GROUNDHOG DAY MEETS HALO
What if tomorrow never comes?
“Edge of Tomorrow” is one of my favorite science fiction movies. It is well acted, well crafted, and the script is genius.
In the near future, mankind is losing a war against creepy alien creatures called Mimics. The human soldiers are enhanced by heavily armed mechanized suits to battle these monsters. Tom Cruise dies while simultaneously getting some strange alien funk on him and immediately wakes up on the morning of the same day. The day has been reset. He finds himself reliving the same day, and the same battles, over and over. I usually describe the film as Groundhog Day meets Halo.
Every day he dies in some gruesome manner, only to find he must start the dreadful day over while trying to understand what is happening to him. He is trying to make it to tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes. The posters for the movie have the tagline “Live. Die. Repeat.” We are not told how many times he must do this, but by the end of the movie you realize he must have died hundreds, if not thousands of days.
The Emily Blunt character knows what is happening to him because the same thing happened to her. She takes him under her wing and teaches him how to fight the enemy. In one pivotal scene she explains to him that he is the one resetting the day. He asks, “How do I control it?” her answer is simple and hard, “You have to die, every day, until the enemy is destroyed.”
That, in a nutshell, is the Christian life. You have to die every day until the enemy is destroyed. But the enemy is not a hideous space alien, it is our own corrupted desires, and the dark spiritual forces that inspire them. Lust, greed, envy, selfishness, self-pity, self-absorption: these all tear at us every day, wanting to consume us. The only way to wage war against them is to die, every day. To say “No” to self.
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”
It means to die every day to the petty little dictator that dwells in my soul and demands to be fed, to be adored, to be catered to at the world’s expense. It means crucifying me and putting others first. It means living to serve, not to be served. It means giving, not taking.
In the movie the last name of the protagonist is Cage because he is trapped in the same endless day. But is he trapped? Each time he dies and rises he remembers everything from the day before. He begins to learn, and he becomes smarter and stronger. The enemy begins to fear him.
Imagine if you could repeat the same day endlessly, even the worst day, until you got it right. Until you have squeezed every bit of wisdom and strength out of it. Until you learn that it is only by your weakness, your very ability to die, that you will gain the victory. Imagine fighting “the long defeat” each day until you truly become the selfless warrior that we all dream ourselves to be.
We are always living on the edge of tomorrow in this place, but, because of Christ, each day is a reset. A clean slate, but we can remember all the lessons that went before. We need to face this daily death with confidence and joy. It will not last. One day tomorrow will actually arrive, and there will be no more enemy.
And there will be no more death.
“For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”