While Klaatu's purpose in coming to earth is at first in question—hey, if E.T. could befriend a boy, there's always the chance that other aliens who drop in for visit might not be intent on our destruction—the fairly rapidly unfolding events that follow reveal that Klaatu has in fact been sent to destroy the human race. Really, it's just a matter of logic. As Klaatu's alien contact on earth tells him, the human race is not a reasonable race, they won't change. As Klaatu tells Dr. Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly), the astrobiologist who dares to believe that Klaatu is not necessarily the enemy, "If the earth dies, you die. If you die, the earth lives." But as Klaatu's contact also tells him of the humans he has come to know over his lifetime, "There's another side. I love them."

And so arises the question: In the face of universal logic and supreme power that both say the human race must be destroyed, is there anything that can save it? The answer: Yes. And the means: Grace. "You could stop this couldn't you? If you wanted to?" Dr. Benson asks. "We can change," she pleads with him. "Help us to change." Although the path the human race is on may have its problems, and it may take a moment of crisis to finally bring about necessary change, Helen pleads with Klaatu to acknowledge that there is still hope for human survival. As Klaatu begins to see, glimpses of that hope shine through in the love we show each other. And in the end, it is in the choice of love over logic which rests our only hope of salvation.

While not quite as religiously symbolic as the original (Klaatu's name is actually John Carpenter in the first), Klaatu and the story that unfolds around him still closely parallel the biblical stories of Noah's Ark and the birth and death of Jesus Christ. Like Jesus Christ, Klaatu is a higher life form "born" into human form. In his alien contact on earth is a lifetime spent experiencing and gaining understanding of every joy, pain, celebration, and suffering of human reality. During even his short time on earth, Klaatu also learns more about the human race than he ever could by just looking down on us. And almost collapsing the time between Noah's Flood and Jesus' life and death, in Klaatu we get a portrait of both the God who could easily destroy us all with good reason, and the God who chose not to.

Like Klaatu's aliens, God has essentially unlimited cause and means to destroy us. He could blow us up, He could wipe us out with plagues, or He could drown us all in a worldwide ocean. In the face of His power and control, neither our strength nor our logic can do anything to stop Him. But although He has demonstrated His destructive abilities many times, when He sent Jesus Christ to live and die for our sins, He proved His love for us by giving us a second chance. And extending to us His helping hand instead of His hand of destruction, He proved that not only is He a friend of the earth, but a friend of humanity.

In a world of logic like the world in which The Day the Earth Stood Still begins, hope is solely a product of change. But as we see as The Day the Earth Stood Still unfolds, often it is only in hope that we are able to bring ourselves to change. While it may sometimes be difficult for us to find hope, as the characters in the film show us, it is within us all—in the love that we share with each other and in the love of a God who desires us to live with Him forever. And in that hope is the greatest impetus for change we will ever find

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