Bioshock, part one.

I know, I know, this game has been done to death, but hold on, there's still some things to say.

If you are well aware, you'd know that I've been working through Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged' for quite some time.  It is exactly what you think it is - essentially a long tale all about how the ambitious ought to be encouraged in their ambition, because everything in civilization ultimately rests on it.

Knowing this is ultimately important for the rest of the Bioshock story, as it tells a tale of a world in which all the restrictions are removed.  Bioshock is a game by Ken Levine's Irrational Studios, released in 2007. It tells a story of a world in which the scientist is not restricted by morality, in which the artist is not restricted by the censor, in which the great is not constrained by the small.  In other words, according to secondary antagonist Andrew Ryan, it is rapture.

And here's where the story really starts.  You are an unknown, essentially silent protagonist, whose airplane just happens to crash in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, conveniently right next to a lighthouse in the middle of nowhere.  You are, ostensibly, the only survivor, and floating in the waters as the wreckage of the plane sinks around you, your only choice is to swim towards the lighthouse, whose door is open, and where the music of Bobby Darrin's 'beyond the sea' greets you.

What else greets you?  The massive face of a bust of Andrew Ryan, surrounded by his motto

No Gods.  No Kings.  Only Man.

When Andrew Ryan narrates your descent into the briny depths, he asks who owns the sweat of a man's brow?  The man in Washington says it belongs to the poor.  The man in the Vatican says it belongs to God.  The man in the Kremlin says it belongs to everyone.

As the bathysphere you are in descends, you look out over the sprawling city of the ocean floor, and you see fish, and a massive whale, and a giant squid swimming by.  And you realize that this is going to be where all the action happens.  Under the sea.

For a game underwater, there is no swimming gameplay.  At all.  It's all walking and using bathyspheres.  But hold on, because the underwater setting exists primarily as an interesting way to maroon the cast beyond the reach of anyone else.  Rapture has to be able to exist outside the rest of the world in order for it to remain a realistic project, but also have plenty of the fantastic attached to it.  And as you walk through Rapture, something strange crops up before almost anything else in the entire story.  Everything is for sale.

When I say everything is for sale, I mean everything.  All things in this world are for sale, and are closely monitored. There is no charity here, no welfare, no public works.  If you want something, you will be paying for it.  Food, drink, even the air itself is for sale.  Nothing is free.  Right after you get into the first bathysphere, before Ryan's speech, you see an ad for a plasmid, one of the many things in this world that are for sale.

So in a world that is for sale, in which you can buy anything you want, in which there is no censorship, and there are no restrictions, how could there possibly be any contraband?  But there is contraband.  There's always contraband.

If you make it far enough into the game to stumble across the camps that smugglers have left behind in the bowels of Rapture, you'll find that there are smuggled crucifixes and smuggled Bibles in crates that are definitely listed as complete contraband, and are excessively illegal in Rapture.



As you move through the world that Ryan has created under the sea, you realize that his world hinges on there being no censorship except censorship of ideas he doesn't want.  Ideas of altruism and faith are quashed right away, and in Ryan's world cannot be allowed to spread, given that everything depends on self-interest.  If enough people start demanding charity and hands-on government, then his entire city washes away before his eyes.

All this speaks to the incredibly counter-cultural nature of the Bible, and of the faith that it embodies.  Jesus famously said to his disciples who were looking on 'give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and give unto God what is God's' and the people marveled at his teaching.  He was being put into a situation in which the Hebrews who were there were asking him if it was lawful to pay taxes, and Jesus turned the question on its head.  For Jesus, his kingdom was not of this world, and because it was not of this world, then his kingdom, and his word, could remain staunchly and stubbornly opposed to the system that existed all around it.  The message of Jesus is always going to be critical of those in power.  I know this, because the message of Jesus is always critical of us.  There isn't a one of us who can look at him or herself with confidence when reading through the words of Jesus. If you have read the words of Christ, and still feel confident about the great job you're doing, then go get another translation, and read it again, because you've been reading it wrong.  Especially read the part that says that there is none righteous, not even one. (Romans 3:10).  And yes, that does apply to you.

So why does the church seem to march lockstep with Caesar?  Good question.  Dorothy Sayers said at one point that the church has marched in lockstep with Caesar because the church believed that they were on the same side, which Caesar smugly knew that the church was to be used as long as it was useful, then discarded when it was not.  And Caesar depends, fully, on people knowing almost nothing about the God whom they extol, and knowing nothing of his words.  They are happy to continue in mute silence and acceptance of a watered down Gospel that no longer has the power to shock or to even surprise.  And when we present this Jesus, confirming us in our sins, condoning our misdeeds, shrugging at our terrible attitudes both as a society and as people, then we end up

With the best of intentions showing the world the typical Christian

in the likeness of a crashing and rather ill-natured bore - 

And this in the name of one who assuredly never bored a soul

in these thirty-three years during which he passed through the 

world like a flame.

Dorothy Sayers, 'the Dogma is the Drama'

But when you're in a world in which everything is for sale, in which charity is not only discouraged, but outright forbidden, if you're living in a world in which owning a Bible is a death sentence in and of itself, you begin to realize that you're not dealing with small issues anymore.  Maybe the Bible that we all think is so tired and worn out, maybe the Jesus that we've neutered so much by now as to be gutless actually has some things to say.

The greatest thing that Jesus of Nazareth says to those who are looking on, to those who are there to hear him speak and to marvel at his teaching, is when he overturns the tables in the Temple, and drives the animals out with knotted cords, and sets up court there, and he says to anyone who is listening

You will not turn my father's house into a den of theives.

John 2:16

In other words, this is the one thing in all of creation that isn't for sale.  There's no price tag on it.  This is why Andrew Ryan feared it so much, because the very idea, whispered through Rapture, was enough to overturn his whole organization much faster than the splicers ever could.  This is the one thing in all of creation that isn't for sale.  You can't buy it, you can't sell it, and more importantly, you can't own it.  Jesus isn't for sale.  And his followers encouraged things not to be for sale either.

In a world in which everything is for sale, where you pay for the air you breathe and the water you drink, the words of Jesus had immense power, power enough to shake what Rapture was built on.  When Jesus feeds the four thousand, when he makes the blind to see, when he talks about giving to anyone who would ask, he is setting up a great leveling, that Ayn Rand, Andrew Ryan, and everyone else would have been uneasy about.  In a sense, I'd like to tie it into, for the purposes of continuing the discussion, the words of Isaiah 55, which run counter to not only Ryan's Rapture, but also to our entire system of economy, of buying and selling, which says this:

Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters

and you who have no money, come, buy and eat.

Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor 

for that which does no satisfy? 

Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,

and delight yourself in rich food.

Isaiah 55:1-2

Does this seem like an insult to Andrew Ryan or Ayn Rand?  It should.  It is exactly against what he has in mind for his utopia. And his view of Utopia is one in which we will all be serving our own interests, and then society will move forward.  And to Ryan, this makes sense.  However, the demands of the Lord for charity, for justice, for goodness and mercy will stand in the way of that.  And there is no possible way that this will make sense to a man like Ryan, as in his place of comfort, he views the poor as parasites.  But, in Isaiah, we have to remember that 'My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so too are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.'  What Jesus wants, what he is instituting, is nothing short of equality, equality for everyone.  And if you believe that one group of people, those who are brilliant, those who are advanced, those who are not parasites or moochers, those who excel are better than everyone else, morally or ethically, then Paul has some words for you.  Some words about the equality found in Christ.

'As many of you were baptized into Christ

have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is no longer

Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free,

there is no longer male or female.  All of you are one in 

Christ Jesus.'

Galatians 3:27-28

Whew.  That's a wall of text.  Tune in next time and we'll discuss free will in Bioshock, which, unlike today, I will put a massive spoiler warning on.  If you haven't played Bioshock yet, you probably ought to.  It's amazing.