Now and then I offer the periodic reminder that we are never getting off the Earth in any meaningful way and that the dream of colonizing even the planets, let alone the stars, is a secular eschatological fantasy clung to by a civilization that has (I think without sufficent reason) abandoned hope in the only eschatology that we (literally) have a prayer of seeing fulfilled.
Kurzgesacht agrees with me. The fantasy that we will colonize the stars is just that: fantasy.
That exasperates a certain sort of person and I feel that, to a degree. I am a child of my age like everybody else and I feel the attraction to exploring new frontiers, seeking out new life and new civilizations, and boldly going where no one has gone before as much as anybody.
But that sort of thing is, in the end, just a sacramental participation, in a very minor key, in the exploration of the Spirit and the Kingdom of God that is the real task of human beings. And when it becomes an idol, as it so often has done in human history, it becomes a devil. I think C.S. Lewis is simply right when he speculates that God has ordained the vast distances between us and any civilizations beyond Earth as a quarantine. As he notes, if we did find another civilization and it was technologically inferior to us, “the red man and the black man can tell” what their fate would be at our hands. If they were technologically superior to us, we should be very properly annihilated.
So here we are, stuck with one another, stuck with our questions, problems, hopes, virtues and sins and forced to make the best of it here on Earth instead of running off to be Space Rangers in a never-ending Gee Whiz Ray Bradbury tale of adventure and derring-do from the Golden Age of Science Fiction. It’s all very frustrating. After millennia of evolving as a species of fallen predators conquering more and more territory and bringing more and more real estate under our domination, we are now confronted with the reality that, like Alexander, we have no more worlds left to conquer. So we either learn how to share this planet or we attempt suicide as a species. “Attempt”, I say, because the revelation tells us that though we are creatures driven to kill ourselves out of sheer sinful spite, the story ends (after a lot of blood and smoke and the attempted re-crucifixion of Jesus in all those to whom he has joined himself) with a New Heaven and a New Earth, not with annihilation and not with an ever-expanding United Federation of Planets spreading out forever to bring leotard-clad UN conflict resolution counselors to more and more planets.
That’s, as I say, frustrating. We want the old song to go on forever. Maybe in a slightly different key. But essentially the same old song of more and more empire-building forever. But the Kingdom of God means to radically reorder the very concept of a Kingdom, which means (among other things) crucifying our old notions of a kingdom in order to give them back to us transfigured. So what the revelation seems to indicate (and, what is more, how life seems to go) is that nothing in this universe ever fully satisfies and the attempt to make it do so is always going to be doomed. So one of the more mysterious passages in Scripture is found in Romans 8:
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning with labor pains together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified. (Ro 8:19–30)
I think about that passage a lot. Creation has been subjected to futility–in hope. Over and over, we try to make everything perfect here and over and over it just never is. There is something about the grain of reality that is wayward and wilful and that just will not fully cooperate with our plans for Utopia. Things fall apart. The center will not hold. We want… something. But even when we win the lottery like the author of Ecclesiastes did, it’s not what we want and we end up faced with the fact that this life is Vanity of Vanities.
Not that the goods of this life are not good. They are, because they are from God who pronounces them all good. But he has made us in his image and likeness and so the whole universe, great and good as it is, is still not large enough to contain us. We require more. We require him. And so deep down in the very grain of reality, there is always going to be a restless dissatisfaction for us because, as Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.”
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