You may not know this but I’m a large space nerd. So when scientists studying data from the James Webb Space Telescope announced last week that they’d found possible evidence of life on one other planet, I became immediately wide-eyed and geeky.
This planet is 700 trillion miles, or 124 light years, away from Earth, and all that might be detected is that the chemical composition of its atmosphere may contain molecules related to life. We don’t have any way of knowing what type of life this is likely to be, and it’s highly improbable that it might be of the sentient kind. But the very possibility is exciting!
Humans are endlessly fascinated by space. Its sheer vastness makes it stuffed with unknowable possibilities – and novelists, filmmakers and TV producers have imagined whole galaxies into life.
Yet the opportunity of other intelligent life forms presents a challenge to Christians. We imagine within the fallenness of humankind and our redemption through the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If there are other worlds on the market, would Jesus need to redeem them too? Would he tackle their flesh and die multiple times for multiple beings? CS Lewis speculated on this in his Narnia stories: Aslan hints to Lucy within the Voyage of the Dawn Treader that she’s going to get to know him by a distinct name in our world.
Of course we cannot tell. The Bible tells us what we want to know, not every part there may be to know. It focuses on humankind. The vast immensity and complexity of the universe is a mirrored image of God’s great joy and creativity, and speculation about alien life shouldn’t distract us from what now we have been called to do on the earth here in front of us.
But meditating on the hugeness of the universe has all the time formed a part of our worship of God. In the immensity of God’s creation we are only infinitesimal specks. And yet, God has imbued us with infinite dignity as his image-bearers, worthy of his deepest love and saving grace. In the words of Psalm 8,
“When I consider your heavens,
The works of your fingers,
The moon and the celebrities,
Which you have got set in place,
What is mankind that you simply are mindful of them,
Human beings that you simply look after them?”
Reflecting on the universe gives us a healthy sense of perspective that relieves our tendencies towards self-obsession. Since I’ve already admitted to being a nerd, I’d as well let you know that I prefer to keep track of the Voyager 1 mission. It was launched in 1977 and was the primary spacecraft to depart our solar system, in 2012. It is probably the most distant human-made object from Earth. And yet after nearly 50 years in space, it continues to be not even a light-weight day away. Compare that with the 124 light years between us and this other possible life-sustaining planet, and the mind boggles!
But if there are other sentient beings, then Jesus is unquestionably their Redeemer too and he’ll make himself known to them. Tom Wright points out that Jesus is the embodiment not only of a neighborhood deity however the God who, within the very first sentence of the Bible, created the heavens in addition to the earth.
It seems mysterious to us that he selected to enter into a selected time and place on our tiny planet as a helpless baby, when, as Solomon says in 1 Kings 8:27, “the heavens, even the best heaven, cannot contain” him. But Paul reminds us in Colossians 1 that in Jesus, “all things were created, things in heaven and on earth … He is before all things and in him all things hold together.” And in Ephesians 4:10, we’re told that Jesus “ascended higher than all of the heavens, so as to fill the entire universe”.
Indeed, it signifies that God is just as present on that distant planet trillions of miles away – and whatever life forms it might or may not contain – as he’s to you and me right here and now. That is just awesome.
We shouldn’t be afraid of anything we discover within the universe, or allow the opportunity of discovering other life forms to challenge our faith. His ways are higher than ours. As the seventeenth century German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler identified, scientists are “merely considering God’s thoughts after him” – and the more we find out about science and the way God does things, the more blown away we must always be by the epicness of creation.
And as now we have just celebrated the miracle of Easter amidst a culture that’s at best sceptical concerning the supernatural features of the story, let’s do not forget that a God who can breathe two trillion galaxies into existence can have no trouble with a Virgin birth or a Resurrection. Let’s take a while today to reflect on his awesomeness and praise him that he loves and needs to know each one in all us personally.
Tim Farron has been the Member of Parliament for Westmorland and Lonsdale since 2005 and served because the Leader of the Liberal Democrat Party from 2015 to 2017. Tim can also be the host of Premier’s ‘A Mucky Business’ podcast, which unpacks the murky world of politics and encourages believers across the UK to have interaction prayerfully. He is the creator of A Mucky Business: Why Christians should get entangled in politics.”
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