Ray Bradbury has managed to create a world which is science fiction and yet seems eerily familiar all at the same time in Fahrenheit 451.

Guy Montag lives in a world where it is illegal to read books.  Books have been banned, and firemen are there to enforce the law.  Firemen don’t put out fires; they start them, in homes of lawbreakers.  Montag lives in a society that is swallowed up by their addiction to a futuristic version of the television.  And all else has been lost.  Life has no meaning, no purpose.  And any type of social activity is strictly prohibited.

Montag meets a seventeen year old girl named Clarisse.  She teaches him that people hold value, and are meant to be in relationships with one another.  And Montag meets an elderly professor.  Professor Faber teaches Montag that it is all right to think for himself; and he casts a vision for Montag of a future where thinking is encouraged once again.

While Fahrenheit 451 is a book which was written 50 years ago, about a society far in the future, even from today, and completely centered on censorship and defiance, it haunts the reader with frighteningly accurate glimpses of reality today.  And not simply in the area of censorship, though that is familiar enough.

There’s a spiritual element in Fahrenheit 451 that shouts to be heard over the noise of a godless society.  In Montag’s world, people have no purpose or meaning.  Individuals have lost their individuality.  People have become purposeless drones, drowning in their own sorrows, and covering up their shattered lives by wearing masks. 

In a very real way, this describes us, today.  We wear masks, hiding who we really are, and we’ve done this so long that we’ve forgotten who we really are.  We need people like the group of old men Montag meets at the very end of the story.  People who seem to represent pastors and ministers.  People who hold the truth in their minds.  People who have the keys to restoring our individuality and relationships.  People who are willing to serve others, meeting their needs.

Just like the people in Guy Montag’s world accepted their imprisonment by their society, we have put up with our own for far too long.  We need to stop reveling in our bondage, our sin.  We need to return to reality; return to the Truth.  We are trapped.  We need a Savior to free us.

While Fahrenheit 451 may not have been written with a spiritual purpose in mind in 1953, there is a message there for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.