Blogging through STTNG: The Lonely Among Us

Data discovers Sherlock Holmes and Picard briefly visits a community of energy beings all while the Enterprise attempts to deliver two rival worlds' delegates to parliament in in one piece.

The most interesting thing about this episode is the energy being the ship picks up as it skirts a strange cloud thing in space. Part of the ship scoops through the mass and a collection of personalities become trapped in the ship somehow. They can't communicate with anyone, but they can possess people and computer systems on board. I think something like this happens a fair amount in the show. They don't get into it in this episode too much, but the idea that someday we'll evolve beyond our bodies comes up more than a few times. In fact, we just watched Justice the other night and in that episode some beings that have access to dimensions higher than our own.

It makes sense that even secularists and naturalists have to admit there is something supernatural about people. If you think about it, we practically are made of electricity now. Remember high school chemistry? How much stuff is in an atom? if the nucleus of an atom is the size of a golf ball, the first row of electrons buzzing around it would be 3 miles away! It is more true for me to say that there is nothing in an atom than for me to say there is something in an atom. We really do live in an amazing world.
I wonder if angels see us as insubstantial wisps of smoke; the true walking dead? We are ghosts restlessly roaming the earth till we decide if we're going to die into death or die into life. We always think of angels as having spirit bodies, but we don't really know what that means. I think to get a better understanding we can look at Jesus' resurrection body since he is our example and hope for resurrection. C. S. Lewis has a great analogy as to why Jesus could pass through the walls of that locked room and meet his disciples. He was simply able to pass through it like a stone passes through water. A stone can pass through the water not because it is is less solid than the water, but because it is more solid! The bodies we are promised are like that. I don't know about you, but I'm ready.

For we know that if our earthly house, [this] tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in [this] tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing [is] God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So [we are] always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. - 2Cr 5:1-8 NKJV

But now Christ is risen from the dead, [and] has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man [came] death, by Man also [came] the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those [who are] Christ's at His coming. Then [comes] the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy [that] will be destroyed [is] death. - 1Cr 15:20-26 NKJV