Since 2016, Elon Musk has been working towards humanity going to Mars, and even building a city there, with the new spacesuits his company SpaceX showcased this week being the latest step towards that goal. [1] On the other hand, NASA’s Artemis program aims to land humans back on the moon by 2026. [2]
For some, space exploration means the promise of new technologies, resources, and whole new worlds opened for human exploration and colonisation. [3] For others, space exploration feels like an expensive and self-indulgent distraction while millions live below the poverty line on earth. [4]
How would a biblical worldview shape how we as Christians think about space exploration? What can Christians say to our secular friends who are feeling excited or indignant about it?
First, there is much Christians can affirm with those excited about space exploration and even colonisation.
When God created humanity “in his own image,” he commanded them to “be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:27-28). Psalm 8 elaborates on this and tells us that God has made humanity “rulers over the works of [his] hands,” which includes the “heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars.”[5]
God is the generous Creator who has gifted the whole of creation to humanity. We are created to explore, inhabit, and to rule under him as his representatives to the rest of creation. The description of Eden as a rich land (Gen 1:10-14) hints that God intends humanity to also use and develop creation’s resources, which He has generously placed, as part of carrying out the twin commands of “lov[ing] God” with our whole beings, and “lov[ing] our neighbours as [our]selves” (Mark :30-31).
And as we do so, we fulfil “God’s ultimate goal in creation … to magnify his glory throughout the earth [and by extension the universe] by means of his faithful image-bearers inhabiting the world in obedience.”[6]
It is therefore right and good that we should excited about space exploration and colonisation. In fact, it is yet another glimpse of the fact that we are made in God’s image, whether we acknowledge it or not. We still have vestiges of God’s original purpose imprinted on our hearts that make us excited about the stars, even when space seems irrelevant to the more immediate concerns of today.
As secular astronomer Emily Levesque wrote, “we don’t know exactly why, but we must [study the stars.]” [7] As Christians, we have the wonderful opportunity to proclaim to them about what they are ignorant of and yet pursue (Acts 17:23), and point to humanity’s greater purpose as God’s image-bearers.
However, as much as our fascination with space comes from God’s good purpose for us in creation, ever since the Fall, our pursuit has also been thoroughly tainted with sin, and affected by its punishment of death. This expresses itself in two ways.
First, we seek to replace what we can only have from God with what we hope to find in space exploration.
For Musk, space exploration is humanity’s ultimate answer to our fragility apart from a relationship with God. When Musk was interviewed about why he wants to make humanity “multi-planetary,” he said that it was “to safeguard the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen [on earth].” [8]
On the other hand, Astronomer Royal Martin Rees suggested that spreading across the stars would be how humanity achieves ultimate significance in a vast cosmos for ourselves. [9] By becoming an everywhere present species, we will also gain knowledge in the stars that would help us transition into an all-powerful species.
Eventually, Rees envisages humanity’s descendants to become intergalactic entities who are “near-immortals.”[10] Hence space exploration becomes yet another Babel where we build to “make a name for ourselves” (Gen 11:4), and to assert our independence from our life-giving Creator.
Second and consequently, the fear of death, rather than love for God and neighbour, becomes what drives and shapes how we do space exploration.
Everything in the universe, including the lives of “less significant” humans now, becomes a tool for the long-term preservation and destiny of humanity. [11] As Stephen Hawking wrote, those who do not have the opportunity to benefit from it would become less important than “these space-faring adventurers … who will spearhead the post-human era.” [12]
This way of thinking, known as ‘longtermism,’ is embraced and promoted by Musk and other entrepreneurs. [13] Ignoring the poor now in the name of space exploration would be a small thing in comparison to that future, when, as C. S. Lewis wrote, “man’s power over nature” would become “a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument,” with “man’s final conquest” proving to be “the abolition of Man” instead. [14]
What can Christians say to such thinking? In the Lord Jesus, we have one who now offers us freedom from the fear of death by defeating death for us in his own death (Heb 2:14-15). He now offers us full forgiveness and restoration to our life-giving Creator (9:15), and promises that when he returns, believers would share in his glory and dominion over creation that was God’s original design for humanity (2:5-11).
It is only with this hope that space exploration can be re-driven and reshaped within the context of our true purpose of loving God and neighbour. And it is with this hope that humanity can truly reach for the stars as God’s image-bearers, and represent his loving rule to all creation.
References
[1] Matthew Williams, “SpaceX Shows off Its New Extravehicular Activity Suit,” https://phys.org/news/2024-05-spacex-extravehicular.html.
[2] “NASA’s Artemis III Mission,” https://www.nasa.gov/event/artemis-iii-launch/.
[3] NASA, “Artemis,” https://www.nasa.gov/feature/artemis/.
[4] Alexis C. Madrigal, “Moondoggle: The Forgotten Opposition to the Apollo Program,” https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/moondoggle-the-forgotten-opposition-to-the-apollo-program/262254/.
[5] Lacey, “Does the Bible Prohibit Space Travel?,” https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/does-the-bible-prohibit-space-travel/.
[6] G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, Nachdr., New studies in biblical theology 17 (Leicester [u.a..]: Apollos[u.a.], 2005), 82.
[7] Emily Levesque, The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy’s Vanishing Explorers (Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, 2020), 284.
[8] Ross Andersen, “Elon Musk Puts His Case for a Multi-Planet Civilisation,” AEON, https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-planet-civilisation.
[9] Martin Rees, “Interstellar Travel and Post-Humans,” https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/articles/interstellar-travel-and-post-humans/.
[10] Martin Rees, “Could Space-Going Billionaires Be the Vanguard of a Cosmic Revolution?,” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/30/space-billionaires-cosmic-earth-elon-musk-jeff-bezos.
[11] Émile P Torres, “Against Longtermism,” AEON, https://aeon.co/essays/why-longtermism-is-the-worlds-most-dangerous-secular-credo.
[12] Stephen W. Hawking, Brief Answers to the Big Questions (London: John Murray, 2018), 75.
[13] Torres, “Against Longtermism.”
[14] C. S. Lewis, “The Abolition of Man,” in Selected Books (London: HarperCollins, 2002), 420, 423.
