The Human Bent Toward Exploration
What Blue Origin can teach us about ourselves
Last week, the Blue Origin kerfuffle caused a stir on the Internet. It caused me to remember the occasional talk I’ve heard of one nation or another monopolizing the moon, or humanity getting a fresh start by colonizing Mars.
I’ve always thought:
Monopolize the moon? We’d mess it up, too.
Move to Mars? We’d mar it, too.
The moon and Mars are not magical places that mend hearts. Rockets are simply carrier vehicles for our evermore brutal selves.
As a child of the Jesus Movement, this lyric from “Readers Digest” by Larry Norman has stayed in my head for fifty years. Using the medium of irony to express a true ache, it seems as relevant now as then.
It's 1973, I wonder who we're gonna see
Who's in power now? Think I'll turn on my TV,
The man on the news said China's gonna beat us,
We shot all our dreamers, there's no one left to lead us.
We need a solution, we need salvation,
Let's send some people to the moon and gather information.
They brought back a big bag of rocks.
Only cost thirteen billion. Must be nice rocks.
I admire and respect the human bent toward exploration. The intellectual capacity that undergirds and facilitates it is a gift from our Creator God.
But as with any good thing, humanity knows how to turn it bad.
Here’s the problem: Even if we go to space, we return to the same place—both in our hearts and in our homes.
Moving vans are similar. I’ve lived in five states and in no case was I able to leave myself behind. Whatever was real about me moved with me.
A Sign from Heaven
There was a time in Jesus’ ministry in which…
The Pharisees and Sadducees came to him and tested him by asking him to show them a sign from heaven.
He replied, “When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,’ and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”
Matthew 16:1-3
These ancient people had a sense of the workings of the cosmos but had no sense about what God was doing in and through Jesus to inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth.
This is the age-old mistake.
There is nothing wrong with loving stars, supernovas, and pulsars. The error is to lose sight of their origin, present superintendence by God, and their ultimate telos in the new heavens and earth.
An orientation to those things sparks awe-filled worship.
Worship then yields a felt connection to God and his purposes. That connection is a catalyst for understanding more about God’s purposes and pursuing them as faithful followers of Jesus.
Over the last decades I have discovered that there is a great beyond in my heart and in those I have pastored. Exploring our inner spaces through God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit is the means to an outer life that reflects the righteousness, peace, and joy of God’s kingdom.