Michael S. Heiser - The World Turned Upside Down: Finding the Gospel in Stranger Things

THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

FINDING THE GOSPEL IN STRANGER THINGS

MICHAEL S. HEISER

The World Turned Upside Down: Finding the Gospel in Stranger Things

Copyright 2019 Michael S. Heiser

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TO THE MEMBERS OF MY TEENAGE PARTY:

SCOTT,

BRAD,

PAT,

TOM,

MARK,

AND RANDY

A nd Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ. And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd. And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.

ACTS 17:27

CONTENTS

T he first season of Stranger Things premiered on July 15, 2016. There was no fanfare, no breathless anticipation generated by advance hype. Like other projects, the show was a Netflix experiment. Eight episodes later, it had exploded into an international sensation.

Stranger Things transports viewers back to 1983, more than a lifetime ago for many of the shows most devoted fans. Ronald Reagan was the president of the United States. The Washington Redskins won the Super Bowl (yes, that actually happened). Return of the Jedi was the highest-grossing movie of the yearwhich meant that Star Wars was already six years old. The Mario Bros. Nintendo arcade game debuted. Winona Ryder, the actress who plays Joyce Byers in Stranger Things, was twelve.

Stranger Things is set in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana. Its a quintessential small town: Everyone knows everyone else and wants to know their business. Nothing really bad ever happens; to quote the towns chief of police, Jim Hopper, the worst that had happened since he took over was when an owl attacked Eleanor Gillespies head because it thought that her hair was a nest. But this town also harbors secrets, and Stranger Things catapults its audience into one that would shake the entire town for years to come.

The first episodeand in many respects the entire showrevolves around the unexpected, eerie disappearance of Will Byers, Joyces youngest son. As panic takes hold in the hearts of Wills family (his mother and his brother, Jonathan) and his three best friends (Mike Wheeler, Dustin Henderson, and Lucas Sinclair), an otherworldly evila grotesque creature Wills friends nickname the Demogorgoninfiltrates the town. Not coincidentally, an equally sinister human threat emerges in tandem with the Demogorgon. Blame for the latters appearance can be laid at the feet of a cabal of government operatives led by amoral scientist Dr. Martin Brenner, headquartered at Hawkins National Laboratory.

At first, things move along in all the familiar rhythms of life. As news of Wills disappearance circulates, people are sure the boy will be found. There are bullies to deal with at the middle school that Will and his friends attend. Nancy Wheelerthe sister of Wills friend, Mikeplots to deceive her parents for some unchaperoned time with her new boyfriend, Steve Harrington, the epic party boy at Hawkins High School. Nancy dismisses the concerns of her best friend, Barb Holland, who winds up in the wrong place at the wrong time because of Nancy and Steve. But the settled peace of the oblivious, sleepy town soon dissipates as the search for Will becomes a community project. The search is a tragic failure, save in one respect: it yields the discovery of peculiar girl with a shaved head who, when asked her name, points to the tattoo on her arm: 011. The boys quickly discover that theres more to her than a hesitancy to speak.

Eleven (or El for short) emerges as the central character of the series. As viewers suspect from the outset, she isnt your run-of-the-mill preteen girl. Her presence and her powers will forever alter the lives of those who know her. She is the key to understanding the real purpose of Hawkins National Laboratory, ostensibly run by the Energy Department for the mundane purpose of supplying the town with electricity. While the people of Hawkins might wonder why a power plant needs so much security, no one has any idea of what has transpired behind its gates and walls. But Eleven knows. Throughout the series she will save the rest of the characters tied to Will and his family from the beast and the bad men who are desperate to manage their mistake and maintain the secrecy of their experiments.

For me, Stranger Things is the perfect marriage of my interest in all things paranormal and the memory of my own teenage years along with the cast of characters among whom that life was lived. The combination calls to remembrance both questions I wondered about during those years and truths I was shown by the providence of God in answer. My hope is that this book will stimulate readers to discern what God really wants for them and how the good news of the gospel can be found as we reflect on the insightful, artful storytelling of Stranger Things.

L et me be honest. This book isnt propelled by any academic urge. Im not a media critic. I just love Stranger Things. Before its creation I was fond of referring to The X-Files as the television event of my lifetime. Ive been forced to change my thinking. I now say that The X-Files was the television event of my adulthood; Stranger Things has become the television event of my childhood.

Thats anachronistic, of course. Stranger Things debuted well after The X-Files, and its been a long time since I was a kid. But thats my point. Stranger Things takes me back to my childhood. The nostalgia that the show so skillfully cultivates seduces fans of the show who are my age. I see myself and my gang of friends in the characters. I relive the nerdy things we did (my middle- and high-school years were the seventies and eighties). My own kids talk about Stranger Things as though it was part of their own fondly remembered past. Thats fine with me. They could be Googling worse things than what life was like in the 80s.

A lot about the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, and its middle school reminds me of growing up. When I watch the show I can see old neighborhoods and the store where we bought baseball cards, the kind that came with chewing gum that was essentially sliced granite. I relive the bike rides to school and my friends houses. I can pick out middle-school friends and acquaintancesnerds, jocks, and the troubled bullies who spent most of their time in detention. Our school had an AV club. Most of the guys I hung out with had single parents. And I remember just about all of the movies that the series famously repurposes in weaving its earthy-but-ethereal tale of, well, the strange things going on in town.