God Issues Today: "Jetpacks and the Soul"

Author, educator and commentator Dr. James Denison has been pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas since June, 1998. Prior to that, he was pastor at churches in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as Midland (at First Baptist) and Mansfield, Texas.

If necessity is the mother of invention (said Plato in The Republic), perseverance must run a close second. The stories of tireless inventors who slave for years over new ideas are legend. Some are history-making, like airplanes and automobiles. Some are less so, like the tie my mother once gave me for Christmas which looked like it was made from wood. Some inventors won't give up but should, like the jetpack enthusiasts profiled in today's Wall Street Journal. The headline has it right, calling their invention "an idea whose time has never come, but won't go away."

You're familiar with the concept—Buck Rogers straps a contraption on his back and flies away to save the day. Except that they work best in comic books and movies, places where reality is seldom a concern. Imagine leaving the earth with 1,300-degree steam shooting inches from your legs while wondering what you'll do when the pack runs out of fuel in 30 seconds. Such is the lot of your average jet-pack enthusiast.

One man profiled in the article has spent $50,000 on his jetpack; another has blown out his knees four times; yet another flipped while 35 feet in the air and shattered his shoulder. The typical jetpack uses a kind of hydrogen peroxide which creates a jet of steam powerful enough to lift a man in the air while burning him to a crisp. A typical pack holds about 10 gallons of fuel, enough for half a minute of flight. That's not enough time to go anywhere that matters, but it is plenty of time to get yourself maimed or killed.

Undeterred, one man makes and sells jetpacks for $90,000, although he says the price will go up because he hasn't yet completed any sales and needs to cover his costs. He refuses to fly without a tether because, he says, it is "dangerous." He is writing a book to teach us how to build and fly our own packs. But his guide will include a warning that the book "is not intended to encourage anyone to try to build one." That's inspiring.

Most of us have a jetpack somewhere in our lives, I think, a hole we won't quit digging. I still think I'll run in a marathon someday, though my creaky knees laugh at me whenever I get serious about trying. I want to learn to play the piano before I die, but at this rate I'd better live a couple of centuries.

Spiritually, most of us have sins in our past which inflict shame in the present. We try to work off our guilt by self-inflicted penance. Our shame won't get us far off the ground, but we don't give up. Why not? How can we be free from the guilt that plagues us? Let's continue tomorrow.