Why are we always using black holes for bad things?

At yesHEis we try to post videos that start a conversation about faith or even some aspect of life that tends to go unnoticed. Produced by Photoplay Films, The Black Hole is a clever piece that examines our human tendency to allow greed to overtake our better judgment.

An office worker stays late and finds himself in possession of a mysterious black spot on a large piece of paper. To his delight, the strange document allows him to reach through any surface the paper touches. As you might imagine, the worker immediately turns to how he can profit from his good fortune (wouldn’t anyone?) and eventually attempts to steal from the company safe. However, greed ultimately gets the best of him and he finds himself trapped inside the safe; whether intentional or not, the symbolism of being imprisoned by greed is remarkable.

At first glance the lesson here is simple: don’t let greed take over, or you could be trapped… inside a safe with no money. Though when you think about it, I’m not sure it is so simple. What’s so wrong about exploiting a gift you’re presented with? Anyone would, right? The unfortunate truth is that when presented with a powerful gift, it appears that humans largely turn to a selfish means of using that gift. Like Uncle Ben says, “With great power comes great responsibility” and it’s the ‘responsibility’ part that is the hardest.

I don’t think the problem is that he exploits this opportunity. The deeper question is: what is it about humans that make us swing towards the immoral use of a gift? Why isn’t the inherent action to use a powerful gift to bring good into the world? Furthermore, what about the gifts we already have? Like freedom, money or speech, how are we exploiting those? I think that a deeper inspection of this film will examine the heart of humanity and see that we are in desperate need of something (or someone?) to change whatever it is inside of us that chooses to steal, and get trapped… in a safe with no money.