Doctor Who changed my life
Mum? What do I do every day? Get up, catch the bus, go to work, come back home, eat chips and go to bed. Is that it?
You either love it or hate it! As much true of BBC Television’s Doctor Who as it’s true of Science Fiction as a whole. Yet the Doctor has excited the interest of millions and, in the UK, he has given us back Saturday family TV. And for those who meet him in the series, he changes their lives.
We begin with Rose Tyler, who describes herself as someone with no A
levels, no job, no future. (Her workplace has just been blown up.) Happy
as she seems, it’s clear that something is missing. - And, when the doctor engages with her again, we get a feel for what is missing—and not just for Rose but for all of us! For the doctor’s summary of the human race is this, “All we do is eat chips, go to bed and watch telly.” Life is mundane, and yet Rose, at this point, is blissfully unaware of anything more.
- That all changes by the end of the first series. Rose has grown up and blossomed in all sorts of ways. Now she quizzes her Mum with a new perspective, “What do I do every day, Mum? What do I do? Get up, catch the bus, go to work, come back home, eat chips and go to bed. Is that it?”
- Is that it? Is that all there is to life? Rose knows it isn’t—not now that she has met the Doctor. Life with him is, to use her words, “a better life.”
- “I don’t mean all the travelling, and seeing aliens and spaceships and things—that don’t matter. The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life . . . You don’t just give up, you don’t just let things happen. You make a stand, you say ‘no’, you’ve got guts to do what’s right when everyone else runs away.
The Doctor has changed her life! She’s even seen that, “One day it will all be gone, even the sky.” An entirely new perspective has given life a whole new meaning and purpose. The Doctor brought that.
- People either love Christianity or hate it. But in spite of that, most of us appreciate Jesus Christ. We might not like what churches do, but Jesus, generally speaking, is esteemed around the world. But have we ever seen the perspective that Jesus brings? Have we ever ‘watched’ and listened to him enough to begin to see the world through his eyes. A world that one day will be gone!
- For Jesus, well listen to Einstein, “No man can read the gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word.” Encountering Jesus changed the mundane life of his followers enormously. Jesus’ influenced has reshaped our world. For many, encountering Jesus in the pages of the Bible had led to “a better life.”
