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At the Movies: 2040

Damon Gameau plants a tree with his family in the film “2040.” Photo courtesy of Good Things Productions

Humans love to imagine what the future will be like. We’re especially fond of cataclysmic events, where nature rears her angry head and bucks the people of the planet off her back, swallowing them in flood, lava, or freezing temperatures. 

In movies like The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 (two of our favorite natural disaster films), and Dante’s Peak, there’s usually a team of powerful people who refuse to listen to someone who sounds the warning bell until it’s too late.

But what if the future we imagine for ourselves begins today, uses the resources and innovations that already exist, and bypasses all of that bull-headed stubbornness, to create a future we actually want for our kids, instead of one we want to avoid?

2040

The inspiring, entertaining, and joyful documentary, 2040, imagines what the world of tomorrow could look like for director Damon Gameau’s daughter, Velvet, who was just 4 years old when the film was produced in 2019. 

Like many of us, Gameau is concerned about what kind of world his daughter will inherit. The future forecast seems grim; reporting from five years ago, Gameau recounts the rise of sea levels and severe weather, soil depletion and energy shortages, and more. These issues were already a reality then and seem to be an even greater reality now.

Instead of taking a posture of despair, however, Gameau puts a different spin on his picture of the future. What would happen, Gameau asks, if all we did was embrace the best technologies that are already available to us to make a better, greener, cleaner world?

Leaving his home in Australia, Gameau travels the globe, visiting a remote village in Bangladesh that is equipped with a solar micro-grid. He connects with leaders developing electric vehicles and shared transit systems. He meets farmers who have embraced regenerative agriculture practices. He sails over kelp forests that are cleaning the ocean and drawing down carbon. He talks to children around the world to hear their hopes for their future.

Through Gameau’s lenses, Velvet’s future—and ours—looks hopeful and bright.

Finding the Love: Faithifying Your Viewing

If you’re like me, born before the year 2000 and still believing that 1980 was just a couple years ago, the year 2040 feels light years away, almost impossible to imagine. Didn’t we just survive the Y2K crisis?! How come my favorite songs are on the Golden Oldies station?! 

But 2040 isn’t really that far away, just 16 years from now. I’m in my forties; 16 years ago, my husband and I were dealing with two children under the age of 2. Now, one is in college, getting ready to vote in her first presidential election. 

As futuristic as 2040 feels to me today, I couldn’t imagine today any better 16 years ago, which is why Gameau’s work is so important. Proverbs says that without vision, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18). We have to be able to envision a future that is hopeful in order to have a target to move toward.

In the Gospel stories, Jesus presents a view of the kingdom of God that we like to call “now, and not yet.” The kingdom of heaven is here already, believe it or not; we can access the shalom, or a sense of wholeness and completeness that brings inward peace, right now. Jesus told his followers, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). The justice, righteousness, and everlasting love of God is available and accessible to all, right now, and that is the fabric of the kingdom.

But it is of course also “not yet.” The world is not in a state of shalom, even if there are hands, hearts, and minds who experience it. As the people of God united in that peaceable kingdom of “now,” we’re called to keep working toward the future fruition of wholeness for the world, when the kingdom of heaven can be made evident for all God’s creatures.

The Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount are among Jesus’ most famous words. They provide the vision for what the kingdom of heaven could be and how we can get there collectively. Those revolutionary words were spoken into a vision over 2,000 years ago, and still living in the kingdom of not-yet. 

But we’re getting there.

Because of advances in healthcare, sanitation, and nutrition, people are living longer than ever before. Because of technological innovations, people can access information and communicate in ways that are unprecedented. Extreme poverty rates have significantly declined in the past few decades. More people have access to education than ever before. Statistically, the world is less violent now than in the past—with fewer wars, homicides, and violent conflicts between nations. 

Advances in technology just in the last 10 years have made significant contributions to the welfare of people around the globe, from mRNA vaccine technology that has revolutionized public health and saved millions of lives to renewable energy advancements that have become more efficient and affordable. Universal access to mobile banking has given financial access to people who couldn’t bank before, lifting many people out of poverty. Regenerative agricultural practices have improved farming practices around the globe. 

The vision of 2040 really isn’t that far away. We’re getting there, and we can keep marching toward the kingdom of heaven, here and now, rooted in the everlasting love of God that compels us to love our neighbors and restore our world.

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