Image Source: NASA

Scientists believe they’ve located liquid water on Mars, approximately a mile beneath the ice of Mars’ south pole. The water is incredibly salty, possibly to a point of being unlivable, but there is still hope, based on similar waters found beneath our own south pole, that life could be found within those briny depths. With every discovery like this one, it becomes harder to deny that there must be life outside of our planet. This leaves me pondering a specific question: believing that life outside Earth is inevitable, practically speaking, where does that leave one who believes in God, especially through the lens of Christianity?

Though I have grown up believing that we were created by God and saved by Jesus’ death and resurrection, I’ll admit that there are pieces of the story that I don’t really understand. Specifically, I tend to get caught up on the timeline.

By Efbrazil, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18385338

When you look at the scope of history for our universe, it takes an awfully long time for Jesus to show up. When compared to the scope of human beings’ existence, though, it’s almost comically quick how soon the towel is thrown in on humanity’s behalf and we’re saved from ourselves. Honestly, neither history, of the universe nor of humans, does much to make us seem like creatures of particular note. That is, unless you see humans as a culmination of sorts, which Christianity does. If humans are the end result of history, then the immense length of time before gives credit to our inherent complexities. Though it is unclear when exactly Jesus intends to return to Earth, it is firmly believed that he will return for us and that we will be placed on the cosmic, heavenly pedestal long promised.

This mindset can also save us from the vastness of the universe in a similar fashion; that a near infinite amount of time and space exists to contextualize our journey as a species, in particular our journey to know the God that created said near infinite time and space (for us). We are also saved by the ambiguity of our savior’s return. If Jesus’ first arrival on Earth comes in the middle of the story of the universe, that would mean that most of us are stuck in some comparatively middling chapter of the plot. The fact that Jesus second coming could be tomorrow allows us to wonder if we are just before the climax of the story, as other Christians have for the past 2000 years.

The inevitable consideration that follows then must be: what if we are not a culmination in any remarkable way? Consider this passage from the Gospel of Matthew:

We see in this passage a classic desire of humans: to understand themselves as being distinct from, perhaps even ascending beyond, nature. This mindset allows us to re-contextualize thousands of years of being flowers of the field ourselves — here one day and thrown into the fire the next — as part of a story arc that leads to immortality and everlasting grace. It is the human condition to assume that no other being, other than perhaps God, could look at us with the same pitying respect and gentle condescension we give to lilies and daisies.

At the same time, though, we are also driven by the fear that we are but flowers to be burned, and this fear is what pushes many of us to work towards being the individuals doing the throwing, instead of the thrown. In a nuclearized world, it is worth noting that there is some similarity between an ambiguous second-coming and the concept of mutually-assured destruction, in that both allow us to think that we could be on the cusp of a moment of history beyond all others — one which would provide the singular moment of a true, if admittedly rather dark, plot-twist; a twist many of us yearn for as a path to the legitimization of the historical value of our shared lifetimes, and therefore our own lives. If we cannot be the culmination of nature, would it not be the next best thing to be the culmination of humans, as determined by creating the period closing the sentence of our species?

This is a question we must grapple with, as findings of microorganisms on Mars and exoplanets in habitable zones and the logical extrapolations that then proceed risk shattering our self-image of being creatures of a remarkable nature. That conclusion, should we come to it, is not particularly surprising really, given the scope of history, the expanse of the universe, and our small place within it. In fact, such a conclusion is not even particularly challenging to embrace, save for one last ambiguity we are left with: our own deaths and the subsequent events thereafter.

As a Christian, I am provided with reassurance that I am saved by Jesus’ death and promised an everlasting paradise with God in the coming afterlife. This life with God will take place on a plane of existence separate from this current one and be wholly apart from the world I’ve known. This idea, of all of them, is where I get hung up: that I should be waiting expectantly for a world utterly foreign to my own, where I will not be myself, in body nor mind (for it is a world of complete joy and tranquility, two things which my mind certainly is not exclusively), and that the defining feature of human existence, our inevitable death, will not exist. And so as billions of years and light-years of space come into being and tumble through their existence, I will briefly pop-in, ponder said tumbling, then be quickly removed to an entirely separate world, where I will live forever.

It is not that I don’t believe in God or accept Jesus as my savior, but I have a hard time getting riled up about putting decades of work into this life knowing that the culmination of my story is a complete rewrite. So, instead, I wonder if perhaps it isn’t. Maybe we don’t die and then move to a heavenly abode where every part of our human identity is left at the front door. But if that is the case, then surely there is no such thing as death? For what will transpire at the end of our lives is simply a closing and reopening of our eyes, like so many nights of sleep. And yes, our Earthly bodies will be thrown into the proverbial fire, but if we truly are as removed from nature as the aspersions we cast toward it would indicate, then we do not belong to the fires of this world anyway. We cannot be promised immortality, but, if it is the case that we have already haphazardly achieved it, it seems a shame not to enjoy it.

So then, what explanation are we left with for the vastness of time and space, which we inhabit for so short a span? To me, the logical answer must be the same as Matthew’s observation: that there is a splendor in life and creation itself that cannot be denied, and that this beauty cannot be tarnished nor made irrelevant by its eventual destruction. If this is true, then the immensity of the universe is simply the persistent expansion of that undeniable splendor. We, as humans, would do well to see ourselves not as the culmination of that splendor, but as rich, complex pieces within the infinitely complicated puzzle of creation, and to see the creatures and environments we coexist with as equal parts of that puzzle. Great joy can be found in a role well played. And when that role is not enough, there is perhaps greater consolation still in knowing that it not the only role we will have.