A little lower than the aliens

What is the message of the hugely successful movie Independence Day? On the surface, it seems to be, "man is back." Toward the end, there's an audience-pleasing scene in which a comedic character defiantly flies at an alien ship crying out that he's back. He's referring to his own return after an abduction and to the inevitable triumph of the good guys (predicted by the movie's title), but he could also be referring to the American psyche.

Recent sci-fi movies have not been optimistic about America or Americans. We've gone from seeing "little green men" after World War II to seeing monsters during the Cold War. We could still handle them, but that very attitude made us seem too violent. Aliens began to show up as big-eyed innocents whom we would strike without thinking. Last Halloween, TV even did an updated version of H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds in which we attack the poor misunderstood visitors and end up getting what we deserve.

Independence Day, however, says, "We're back." We're not going to be degraded anymore and told that everything is our fault and that we are evil. We're going back to the way things used to be.

We're the good guys.Aliens are the bad guys.

They are like the old British Empire in 1776, outnumbering us but unable to beat us. More than that, they are like Nazis from outer space. They are ugly, uncompromising, violent, and evil. When the U.S. president tries for a truce, asking, "What do you expect from us?" the answer he gets is that they expect us "to die."

This evil is trying to annihilate us just so it can have our space. It has plundered other planets, defiled the environments, pushed living things out of its way just so its advanced technology can survive.

Hey, wait a minute. Isn't this what environmentalists say we're doing to the animals? Doesn't hero-scientist Jeff Goldblum repeatedly call on his colleagues to recycle to save the planet? One of the movie's real messages is that we are on the road to becoming the usurping evil. A little Golden Rule is in order: If we don't want to end up on the endangered species list, then we should keep other creatures off the list.

If abuse of the environment is the great evil, then evil isn't what it used to be. But it's the best we can do in a postmodern universe without God.

Another implied message of Independence Day is there is no God. Aliens have sent 15-mile-long space ships to perch over major cities of the world-yet no one thinks to pray. In the 1950s movie When Worlds Collide, danger brought the nations of the earth to their knees, but in this movie the only character who thinks about God as a possible help is a non-practicing Jew. When he finally prays, it is in a humorous scene where tolerant inclusiveness is more the point than rescue.

Lest we think prayer is what undergirds the final victory, the movie's ending deliberately has man, not God, wiping out the aliens. H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds, written in 1898, suggested that God's providential protection is built into his creation. Last Halloween's TV version was pessimistic.

Independence Day is humanistically optimistic, celebrating the ability of human beings to use creativity to protect themselves and thereby declare an independence day from God.

Ironically, this elevation of man only lowers him. The U.S. president sums up our predicament. He invokes imagery of the original July 4 to rally us against the foe, but then says we are not fighting for some high ideals this time. We're fighting just for survival. What he doesn't mention is that the aliens are fighting for the very same reason. That's why the movie has to be fun. In a Godless universe, we have lost the standard by which to judge evil and lose the right to moral outrage. If man is back in such a world, it is as king of the beasts, not lord of the creation.

Mr. Drake is a minister in Asheville, North Carolina.