Is your view of God big enough to encompass the entire universe…and all the life that may be in it?
On Thursday, NASA is expected to hold a press conference about a new find made by its Kepler planet-hunting telescope. It’s possible it could involve finding an extrasolar planet that’s very similar to Earth.
This isn’t 20th-century science fiction anymore. Gone are the days when talk of extraterrestrial life centered around UFOs and abductions by little green men. It’s no longer just the nutty conspiracy theorists that believe in life elsewhere in the universe. Former NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan believes, in fact, that we will see definitive signs of extraterrestrial life in 20-30 years.
Quietly, NASA scientists have discovered more than 3,700 planets outside our solar system, which include:
- More planets (9) have probably been discovered in the HD 10180 system than our own
- Planets with two suns
- Planets where it’s always day on one side, and always night on the other
- 28 that have been officially named
- An Earth-sized planet around the nearest star (Proxima Centauri)
- Around 53 planets in the “habitable zone” of their sun
I have always loved astronomy, and it’s fascinating to me to see the incredible variations of planets and stars in the universe. Some of this stuff is better than science fiction. But now, we are getting to the point where we must face the question of other life as a genuine possibility that may directly affect, if not us, our descendants within just a generation or two.
Is your view of God big enough to embrace that possibility?
Logically, most of us would say yes. The portion of the universe observable to us alone is some 27 billion light-years across. There are about 1 octillion (1 trillion trillions) stars in the universe, and 1 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, to say nothing of what’s in the 100 billion or so other galaxies. It seems incredible that God would make all that, only for all but one planet to be barren and devoid of creatures. Sure, it could be that he created the universe so big because wanted to emphasize his glory to a magnitude we can’t comprehend, but is that really the more likely option? And, you know what, forget about the rest of the universe — some are optimistic about the possibility of life on Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which probably have massive oceans buried miles beneath their icy crusts.
The counterargument to this is that if such living creatures existed, they would have contacted us, because surely there would be some civilizations more advanced than ours. If so, why haven’t they contacted us or been detected? This dilemma is known as the Fermi paradox. Among the possible answers that have been proposed:
- Other life exists, but we are (one of) the most advanced species in the universe
- Other life intentionally keeps itself hidden
- Other civilizations destroy themselves before becoming advanced enough to travel to the stars
- Other civilizations have no interest in traveling to the stars (or are unable to)
- We are indeed actually alone
If that last option is not true, though, again, is your view of God big enough to embrace that possibility?
You might ask why it matters at all. After all, the Bible doesn’t say anything about aliens. First-century people didn’t think about such questions. But it will make a big difference in the way that we think about our relationship with God, bigger than a lot of people give it credit for. The faith of a lot of Christians will be shaken, whatever kind of life it is.
If we’re talking about the discovery of non-sentient life — with intelligence comparable to bacteria, ants, or dogs — then that would really challenge our narrative of creation. At a 2016 Acquire the Fire conference (a weekend retreat for teens), the speaker started off with creation, placing a huge amount of emphasis put on Earth’s uniqueness and optimal capacity for life. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this kind of argument for the existence of God. With the discovery of even microbial life elsewhere, that narrative would be obliterated. Indeed, such a discovery would seem to lend credibility to the contention that life can and does evolve on its own, if it appears in so many different places. I believe that’s part of the reason that some are so uncomfortable with the idea. But our view of God has to be bigger than that. God did not have to do things a certain way to set the stage for creatures that could bear his image. He didn’t have to make Earth just right for humanity. He chose to make us in the way that he wanted, into the environment that he wanted, he could have done so any different way he chose, and he could have done the same for other life forms as well.
But the discovery of other sentient life in the universe — creatures that are capable of conscious thought, reason, discovery, philosophy, and perceiving the spiritual realm — would challenge some of these beliefs about God and ourselves that we consider fundamental. For 2,000 years, we have thought of God’s big plan as being all about us. It’s us humans that were made in his image, are uniquely loved by him, and at the center of God’s plan of salvation. The biggest holiday of the year, just 13 days away, is a celebration of the time God became one of us to enact his plan to save us from our sins. That’s one of the things that sets our God apart from all the other gods people worship: our God is both God and human. He is truly God, and yet he is truly one of us. And we look forward to being with him for eternity, seeing the face of the God-Man Jesus Christ. That’s a narrative that we hold dearly, and that the Bible seems to spell out pretty plainly. And quite frankly, we like the idea that the universe is all about us!
So where would other creatures fit into God’s plan? Is there another species that hasn’t fallen into sin, like the Venusian race CS Lewis portrayed in his novel Perelandra? They need not be perfect to have not fallen; they could be like the angels, who don’t appear to have sinned or need redemption either. But, Romans 8 and 2 Peter 3, talking about the whole creation groaning and waiting for its renewal, and the judgment and destruction of the entire universe by fire before that renewal, seem to preclude that. Why would the whole universe need to be destroyed if humans are the only ones who have sinned?
Then what if these other species have fallen into sin? How are they redeemed? We can assume God didn’t leave them to perish eternally, not unless they were as irredeemable as the demons. Did Jesus become incarnate on all these planets and pay the price for their sins as well? Is he not only fully God and fully human, but fully Europan, Enceladan, Tau Cetian, and Trappistian? How does that reconcile with Hebrews 9:27, which says that Jesus died once and that was enough? What would be the need of Jesus rising from the dead and defeating death if he’d already done so 500 million times on other planets?
We could analyze these questions and the numerous possible answers, but it might be better to analyze the way that we think, and what about it that makes these questions so hard for us in the first place. And the answer may be that we need to expand our view of the universe, of living creatures, and of God himself.
We are too prone to thinking of God as a sort of superhuman, who is like us except infinitely great. That’s why we have so many depictions of God as an old man with a beard. But one word that God uses us to describe himself all the time is “holy,” which fundamentally means “set apart.” He is different from us. He is like nothing we’ve ever imagined. God is very near to us and always with us and makes himself known to us, but at the same time he is utterly foreign and incomprehensible to us. He’s utterly incomprehensible to any finite object or creature that could possibly exist.
If other sentient creatures, created in God’s image, existed, we would have to deal with the fact that humans are not the only ones who have a relationship with God. Indeed, another species, which may have a hugely different physical structure, brain mechanisms, and culture from us, may relate to God in ways that are totally foreign to us, even shocking to us. (Take a look at the Old Testament and how God relates to Israel, where he commands territorial war, doesn’t outright forbid polygamy or slavery, and commands strict observance to ritual, versus how God relates to us today, to get an idea of how radically different that could be.) Or they may not have conceived of God at all. We can’t say that God would relate the same way to aliens as to humans. But if they can have any relationship with God, then we must assume they are made in the image of God, just like us.
The answer will probably be to think of such beings as no more fundamentally different from us than the human races are from each other — one spiritual race, the divine-image-bearing creations of God. Our view of God must be big enough to allow for that. We can’t say, “God must care about us more than other creatures.” We can’t say, “God could only do things this way.” Although the unbreakability of the speed of light probably means it will take us at least a few thousand years to make contact with any other life forms, if our children or grandchildren do ask one day not if, but why God made life on other planets, our view of God must be big enough to explain why this universe isn’t all about us.
