THIS month sees the 83rd birthday of the Canadian author, Margaret Atwood, famed for her dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, (also a series on Netflix). Dystopian tales seem popular now in film and print – The Hunger Games, Fahrenheit 451, 28 Days Later, and hundreds more.

Perhaps they are popular because watching a disastrous and possibly apocalyptic world makes us feel better about ourselves. That or we appreciate our liberties more when we watch what might happen if they are removed. Perhaps as viewers or readers, we experience indignation over a broken world and so root for the hero all the more – I’m pretty sure that’s true in The Hunger Games for example.

I wonder whether part of the appeal of dystopia is that we can view a broken world from a safe vantage point. We may even reflect on our hypothetical role within it without the risk of this becoming real – which district would we choose to live in if you were in the Hunger Games? Would we be a hero or simply live a shortened life in peace?

There is something very Christian about dystopia: a sense that the world has gone wrong somehow, that things are not as they should be, and very often there is a hero who somehow brings about a change to the entire world, often through sacrifice or at least the willingness to become a sacrifice.

Of course, sadly, none of us lives in a utopia. For all of us, our world isn’t perfect and we are forced to admit that it is broken and fractured, perhaps in ways that we even contribute towards ourselves. We look for that hero who will offer themselves to bring change, but we are always disappointed. It seems that even our leaders cannot escape being just as broken as the rest of us.

Perhaps the power of dystopias is that they point us to a hero we cannot see but who we hope for. For Christians, the good news is that the hero, Jesus, has already come, sacrificed himself and set in motion a new world order. Whilst still living in a flawed world, we look forward to a renewed world rather than just the next dystopian slump.

Watching dystopian films reminds me of just how amazing that hero must be, that one person from the backwater of ‘District Judea,’ can come and save the world; bringing hope, release from brokenness, and raising our eyes to imagine a new horizon and a new way of being.