows from God and everything is created by God. So that leads to the following statement, which was All goodness is God's goodness. All truth is God's truth. All beauty is God's beauty. So as we look for the good, the true, and the beautiful, which are kind of these, these, these things that we hang our hats on, these things that we latch on to, you know, in, in what I would call the Christian humanist circles, which is where I live, that is, as we seek those things, we're really seeking God.

Yeah, that is just so good. Thank you for repeating that again. I know the listeners if you didn't do that, they were gonna scroll back to hear it again. I just thought it was so good. It's one of the great ones. Yeah, well, and with that in mind and thinking of every corner of creation, everything Christ saying, "Mine," I love that you quoted Clannery— boy, I can't talk today. Not Clannery O'Fanner, but Flannery O'Connor. I love that you quoted Flannery O'Connor in the book, and she gives a description of the American South as Christ haunted. And you, you say that as well, whatever Roddenberry thought of Jesus, the Christian religion and all that, that he saw it as— he saw it and the perception of God he perceived in it, it pushed him away from any kind of pursuit of Christ. But like Flannery O'Connor described, that he was Christ haunted. And I think that is probably a very good description for maybe the human situation in itself. I love that description because I think not only do we probably see that in Roddenberry's life, how many times for each of us could we point to it and say that we also are experiencing that Christ-hauntedness, that Christ is there at times whether we want to admit it or not, maybe in times when we didn't see him, but he was there pursuing that. And I love that you bring that out sort of through the story And the many stories and the many different generations of Star Trek that we have, whether they know it or not or acknowledge it or not, that is the thing that is sort of pursuing them whether they are pursuing it or not. Yes. And I really love that.

Yeah. One of the things that I say, I'm pretty sure I say it in the book, is that, you know, God is about the business of telling God's story., through our human efforts, through all of our human efforts, especially through our creativity, and often when we are unaware. So I have the feeling that we catch these resonant echoes. There's, there's the, the concept of, um, general revelation and specific revelation, okay? There's the general revelation, the things of God that the scripture speaks about that are knowable to everyone. That everybody has access to, so that in Paul's words, people are without excuse for ignoring God. But at the same time, there's the specific revelation of Jesus. So apart from the specific revelation of Jesus, there's a general revelation where people find things out about God. And what's really interesting is that humanity is the, the crown of creation, and we're created in the image of God to be the image of God, right? And so as we deeply explore what it means to be human, we ought to find ourselves bumping up against the gospel. And it's just really cool to me that in Star Trek, among other places, but particularly in Star Trek, I see that happening and see that proving true.

Well, and I even found it fascinating in the book, you know, because I've read many— not many, a few other books that deal with Roddenberry and his life, and I never knew this, which you brought up, that in 1959 Gene Roddenberry was honored by the American Baptist Convention. With an award for skillfully writing Christian truth and the application of Christian principles into commercial dramatic TV scripts. And that Roddenberry graciously accepted the award despite having no such intentions of doing so.

Exactly. Because, you know, if there was an accolade, Gene would take it. That's fine. No problem.

He seemed to have no problem accepting praise at all. Exactly. Exactly. But isn't that interesting though at times? Because I've often thought that about not just Star Trek, but in many films that I see. And you talk about Data at one point in the Nemesis movie being a Christ figure, but I see different movies that I'll watch and I see them very much as Christ figures, knowing that the author of the script and the director of the film probably never had that in mind when they were coming up with it. But we can't avoid it. It's like you said before, when Christ calls everything in creation "mine," there is a sense in which everything is going to lead back to him. One of my friends, he hosts a podcast. He's a Facebook friend. We haven't met face to face, but he's kind of a legend in the geek podcasting world, Michael Bailey. He loves Superman, and he hosts a podcast that's called— I believe it's called "It All Comes Back to Superman" is the name of the podcast, because in some way or another, his conversation always ends up back there. Whether it even started there or not. And I think it's very interesting that I kind of see that in, in a lot of different literature. I see it in a lot of different films and a lot of different TV shows. There are moments, and have been moments, where I find myself very moved by the Holy Spirit in an atmosphere that I don't think the Creator had any intention whatsoever of it. And sort of like this Gene Roddenberry Award where he, you know, accepted it from the American Baptist Convention for writing skillfully Christian truth and application. There are some things that I think God is doing in us and through us whether we acknowledge it or not, and I thought that you really brought that out. Since I did bring up Data a moment ago, and I found it interesting that— I'd love to have you talk a little bit more, a little bit for the first time actually, about Data as the Christ figure. But I found it kind of funny that you kind of start the book talking about how excited you were to we finally get to see Nemesis. And, and Nemesis is one of those Star Trek films that I think a lot of us go, eh, well, they made that one, you know, you know, it happened. But, you know, but a lot of people have a really great love for it. But I, I hadn't thought of it from that perspective of sort of Data being the Christ figure in that, in that film. Would you mind talking a little bit about that?

I would not mind at all, though I would say if any of your listeners, uh, haven't seen the film, they might want you know, and they're concerned about, you know, learning anything about it, they probably don't want to listen to this particular bit. But yeah, so Data is a really interesting character, and he's the Next Generation Spock. And this is also kind of a preview too of The Gospel According to Star Trek: The Next Generation, because there will be, of course, a section on Data, because Data started all of this. But in Nemesis is where I really noticed it, where I really saw it. And in this film, I'll just, I'll just kind of go to the film itself instead of trying to unpack the whole character because we could be here for a while. But in the film, and we'll just assume your audience is generally familiar with it, but we'll say there's Shinzon, who's the villain, who is a genetic copy of Picard. Yet Shinzon's soul, Shinzon's philosophy, Shinzon's worldview is completely antithetical to Picard's. And the thing that Shinzon brings to Picard in this film is to say, "I'm you. In every way, I am you. If you had lived my life, you would be making the decisions I'm making now." And this— and Picard completely is completely opposed to that idea and says, "No, no, no, there's no way I would do that." But it shakes him. Rattles him. And he's left with this idea that like, "Wow, really? Really? What if this is true?" Because Picard, I don't think, is particularly any kind of theist. I rather think that Picard is probably an atheist, at least an agnostic, probably doesn't believe in a soul, although there's a moment in one episode that kind of gives us the idea that maybe he might, but it's early in the series and they were still figuring out the character, so I'm not sure if we can really take that as conclusive. But so I think Picard really sees himself as defined by his DNA, defined by his genetics, as much as or more than anything else. So for him to think that his whole— his internal self, his true self, his sense of who he is in the world could be different, that different, that dramatically different, if his circumstances were otherwise, is really shaking for him. It really rattles him. And so in his final encounter with Shinzon, as you recall from the film, when he pulls the pole or whatever it is down from the wall with great strength, I don't know how he did that, but whatever, he did it.

He is Bane after all, Tom Hardy, you know, so.

Well, no, no, no, no, Picard does that. Picard does that. Oh, that's right. He pulls the pipe down and then Shinzon acts, you know, just kind of runs into it. And so Picard sort of intentionally, unintentionally impales Shinzon and Shinzon is pulling himself toward Picard along that pull. It's such a really powerful visual image. And he gets right up in Jean-Luc's face and says, "You know, it's good that we could be together." And Jean-Luc could move. I mean, Shinzon's stuck there, he's gonna die. Picard could move and he could go shut down the reactor and stop all this stuff from happening. That's what he's supposed to do, that's his hero's moment. But he can't. He's frozen. He's so shaken by Shinzon being face-to-face with this dying, with the Shenzon dying in front of him, that he just can't move. And that's when Data shows up. And then Data comes and, you know, he has the little transponder that will transport one person back to the ship, and he sticks it on Picard, says, "Goodbye, Captain," and Picard is beamed out of there. And then Data shuts everything down and destroys the ship and himself. And so Data comes in and accepts the death that Picard would have had had he stayed there, had Data not showed up. And it's a sacrifice, you know, for another person, but it's not just a sacrifice because Picard is metaphorically there, sort of dead, if you will, in the face of his trespasses and his sins, or the sinful version of himself. He's unable to act, and Data comes and acts on his behalf and accepts the death that he was going to have because he was trapped in the face of his sinful self. And to me, that's not just a sacrifice, that's substitutionary atonement. Sure. And then, you know, there's more to that film too with the whole B4 story and the hints of resurrection at the end of the film.

Yeah, well, well, you know, I'm gonna have to go back and revisit that one because that, that one in my mind is one of the least favorite of the Star Treks. But the way you describe it in the book and the way you talked about it, it makes me want to go back and revisit. And, and I'll tell you why, because I saw it, you know, I think I was in college at the time, and there was a scene where it looked like they just copied it from Star Wars, jumping down the chute, you know, in the middle of the hallway. And I was, I was like, are they just copying Star Star Wars, and so for some reason it set a bad taste in my mouth. But I found that years later when I go back, I often like things better than when I first did.

Uh, well, I'll tell you, it's not an exceedingly well-made film, honestly. Oh, okay. It's, it's, it's very flawed. Um, I about half love Nemesis and half hate it, but the part that I love, I love because it's so symbolically beautiful. I feel like there's a great story in there trying to get out. That's kind of trapped in a not-so-good movie.

Well, and to be honest, I never would have even thought of it that way if I hadn't read your book and seen the way that you laid it out. And so it's worth a revisit. And at this point in my life too, I fully acknowledge there's a lot of cheesy movies that I really like too. And so sometimes it's okay to go to movies that are not well made and still find some truth in there. It's good stuff. Right. Well, we're going to probably skip around a little bit in the conversation, but I'm dying to ask you a question that I've always wanted to ask, and I don't even know if you can answer this question, but I'm just going to ask it straight up. What does God need with a starship?

Oh my, that sounds familiar. It might be the title of an epilogue of a book I may have written.

Now it's— I mean, we— I really want to get into that a bit because, um, I mean, that's— I think that movie is That— it's, it's Star Trek V, right? Yes. Because, because I remember being real excited as a kid when it was gonna come out, and that was the one that Shatner had directed. And I remember not hating it, but again, I was a kid at the time. And I found out later on that that's the movie— that that's the Star Trek movie people want to forget about, you know. But, but it's interesting to me because I, I was and am I'm so interested in religion. And while, you know, I don't think Roddenberry wanted to put religion all through the show, that movie has a lot of questions that it does ask about God. And, and, and the God that maybe we think we're looking for, the, the God that maybe we think we believe in, maybe is not the God that is. Or the thing that we thought was God ends up not being God. And I just, I find that there's some interesting questions in that film that I raised too. So I don't really have a specific question about it, but you did write— I've always wanted to ask that question, "What does God need with a starship?" But maybe you could talk a little bit about some of the things that you hit on with your epilogue in that book, not to give too much away because I do want people to read your book, but you wrote some really interesting things.

Well, for me, the reason I selected that as the title for my epilogue is that it kind of, to me, reflected the sense that I thought a lot of people could have about this work in general, which is sort of, what does Star Trek have to do with God in the first place? You know, and why would we need You know, what does God need with Star Trek, really? You know, why would these two things even come together? How would this— either from two different angles. One is how would this irreligious science fiction show have anything to do with God? And from the other side, how would, you know, God have anything to do with just entertainment? Why would that be, you know, important at all. And I kind of came at that and said that, you know, God has chosen sovereignly, you know, to work through human agency. However we want to view that or whyever we think that is, that's the way it is. And God's purposes will be accomplished no matter what. The question is, what part in it are we going to play? And it's not so much that God needs us to do this thing. It's that God has created us to do this thing amongst ourselves because in love he creates, God creates free people. Sure, sure. And that's who and what we are. So we don't follow a program, and yet these things are carried out. And for me, as I look at Star Trek, I don't see that, well, you know, God needs Star Trek to accomplish God's purposes, but maybe we need Star Trek to accomplish God's purposes, amongst other things. I mean, not just Star Trek, but I think Star Trek is one of the things things that can help us to become more like the imago dei, the image of God that we're created to be. And Gene Roddenberry said that his dearest wish for Star Trek would be for it to go off the air. And the reason he wanted it to go off the air was that humankind wouldn't need it anymore. Hmm. So the idea is that that the important things about what it means to be human and what we should aspire to as humans, as Roddenberry sees them, are what he intends to communicate through Star Trek. Obviously Star Trek is the work of a great many authors, a great many writers, producers, directors, actors, etc., who have come together to make stories that Roddenberry even had nothing to do with. But that that was his hope and his intention. For the series. And I think that's true. I think that's really something that is a part of how I encounter Star Trek as well, that maybe God doesn't need Star Trek, but maybe we need Star Trek to help us get closer to God.

Yeah, and when we think of that too, and the idea, you know, when you ask that question, what does God need with a Star Trek, or even with a Star Trek or a starship,, and then even asking, you know, does God need one? And I love the answer of sort of like, well, no, he doesn't need one, but at the same time I think God wants to do things in cooperation with his people, and he wants to do things with us, and that's what relationship is, and reaching out to us in that way. And there are some really interesting things that can be brought up with that question theologically in thinking about, you know, how much does God need us, and how much how much does he just want us, you know? And how much does he allow himself to— I feel like God really opens himself up to some hurt and some pain and some things that we are scared to open ourselves up to for the sake of relationship and for the sake of loving as well. And I think a lot of that can be unpacked even within questions like that about what does God need with the starship. Well, I want people to read your book, and I want to remind everybody of the title so that we don't get it, so I don't forget about that, but it's Kevin C. Nice's book, The Gospel According to Star Trek: The Original Crew. I'm sorry. Yeah.

And the reason it's— well, actually, I should probably say that the reason it's The Original Crew is that it covers all the adventures of Kirk and company. So it's The Original Series, The Animated Series, all of the first 6 original crew films. And the 3 newest films, so up to and including Star Trek Beyond. So it's all that stuff.

Plus Ron Henry. Yeah, you pack a lot in there. And on just kind of a fun note, the lady who— I lead music at my church on Sundays, and the lady who plays piano for me often, she is such a William Shatner fan. And a couple of years ago, I was at a comic convention, and I found a framed small picture of William Shatner from back in his younger days. It was black and white. And I bought it for her and I gave it to her as a gift. And she kept that picture of William Shatner on the piano in our church, uh, every Sunday for the longest time, for at least about a year. And, uh, and she said, uh, she said, she, she said, is it okay if I keep it there? And I said, it's okay if you keep it there, uh, if you will remember each week that this is your reminder to pray for William Shatner. He said, because I don't know that he's I don't think he claims any sort of faith or religion. I said, but somebody has got to pray for him. Why not let it be you? So I think she kind of took that on as something because she's such a Trek fan and she's such a Shatner fan. And I think that's another way that we sort of overlap with the idea of faith. And we're reminded of things in the world that there are things that— why can't Star Trek be a reminder that we have a call to pray? Or to pray for other people and to figure out how to live in this world together. There are so many things that you cover in your book, and unfortunately we won't have time to get through everything, but I wondered if we could kind of COVID one more thing because it was my personal favorite part of your book, and I'm sure other people will read it and find other nuggets that they think are great. But when you write about the episode Bread and Circuses, I think that the whole thing you wrote about it was amazing, from the character of Flavius and Kirk and them encountering the words of the Sun and the wordplay sort of there with the S-U-N versus the S-O-N, you know, Sun. And I wonder if you could just talk to us a little bit about that episode and what really drew you into that and into the spiritual reflection of it, because there's a lot there. And if you feel like it's too much to, to get into, just kind of give us the Cliff Notes version of it, right? But I really enjoyed what you had to say there.

Well, it's an interesting episode because it's the only time— well, it's one of two times that Jesus is mentioned in Star Trek. The other time is— oh gosh, that Nazi episode in the original series. Not, uh, not mentioned by name. I think they refer to him as the Messiah or something like that. Okay. Um, but it's the only time that, you know, the name Christ is spoken in Star Trek. And, uh, and so to me that's a little significant. Yeah. Because the, you know, the whole setup of the episode has to do with these you know, these separatists, these freedom fighters, what have you, who are trying to live in peace in opposition to this Roman authority and this Roman culture that has been brought to this planet and everything. And people— the thing is, the idea is this modern Rome so that they have cars and television and guns and all these things. Which is a little weird because we only ever see a picture of a car in a magazine. You know, it never really looks much like a city, but it is. And there are some jokes about television and things in it, and they're, you know, they're fighting gladiatorial battles in a television studio, you know, instead of in an arena and all that. So people kind of get caught up, but most of the things that you read about this episode have to do with the television aspect. And, oh, this is a send-up of network TV, and it's like, Yeah, kinda, but that's really kind of a footnote, really. The rest of the story is really about how the soul of this Star Trek— the Starfleet officer has kind of been corrupted and how he's kind of been trapped here and, and pulled into this way of thinking so that he's part of the Roman Empire. And then how our people, how the crew is going to sort of counter that and how they're going to be the ones who don't submit, who break free. And the way they do it is through— well, it's through a lot of things, but one of the things that happens is the self-sacrifice, the intention of self-sacrifice, and the actual sacrifice of Flavius. I mean, all these people are always talking about being followers of the sun and children of the sun, and then there's that scene at the end of the episode where they're talking about their experience and Spock says, "I don't understand, you know, sun worship is considered barbaric," and all this sort of thing, which isn't actually true, but nonetheless, it's in the script. And Uhura says, "No, you've got it all wrong. They're not talking about the sun in the sky, they're talking about the Son of God." And Kirk says, "Caesar and Christ, they had them both. Wouldn't it be amazing to be there and see it all happen again?" And they talk about this philosophy of peace and love that Christ would bring, and that it would take down the Roman Empire and all that sort of thing. And it's really interesting, because there's a lot in the beginning of episode 2 about this being sort of a mirror Earth. And it's really interesting And to see that, and to see— I think a lot of people who read that and see that think of writers sort of sneaking that in under Roddenberry's nose. Yeah. You know, and sort of getting away with it, or putting it in there to sort of appease the censors or what have you. Hmm. But the truth of the matter is, Roddenberry was the head writer and the executive producer. He had final say on everything that went on screen. And he rewrote most of the episodes that went to air. He would rewrite, sometimes rewrite entire episodes or parts of them or what have you. And according to Marc Cushman, who did the really extensive These Are the Voyages 3-volume set of books, he says a lot of the more sentimental dialogue in the episode is actually Roddenberry's. Well, I think the most sentimental dialogue in the episode is probably that last scene. Now I can't say that Roddenberry wrote that scene, and I also can't say that Roddenberry would be extolling Christian religion. He absolutely would not. But he speaks frequently in interviews of a regard for Jesus as a great moral teacher and divine in a certain sense, though not in the sense that, that, um, uh, that Not in a special way, he believes everyone's divine, but he sees a great— he has a great affinity for the teachings of Jesus. And that's right there in that episode. And it's not an aberration. It's— well, it is an aberration in that it's a specific discussion of religion, a specific discussion of Christianity in Star Trek, in Roddenberry's hands, you know. So that was very unusual. But the fact that, of course, they're not discussing Christian religion, they're discussing Jesus, and they're discussing his early followers, and they're discussing, you know, when they come to the planet and they meet the followers of the Sun, they said, "Oh, we're, you know, we're men of peace ourselves," you know. And there's that identification between the Starfleet Federation philosophy our humanism that we hold on to in Star Trek, and the philosophy of these early Christians on this planet. And that is the thematic core, the whole arc of Flavius's character and how he helps the crew escape and win victory again, a substitutionary death, by sacrificing himself because he is a follower of Jesus specifically, you know, his planet's Jesus, whatever that means, you know. That's the core of the episode, you know. And that tag, that, that final, that final scene points directly to that, but everybody just skates right by it. Yeah, like it's not there, because that's uncomfortable, honestly, for your average Star Trek fan. That's uncomfortable, but it's the reality of the episode. Well, that's true.

True. Well, you know, I can't think of a more appropriate way of kind of closing down this conversation today. If you don't mind, in just a moment, after I let you have sort of your final word and tell people where they can find you online and anything you'd like to let them know in that direction. But when we're done with that, I'd love to just read a passage that you wrote from your book that has to do with that, because I think it's a good note to sort of end the episode on today. But before I read from your book, I wonder if you could just tell us maybe any of your web links or anything that you want people to know about specifically that you have happening right now.

Sure, yeah. I'm, well, if I talk about specific things, this will date the podcast, but I'm My name is Kevin C. Neese, and Neese is spelled N-E-E-C-E if you're just listening and you've not seen it in text. N-E-E-C-E. So you can go to kevincneese.com and you can catch up with me there. You can also find me on Facebook and Twitter, and you can also find me at Discover Country Project. If you just Google— one of the big things in this book is I explore Spock as a Christ figure, particularly in Star Trek II, III, and IV. We didn't even touch on that, but it's in here and it's really fun and fascinating. So if you even just Google Spock as a Christ figure, I'll be like the first 5 results. Adults. So you can find me. Nice, very good. And I love to, you know, one of my favorite things in the world to do is to go and speak. I've, you know, libraries and conventions and churches and universities and what have you. And so I'd love to get in touch with you and talk about coming to your area and talking to your people because that's what I get a lot of joy out of. Reasons that I do this.

Well, great. Well, thank you for being the guest today. And I do want to close out with reading a passage from your book, and it actually has to do with that bread and circuses passage. And you have just asked the question about Flavius, and Flavius has been this warrior. And the part that I'm going to read kind of tells the situation here, and it tells the story. And you say in the book, is he a fighter or a man of peace? In other words, when he is pressed Will he follow the words of the Son or not? And so the next part that I'm going to read is actually dialogue from the show. Flavius says, "For 7 years I was the most successful gladiator in this province." Kirk says, "Then you heard the word of the Son?" Flavius says, "Yes, the words of peace and freedom. It wasn't easy for me to believe. I was trained to fight, but the words, The words are true. Later, Flavius again refers to the words of the Son and to his difficulty believing them. "The message of the Son that all men are brothers was kept from us," he said. "Perhaps I am a fool to believe it. It does not often seem that a man must fight to live." But Kirk encourages him, "You go on believing it, Flavius." All men are brothers. Flavius then goes off to live and die as though those words are indeed true. "The words that I have spoken to you," Jesus said, "are spirit and are life." Like the words of the sun depicted in Bread and Circuses, his words both drew people to him and repelled them. When many of his disciples left because of what he taught, he asked the Twelve, "You don't want to go away 'To whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.' Ultimately though, Flavius chooses to follow the Son because the words are true. And that's just a taste of what you're going to get when you read this wonderful book by Kevin C. Nies. So as we say every week to our guests at the end of the show, Kevin C. Nies, thank you for being one of the voices in my head this week. Week.

Thank you for inviting me to your head, Rick. I appreciate it.

Thank you for joining me here this week on the Voices in My Head podcast. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com, follow me on Twitter @RickLeeJames, like my artist page on Facebook at facebook.com/rickleejames, and keep up to date on what I'm writing at my author page on amazon.com. Make sure to follow my calendar on the website, and if you would would like to have me come to your town to do a concert, a speaking engagement, or a book event, you can book me through my website by clicking on the link for Pare Booking Agency. That's P-A-R-E Booking. And finally, it would mean the world to me if you were to leave me a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast is on the internet. And now the benediction: May the God of peace, who raised Christ from the dead, strengthen your inner being for every good work. And may the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rest upon you and dwell within you this day and forevermore. Amen.