Time is running out in Netflix’s 3 Body Problem.
An alien race, the San-Ti, broadcasts that they are going to arrive on Earth in 400 years. Before they get here, they intend to “kill” science, stopping humanity from developing the technology to wipe them out.
This otherworldly threat precipitates a lot of the motion within the eight-episode TV series, adapted from Chinese writer Liu Cixin’s popular book trilogy, Remembrance of Earth’s Past . The show focuses on a gaggle of Oxford scientists who try valiantly to thwart the San-Ti’s devious plan. That includes theoretical physicist Jin Cheng (Jess Hong), who comes up with an outlandish scheme to intercept the San-Ti fleet using the principles of nuclear thermal propulsion.
The characters in 3 Body Problem are desperate to avoid wasting themselves from impending doom through mental innovation and technological prowess. Their frantic race to avoid wasting humanity brings a standard query to the fore: What are we doing with the time we’ve left?
Our relationship with time is fraught. Time imposes demands and restrictions. Every day, there are deadlines to fulfill, deals to amass, and dinners to cook. There isn’t “enough” time to pursue hobbies or dreams.
Compounding these pressures is our culture’s obsession with turning back the clock. Creams and serums tout the erasure of wrinkles and age spots in three to 6 months. Researchers study ways to increase our life span; some are even striving to reduce one’s biological age.
As we seek to slow time down, we bemoan the speed at which it passes. Vacations feel far too short. Children grow up too fast. Our family members pass away ahead of we expect. We turn to “slow living” within the hopes of curbing our impulse toward productivity and self-optimization. But this initiative, with its emphasis on aesthetic morning routines and meandering strolls, could also be overly idealistic, privileging those that can afford to in the reduction of on work responsibilities and adopt a more leisurely lifestyle.
In 3 Body Problem, time’s scarcity makes characters intrepid and impressive; they get their priorities straight. “How will you be remembered?” Ye Wenjie (Rosalind Chao), the Chinese astrophysicist who invites the San-Ti to invade earth because she thinks humanity can’t save itself, asks Jin. “As someone who fought back,” Jin replies. Meanwhile, scientist Auggie Salazar (Eiza González) decides to release her nanofiber technology to the world because “it may possibly make life higher for the individuals who need it most. … It should belong to everybody.”
But living with the specter of impending doom isn’t sustainable. Seeing time as a scarce resource makes us desperate; minutes and hours slip through our fingers. Even the perfect moments of affection and connection are fleeting.
This anxiety-inducing perception of time as finite isn’t the one problem. How we understand the status of human beings can even cause us to take into consideration time wrongly. At first, the San-Ti are interested by our kind. But eventually, they turn into contemptuous, blasting their judgment onto digital devices and billboards around the globe: “You are bugs.”
If bugs are all we’re, then there’s no hope for the time we’ve left. However brave, clever, or loving, we’re ultimately left defeated, bereft of any form of agency. “They are coming,” Ye declares. No matter what, the aliens will arrive to destroy the world.
In 3 Body Problem, time means all the pieces and nothing to a people who aren’t value saving. In this eschatology of annihilation, there’s no possibility for change, for goodness to win over evil. Everyone’s simply muddling through, making do with what they’ve, and waiting for death.
For a individuals with hope, nonetheless, time isn’t limited but abundant, overflowing into all of eternity. Time isn’t inconsequential but sacred, moving toward the approaching of Jesus. Time isn’t meaningless but meaningful.
An eschatology of redemption, which defines life for the Christian, invites us to rigorously consider the passage of time. We may be transformed into Christlikeness at the same time as we’re like a mist that appears for slightly while and vanishes (James 4:14). Our days are numbered but significant.
While a few of the characters in 3 Body Problem reply to their limited time with ambition or experiments, others select relationship. Will Downing (Alex Sharp), a physics teacher, has recently learned that he has only months to live, even other than the aliens. (He has stage IV pancreatic cancer.) As a part of physicist Jin’s project, he agrees to send his cryogenically frozen brain into outer space, hoping that the aliens will rebuild him. Will doesn’t make this sacrifice to avoid wasting humankind. He makes it because he secretly loves Jin.
I’m not condoning Will’s decision to finish his life (on earth, no less than; on this sci-fi universe, he lives on in space as a “floating brain”). But his alternative to provide himself up for Jin demonstrates that love is the best use of our limited days.
Love doesn’t make time stop or slow it down. But love does enlarge our experience of the inexorable passing of days. It turns our attention from the temporal to the everlasting. It makes the smallest moments matter—and it keeps the grand sweep of time in view.
Love is what brings Christ, our Savior, to the cross. His love traverses past, present, and future, binding believers across history together because the people of God (1 Pet. 2:9–10), called to live in ways which are pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work, and growing in knowledge of him (Col. 1:10).
As people shaped by Christ’s self-sacrificial love, we are able to’t give in to panicked, fatalistic despair in regards to the days, weeks, or years we’ve left on this planet, whether we fear an alien apocalypse, a climate disaster, or just growing old. We don’t need to avoid wasting ourselves, just like the characters in 3 Body Problem.
Instead, we are able to let love take its time, knowing that it won’t run out for those of us who keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the writer and perfecter of our faith (Heb. 12:2). We reveal this love through small, peculiar actions that say, I’m here. I’m with you. You will not be alone. And, perhaps, this too: You will not be a bug.
What does this appear like in practice? Canadian writer Karen Stiller recounts observing an elderly parishioner walking to receive Communion without being rushed, members of the congregation waiting patiently behind her. “There was the church beautiful in its slower, patient gait for love’s sake alone,” she observed.
“The church can offer this rare gift to its own beloved and beleaguered people, but additionally to whomever we meet and have the privilege of walking beside and behind for Jesus’ sake.”
The brevity of our lives is neither an issue to resolve nor an unavoidable fate we face with resignation. As we confront the wasting away of our bodies, the memories that glint just out of reach, we are able to decide to love as Will did—fiercely and unwaveringly. We can decide to decelerate, not as a “lifestyle alternative” or in denial of death but intentionally, hopefully. We can trust that our time is in our Redeemer’s hands, declaring along the way in which that, eventually, all the pieces can be made recent (Rev. 21:5).
Isabel Ong is the Associate Editor, Asia for Christianity Today.
