What does it mean to be human?

I watched "Surrogates" last night. Bruce Willis' latest flick, while maybe not the best movie of the season, has some great action scenes-- and poses some surprisingly insightful questions about what it means to be human.

In a world where humans never leave their homes, and interact only through robotic surrogate bodies (which have been upgraded from their human counterparts in looks and physical abilities), what is the uniquely human experience?

The answers given in the film for that question might seem predictable-- love between spouses, shared grief over the loss of a child. But it's the film's exploration of suffering and death in connection to the human experience that most intrigued me.

Robots don't suffer-- in the movie, there's a great scene where Bruce Willis' surrogate continues pursuing a criminal even after his own arm has been ripped off, and his abdomen is a tangled mess of wires and dripping hydraulic fluid. They don't die-- their operators simply unplug and walk away, leaving their surrogates where they stand, frozen like so many mannequins.

But humans do suffer. Humans do die. And in the film, it's not even questioned why-- it just is a fact of human existence. And it's a good thing.

In the film, there's no redemption from the suffering, except in the shared experience of that suffering with other humans. Bruce Willis' character discovers this as he reconnects with his wife, in the flesh and not through their surrogates.

As a follower of Christ, I know a different redemption-- one that does come through suffering. Not my own suffering, born from my own sin and the brokenness of a sinful world. No. My redemption-- the redemption of the whole entire creation-- comes through the suffering of Jesus Christ upon the cross. His suffering and death is what matters, because it takes the eternal sting out of my own.

There are a couple more themes in Surrogates that I want to process-- such as the "creator" who begins to regret his "creation" and the ethics of surrogate life. There's a big assumption in the film that having surrogates would somehow make the world a safer, less violent place which I completely disagree with.

There's a show somewhere in all of that-- check back later, when I've had a bit more coffee and time to process.