Frankenstein, Faith, And The Monster Within

A stitched body asks for love, and a brilliant maker runs. That image from Frankenstein has haunted generations for a reason—because it’s not just a gothic scene, it’s a blueprint for what happens when progress outruns care. We take Mary Shelley’s enduring question—what do we owe the life we create—and bring it into our world of always-on internet and fast-moving AI, where knowledge feels omniscient and power scales at the speed of code.

Guided by Guillermo del Toro’s reimagining, we look through the creature’s eyes and find a startling moral reversal: the supposed monster becomes the most human presence on screen. That pivot reframes our own moment. When platforms shape our attention, algorithms influence justice and opportunity, and models predict our choices, creators aren’t just inventors—they are stewards. We talk about responsibility that looks like love in practice: guardrails, consent, transparency, and a willingness to slow down when harm appears. We connect these themes to the ancient caution against playing God, not to shut innovation down, but to root it in empathy and humility.

The turning point in del Toro’s story—where the creature forgives the doctor—lands like a roadmap for repair. Destruction is not the only answer to dangerous creations. We explore how mercy can meet design, how policy can protect dignity, and how makers, investors, and communities can share the duty of care. Along the way we unpack the internet’s “omniscience,” AI’s promise and peril, and the hard question of who should guide innovation: the fastest, the loudest, or the most accountable.

If you care about technology, ethics, storytelling, or faith, this conversation offers a clear takeaway: ingenuity must be matched by humanity. Listen, share with a friend who works in tech or policy, and tell us—what do you think we owe what we build? Subscribe, leave a review, and join the conversation.

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Modern Films In Sermons
• 1:51 Frankenstein’s Core Moral Question
• 5:07 Del Toro’s Humanized Monster
• 8:44 Who Is The Real Monster
• 11:12 Scripture And Playing God
• 14:10 Tech, Omniscience, And The Internet
• 16:35 AI, Wisdom, And Power
• 18:18 Forgiveness As The Most Human Act
• 20:05 Progress That Requires Humanity
• 21:40 To Whom Much Is Given

Transcript

Why Modern Films In Sermons

Pastor Darren 0:00

You know, I've had a little fun with this series just with people uh coming and finding me and saying, Hey, you know, I I decided I was gonna go and I was gonna watch that that film that you're gonna talk about. Just thought that would be helpful for me. And every time you guys come find me and you say, I don't know what you're gonna make of that one. So I will admit sometimes I say that initially as well. But uh usually we find our way to some uh a good message that is coming from uh, or at least a conversation coming from these modern movies. Uh, you know, these are all other than uh wicked, but uh part one actually was really well thought of, and I think that part two they kind of felt like they'd given all their good awards for the first part. Point being they're all really good films, and there are reasons they're good films, and so hopefully you're finding that and enjoying that and understanding that uh part of what makes them a good film is that they are dealing with some interesting underlying questions and subtexts that uh are actually pretty relevant and and fairly easily related to questions we ask in faith, which is why we do a sermon series like this. So today, Frankenstein. How many of you read that in sophomore English class? Yeah, me and Michael, that's it. All right, Fred, so uh John did it too. All right. One of I I generally appreciate that that uh um that book, especially for the questions that it asks. You know, when I became an English major, it wasn't that I loved reading as much as I loved ideas, and Frankenstein is great with ideas. So uh I'm gonna jump right in here. I'll start with the book itself and just give a little bit of a uh a rollout, a summary of it. Mary Shelley was trying to write a good, scary story. As simple as that. Uh in fact, she was in conversation with another author, and they were uh uh trying to challenge each other to do this. So her story involves this scientist, Dr. Frankenstein. And uh he all right, it's gonna get graphic. Are you ready? Well, you all know the story of Frankenstein, right? This can't be new to so he uh uses body parts to create a assembled body, a human body, uh, and then is able to animate this body, basically to bring it to life. So pretty amazing. But what he doesn't understand, or what he doesn't anticipate, is that uh this being that is created is in a sense a person, a person with feelings and emotions and thoughts, and uh not having anticipated that, uh all of a sudden he's got this this presence that wants the things that we all want. Affection, connection, help things to think about. And so this monster, as he called, as he's called in the uh book, uh uh is starts looking for those kinds of connections. Unfortunately, he is clearly stitched together human being, and not only that, as the story goes, uh Dr. Frankenstein, Frankenstein, he only used really big parts because it was easier to work with those parts. So this it was this massive monster human being that is now going out and looking for human connection, right? And so you can uh um understand the conflict that tends to play out there, right? As this monster's, he's looking for this human connection, uh, and the townspeople, the other folks are just appalled, they're they're scared by him because of that uh uh appearance. And so we end up actually having pity for this monster. And it leaves us with this question uh to ask ourselves: if we're going to create life, right? If we're gonna progress in a way that we are creating human life, well, what do we owe that life? As the creator stepping into that role, what do we owe this presence, this being that we are creating? So now I bring you into the modernized version, the movie. Did some of you go see it or pull it down on Netflix? Some of you did, all right, a few of you. It's a very good film. I, you know, there's some graphic parts, just to warn you, uh, but uh there's a lot more graphic movies out there, so it's not uh as bad as some, but there is uh some on there. Now, as we go into it, the director is a man named Guillermo Del Toro, right? And he um a little bit about him, he is fascinated by monsters. I don't know if you follow him as a director, but one of his famous films is Pan's Labyrinth, where they're walking through these uh uh um kind of monster-ish beings. And then some others of you might even be more familiar with the more recent Shape of Water. Uh, did if you saw that, it actually won Best Picture uh uh Academy Award in its year. Now, what we also learned about Guillermo del Toro is that he is not above treating monsters not as monsters. He will very easily humanize these monsters. In fact, in the shape of water, for those of you who saw it, you might remember that there is this fishman that is sort of the main character that's part of things. Uh, and he turns out to be the romantic love interest in the film. So I don't know how we can humanize a monster any more than making them the romantic love interest. Um I'm gonna show you, and hopefully that makes sense a little bit. This next picture, I'm gonna show you, but this is the monster that Guillermo del Toro chose to be his Frankenstein. Do we have that first picture? Yeesh. Are you scared? Right? If that thing came at you, you know, you might step back. Just no, I'm kidding. I think there are many, many young ladies in our world that would love to storm this guy's castle. I wrote that myself. That's my line right there. No, this is Jacob Elordi. He's one of the newer uh uh heartthrobs in the Hollywood establishment or the film establishment. He is our Frankenstein, uh uh, but uh I will show you uh at how he looks actually in the film. So you can see, right? You can see he's kind of stitched up and and uh you you can see to play in the course of the movie and to fit the theme. Yeah, he looks not quite human uh and and yet still human. I think we got another one here where he's uh you can see uh where he's out in nature. So he's he's clearly looks different, uh right. And and to suit the uh the book a little bit too, Jacob Alordi is a pretty tall guy, six foot five, so so they're they're living out uh some of that Frankenstein thing. Uh but what really drives everything in this story, similar to the book itself, is the shunning that comes from the creator himself. Dr. Frankenstein comes to a place where he believes he's made a huge mistake, and so he looks to undo it. But it's done with such aggressiveness, right? He really tries to blow them up and and to kill the monster that we're we're frequently needing to ask ourselves who's the real monster here, right? As Dr. Frankenstein begins to regret his decision and he tries to destroy this monster, we're we're looking at you know who really is the one that is less human or less ideal. So uh at this point in the film, there's this big pivot. And now we hear the story of all of this, but now through the monster's eyes. And uh we're able to look and see how uh the doctor tried to kill him. We're able to see how the townspeople tried to hunt him down, or we're so scared of him that they tried to take him out too. And again, we're invited to ask ourselves who is this real monster in this story? So, as we're bringing it to our Christian context, uh I picked our scripture from Genesis today with uh this this the focus on this theme as the driver. You know, the doctor, Dr. Frankenstein, he puts himself in this position as creator of life, right? He gives himself, he rationalized this place of I am going to make life. Uh and our scriptures, this one included, many of them point to the problem with that. When we start putting ourselves in the position of God, right, and and the creator of life, there are problems that come from that. In the story of Adam and Eve today, all right, uh the building of the Tower of Babylon, these are all instances where we see humans reaching a little bit beyond themselves, right? Adam and Eve, they defy God, who told them not to eat of the forbidden fruit. And then what do they do? They eat of the forbidden fruit. And what comes of that is they move into this place of awareness of our world and how our world works, that they are not ready to deal with. Now they're understanding good and evil and all the depths and complexities, and they were not ready for that. In the case of the story of Dr. Frankenstein, this doctor wasn't really ready to take on the job of creator, the full job of the creator when he made this creation. He wasn't able to offer what is critical to any creation, anything that has life. It's something we Christians would call love, has that all-encompassing theme for all that is to care for another being as much as we are able to care for ourselves. Others might call it empathy. That's the problem that the good doctor doesn't uh have, or he has this problem, the problem that he doesn't have this empathy, he doesn't have this love. And these are essentials for a creator to have if they're going to create this creation. And so the absence of this capacity, it really puts the doctor in over his skis, so he tries to backtrack on what he did. He tries to uneat the fruit, as it were. The problem is with that is that uh the being is there, the monster is there, and it's this being with heart, it's emotions, it's it's essentially human. So uneating this fruit means to kill this being. Hopefully, you're hearing the weight of that and the weight of uh of uh this human being getting out and ahead of himself, which is really what the director's playing with and what Mary Shelley was playing with. Our director, Guillermo Del Toro, of this latest film, he's giving us some things to think about in life today. It's not just a monster movie, which I think is what most of us anticipated it would be. Oh, I watched the monster movies from the 50s. They're a lot of fun, but I don't know that I need to watch that. And then you get in there and you think, oh no, he's doing more than that. He's talking about some modern day challenges that we have, modern day opportunities where we're getting in out over our skis, right? We we don't necessarily see ourselves as creating monsters because the things we're creating don't look like monsters. But there are plenty of ways we're venturing into unknown and uncontrollable awareness, and often this includes the creation of a kind of life in our world. Most of our movement into the world of technology would probably qualify here. Does it ever hit you that we've created a system of what you might call omniscience? Omniscience being uh uh the capacity of knowing everything. Omniscience. This is a bit of our internet, at least it's the full gathering of all the information that we've been able to accrue as a species, and we've created a way to have that world's content knowledge right at our fingertips. I've got it right in my pocket as I sit here and talk to you. Omniscience, it's a word we use for God, right? We understand a God as Christians that knows everything. That's a key part of a lot of our theologies uh uh here in this room and and outside as Christians. But this idea of creating that in another being in the internet, does that give us pause? Now, to be fair, the internet is not God. There's more to knowledge than just pure content, but it's a pretty powerful monster in and of its own. Are we ready for that? Or are we more like the doctor, the good doctor? And what will come of it if we are? Aren't we learning this a bit with uh artificial intelligence? Right? We're all excited about this amazing tool that's going to serve us. But what does it look like to have an omniscient and all-knowing servant? The dynamic the dynamic there can feel a little bit concerning, potentially. Artificial intelligence is essentially trying to add a layer of wisdom to our content. So it's not just information, but it is a capacity to be able to synthesize information. Are we walking forward with the awareness of what this fruit might bring? Or are we letting the ambition and the desire for money and for power set this course? The film itself, Guillermo del Toro as the driver, gives us an answer. An answer that maybe suits this challenge that he's posing as well. And it comes from the monster himself, actually. The answer isn't to destroy the monster, as one might think. In the case of technology, the answer is not to destroy the internet. We wouldn't necessarily want to do that, and maybe we wouldn't be able to do that even so. But if we go back to the story, it ends with the doctor dying in the book at least, and the monster heading off suggesting that he's gonna go kill himself. In the film, however, in this final meeting between the doctor and the monster, Gamer del Toro, he has the monster offering maybe the most human moment in the film. After they've both had a chance to tell their view of the tale, we've seen both sides of what went on between the monster's creation and then the doctors trying to take that creation down. And this is a story that is pretty aggressive for the monster. But he has that monster, and I keep using that term for lack of a better one. The monster forgives the doctor. This is not just uh forgiveness for the doctor having created him into this graceless state in which everybody around him is gonna either be afraid of him or want to kill him or both. Forgiveness not just for that, but also for hunting him down. For trying to kill him, the monster forgives the doctor. It's a powerful moment in the film that doesn't happen in the original story. And the irony, hopefully you're not missing, is that the monster is offering the most human moment, the most human act in the story is made by the monster. I think the film comes with an invitation. As we move into these new ages, especially with tech, this film is a cautionary tale towards our desire to play God, to bite the fruit, to move into arenas we may not be quite ready for. And the answer isn't necessarily that we don't move into those areas, but it's something a little more nuanced. His answer focuses on this need for humanity in our progress. Right now, all of this movement seems to be driven by the most ambitious of us all. You know, the modern, modern-day Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein's, who've been blessed with these amazing capabilities to be able to not only generate things like AI, but to create the the institutional system to be able to move it forward, to make it something that the general populace is able to use. But they're often driven by being the first to be able to capitalize on that capacity, right? They're the first ones to be able to get there and to establish themselves and to begin uh establishing their presence in a way that they start making income, they start getting prestige, they start getting power, they start getting authority. But it's not generally the place where we're asking the moral questions, the ethical questions. They seem to be all of these uh uh drivers, seem to be leaving that question for others. Or maybe it's just not part of their makeup. And it begs the question for us here in our society are these also the people who can manage the creation? Are they able to manage the foreseen and the unforeseen challenges that might come from creating this omniscient being? Del Toro, he's asking us if we're true truly ready for our creation. And by that he seems to be saying, are we good enough at being human to be able to manage the human progress with humanity? I'll end us with that final bit of scripture from the Gospel of Luke. And this is clearly something that uh a writer in Luke stole from the Spider-Man comic books. But he asks us here, in words that Jesus says, from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required, and from one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded. We're invited to embrace the weight of that statement and to be intentional about walking with this progress and to be able to offer the humanity that our progress needs. Amen.