Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
Hey, y'.
Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
All.
Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
Hopefully you're doing well. It's the Mark Clark podcast. So a year or so ago, we did an episode on aliens, UFOs, the Bible, theology, all the stuff that, depending on your personality, either fascinates you or makes you immediately want to build an underground bunker and start stocking canned beans for the Apocalypse, y'.
Mark Clark [00:00:19]:
All.
Mark Clark [00:00:19]:
At that time, it felt like one of those fun, slightly fringe conversations. A sermon about aliens, you know, Internet rabbit holes, conspiracy theories, grainy footage on YouTube, people on Reddit who haven't seen sunlight since 2014. But over the past year or so, things shifted in a pretty major way. Congress recently held hearings on UFOs, now officially called UAPs, unidentified anomalous phenomena. The Pentagon released reports and footage, and suddenly conversations that used to live on the fringes of have moved into the mainstream. You guys have probably felt this, and it raised a real question for people, regular, normal people. Again, what do Christians actually do with all of this? Because underneath all the speculation and memes and Internet chaos is actually a really sincere, deep question about reality itself. Are we alone? What kind of universe are we living in? And if the universe turns out to be stranger and bigger and more mysterious than we thought, that that actually threaten our faith? Or does it actually fit within a biblical worldview better than most people assume? That is what this episode is all about.
Mark Clark [00:01:26]:
And honestly, even if you don't care about UFOs at all, I think the deeper ideas underneath this episode matter more now than ever, because every generation eventually has to wrestle with the same thing. What do we do when reality turns out to be far stranger and bigger and more mysterious than we expected? All right, let's get into this episode on the question of aliens and God. Hopefully it's helpful to you.
Mark Clark [00:01:48]:
All those might have grown up before the YouTube era. This question may be a little weird.
Speaker C [00:01:56]:
I mean, obviously people have wondered about aliens for a long time and talked about them. And even those who grow up generations ago would have had movies and ideas and books and. And, you know, War of the Worlds and H.G. wells and all this stuff.
Mark Clark [00:02:08]:
It's always kind of gone to the heart of people's conversations. But this is actually in the church. Actually, something needs to be addressed, because in the culture, there is this movement of people who actually believe in this. They just stormed Area 51. The Twitterverse blew up, and they all said, we need to go storm area 51 in Nevada and prove. Make the government show us the space aliens that they found in the 50s. And so the Twitter versus everybody said okay, on this date, everybody's gotta show up in storm area 51 to get the truth. And then I think it was like 100 dudes that showed up.
Mark Clark [00:02:44]:
But anyway, and they're all living at home with their moms and wearing shirts like this. But the reality is you have those guys, you have that movement afoot, and then you have the Bob Lazar movement afoot, where people listen to Joe Rogan's three hour conversation with Bob Lazar and then go on and watch his documentaries and YouTube things about how he saw, he's a credible scientist and he saw spaceships in Area 51 and he had to work on them. There's all these kind of conspiracy ideas. So it's a cultural question. It's not as insane as some people may think it is. And so we have to be able to kind of engage it and understand it if our job is to be contextual missiologically as the Church, or be able to explain and talk to the actual questions people have, which are vastly sometimes different than the ones that the Church have. So let's explore some of this stuff. Believe it or not, this actually is a theological category.
Mark Clark [00:03:38]:
Through history, religions, since they've been drawing on walls, have explored this question of aliens. Since the Middle Ages, the Church and Christianity have explored the question of aliens. It actually has a name, it's called exotheology, and I'll give you the definition of it. It's the examine of examination, examination of theological issues as they pertain to extraterrestrial intelligence. It's primarily concerned with either conjecture about possible theological beliefs that extraterrestrials might have or have our own theologies have been or will be influenced by evidence of and or interaction with extraterrestrials. How will our theology change? What do they do they exist? What might they believe? And so on. But the main question for us, of course, is is the room in Christianity for aliens? Does it disprove the Bible? Is it actually part of the Bible? All of those. And there's lots of theologians that have written on this.
Mark Clark [00:04:32]:
Vatican Catholic theologians, C.S. lewis, a Lutheran theologian named Ted Peters. The culture is obsessed with it, obviously. Movies, scientists, contact Carl Sagan, Bob Lazar, X Files. I meet people who say they've seen aliens. Now it's always the guy where you're like, I would totally believe you if you weren't you. Right? It's always that guy. Like, it's never the guy who's like, man, I've been credible my whole life.
Mark Clark [00:05:00]:
I've never said anything Crazy. I'm totally legit. I'm a rational dude. And then all of a sudden he's like, dude, you don't understand. It's always the guy where you're like, oh, really? You were abducted? That's great. And then you're like, yeah, I totally believe this if it wasn't you. Because you're kind of say weird things all the time. Seems like that's always kind of you.
Mark Clark [00:05:19]:
It's never the nor. So that's kind of the big question. A guy named Jack Handy. You guys listen to Jack or, you know, Jack Handy? You watch snl? I watch it for cultural research. I don't enjoy it at all, but. Jack Handy. You ever heard of Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy?
Speaker C [00:05:34]:
Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy.
Mark Clark [00:05:37]:
You've heard of that before?
Speaker C [00:05:38]:
All right, here was Jack Handy's reflection.
Mark Clark [00:05:40]:
If aliens from outer space ever come and we show them our civilization and
Speaker C [00:05:46]:
they make fun of it, we should
Mark Clark [00:05:47]:
say we were just kidding, that it isn't really our civilization, but a gag we hoped they would like. Then we tell them to come back in 20 years to see our real civilization. After that, we start a crash program of coming up with an impressive new civilization. Either that or just shoot down the aliens as they're waving goodbye. Right. That's kind of our options. Right. So what do we think about all this from a Christian perspective? What are biblical thoughts on the issue? Culturally speaking, there are two reactions that people have.
Mark Clark [00:06:19]:
Either excitement, which is the kind of X Files, Mulder, I want to believe that kind of reaction, or dread, which is, they're going to come for us. They're going to enslave us. They're going to take all of our water, they're going to kill us. They're going to be more powerful than us, all of that. And so do they exist? Obviously, to get to the point, we don't know. We're agnostic about it.
Speaker C [00:06:41]:
But let's explore some issues around it.
Mark Clark [00:06:43]:
I have about four general things to talk about in these areas. First, if there are aliens, does that disprove God? No. In Genesis chapter one, we have God creating the universe. And he creates it. Massively expansive. The stars, planets, people. And he does this amazing thing. In Genesis, chapter one, verse one, he creates the heavens and the earth.
Mark Clark [00:07:07]:
And the point of that text is that it's very vast, but God made it. And so the reality is he makes this massively expansive universe. And does that challenge if in those mass. In that massively expensive universe, on a planet, if we find aliens, does it crash Christianity to the ground. There are philosophers who think so. Physicist Paul Davies, he says this. The discovery of extraterrestrial life would have catastrophic results for religion because he says humanity, according to Christianity, it's very important, is the sole end, pinnacle of creation and the object, only object of God's love. That's what he says Christians believe and ergo, if we found aliens, it would destroy Christianity.
Mark Clark [00:07:50]:
He says it's inevitable that if we discover life elsewhere in the universe, it will change forever our perspective of our own species and our own planet. Those people who cling to the idea that humanity is the pinnacle of creation or that somehow we were made in the image of God, would, I think, receive a rude shock. Philosopher Theodore Schick says this. For all their differences, Christians and humanists agree on at least one thing, that humans are the most valuable form of life on the planet. Whether divinely crafted or naturally evolved from nothing, both groups consider humans to be the crown of earthly creation. Since humanists believe that life is a natural rather than a supernatural phenomenon, they have no trouble admitting that self conscious, intelligent beings may exist elsewhere in the universe. Such an admission, he says, is not so easy for Christians. However, the Bible does not mention the existence of other planets, let alone intelligent creatures that inhabit them.
Mark Clark [00:08:46]:
So if intelligent aliens were discovered, Christian theologians would have a lot of explaining to do. Here's the thing. Nothing could be further from the truth. It would simply reveal, here's the Christian response, that God has created life more than once. It's a straw man for these philosophers to say the Bible never mentions aliens. Ergo, if aliens exist, the Bible falls apart. The Bible doesn't mention a lot of things. The Bible doesn't mention telephones, doesn't mention Internet, doesn't mention dinosaurs, doesn't mention any of these things.
Mark Clark [00:09:17]:
It doesn't mean that those things actually don't exist. Saying that the Bible doesn't mention it actually isn't an argument for anything. That's one response. The second response is the assumption that these philosophers make that it is a biblical view, that humanity is actually the only object of God's love and the pinnacle of creation. As if humanity is the only thing that matters in the world world. And what we have in the Bible is actually a different picture. Here's the response. The psalmist David talks about this.
Mark Clark [00:09:46]:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, he's looking at the heavens, he's looking at all this expanse. We're going to come back to this passage. I think it's Important which you have set in place.
Speaker C [00:09:58]:
What is man, that you are mindful
Mark Clark [00:10:02]:
of him and the Son of man,
Speaker C [00:10:03]:
that you care for him.
Mark Clark [00:10:04]:
Look at what his conclusion is. Yet you have made him, meaning man, a little lower than the heavenly beings. It's an assumption on philosophers parts to say that the Christian view is that human beings are the pinnacle of creation. And the most important thing, the reality is God has made angels. And the whole philosophy of the Bible, whether it's Psalm chapter 8 or the book of Hebrews chapter 2, when it's taking Psalm chapter 8 and it's kind of interpreting it through a Christological lens. The point is, is that humankind is not necessarily seen as the pinnacle of creation, that God himself has created such a vast universe that there are amazing things that God himself looks at and values. So CS Lewis says this. It is of course, the essence of Christianity that God loves man and for his sake became man and died.
Mark Clark [00:11:01]:
But that does not prove, listen to this. That that man is the sole end of nature. In the parable, it was the one lost sheep that the shepherd went in search of. It was not the only sheep in the flock. And we are not told that it was even the most valuable. And so here's what we have to understand. If intelligent beings were found elsewhere in the universe, they couldn't compromise the special relationship already existing between God and human beings. That's the reality.
Mark Clark [00:11:28]:
In the same way that if. So I have three daughters, right? I have Sienna, she's 13. We have Hayden, 10, and Bella's 8. Now imagine that once I had Hayden, all right, my second, that that somehow made me love my first less. That's the point of the philosophy. God could have an infinite amount of beings. He could have 12 different species of whatever, and it doesn't change his love for us. In the same way that you have multiple kids.
Mark Clark [00:11:56]:
Now, we all know that there's probably
Speaker C [00:11:58]:
a kid that you like more than the other ones.
Mark Clark [00:12:00]:
All right, that's fine. Admit that to yourself. That's good. And I know that Sienna has started to now come into these sermons. So, honey, it's you. I love you more than the others, but don't tell them, okay? So here's the reality. The reality is I have one child. I have a second child.
Mark Clark [00:12:17]:
It's not that my love all of a sudden has to be taken away from the one and given to the other. It multiplies out exponential.
Speaker C [00:12:23]:
Exponentially.
Mark Clark [00:12:23]:
All right? So that's the reality. And so Lewis's point is just. Even if there was aliens found it
Speaker C [00:12:29]:
doesn't mean that God doesn't love humankind.
Mark Clark [00:12:31]:
Now, second point is the question of the vastness and the mystery of the
Speaker C [00:12:36]:
universe has always been embraced by Christians.
Mark Clark [00:12:40]:
In the beginning, God makes the heavens and the Earth. We know that There are around 100
Speaker C [00:12:45]:
billion stars in our galaxy.
Mark Clark [00:12:48]:
All right, let's show you a picture. This is the. This is the photo. It looks. It looks pixely.
Speaker C [00:12:56]:
And the reason it looks pixely is
Mark Clark [00:12:57]:
because this is a Hubble telescope photo. This is the largest picture of the universe ever taken. This is the best picture. We've got, the largest amount of the universe we have. Now, obviously, you cannot tell what is going on here, but the bottom line is there are a hundred billion galaxies. Now, for those of you, you know, I haven't been to school or whatever, you got to understand something. We exist in. In one galaxy, all right? The Milky Way galaxy, there are a hundred billion galaxies, that.
Mark Clark [00:13:33]:
There are around 100 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy, and then there are 100 billion galaxies in the universe. So we live on one planet orbiting one star, the sun, in just one galaxy. And so we have to understand the vastness of creation could mean, as some people think, that look at us, we're some random little like you. You would even be able to close to seeing a dot of what the Earth is or even our galaxy in this thing. I mean, these are. These are galaxies within galaxies. You want your mind to be blown. There's black holes in here where things go in and they don't come out.
Mark Clark [00:14:09]:
But then they might come out in a different universe. We have no idea. It's crazy. Go watch interstellar, all right? It'll blow your mind. Because then stuff starts to. Gravity starts to take place. And what happens is they go on one planet, and every hour that they're there is actually seven years back home. Because time functions differently once you start to go through these different places.
Mark Clark [00:14:32]:
And so. And then they. They make a mistake, and so they're there and then they get messed up and they come back and they've only been gone for a little bit, and they come back and it's been 23 years, and they're like, oh, my goodness. This is what happens when you start talking about space. The vastness, the complexity, the mystery of it. Christians have always embraced this, the idea that we're one part of a vast universe. Now, here's what you got to understand.
Speaker C [00:14:55]:
Scientists point out, I think it's very important.
Mark Clark [00:14:57]:
The anthropic principle, the fine tuning of the universe, the Idea all of the things that would have had to come into play for our universe to ever come into existence. Our life giving universe, the idea that our world even can be life giving, that you and I can breathe, that there's oxygen and there's H2O and there's CO2 and there's. We're this far away from the sun, we're not too far. All of those things actually had to come within view. Scientists tell us the chances of our universe coming into existence are 1 chance in 10 to the 138th power.
Speaker C [00:15:36]:
Now I don't know if you know that.
Mark Clark [00:15:38]:
That's 138 zeros after the 10. All right. Now just to compare what kind of astronomical number this is, if you were to add up all the seconds since the universe began, Scientists tell us let's just go with the natural ideas. Fifteen billion years ago the universe came into existence. So how many seconds have existed for 15 billion years? 10 to the 70th power. All right, that's how many seconds that the universe has been in existence for. And what mathematicians say is the universe coming into existence with all the life giving variables that we need to actually ever exist. Here right now is 1/10 to the 138th power.
Mark Clark [00:16:20]:
Basically from a mathematical equation. It's a miracle, it's impossible, it can't be done unless there was a mind that actually played with it. And that's what one writer says. He talks about the idea that there were 15 constants that had to be lined up. First off, these had to be lined up, 122 variables had to be lined up within a million millionth for anything ever to exist. Francis Collins says this matter would not have been able to coalesce. There would have been no galaxies, no stars, no planets and no people. So picture 122 dials across the universe needing to be zoned in to the million millionth for our universe to ever come into existence.
Mark Clark [00:17:04]:
William Lane Craig says the weak force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature which operates inside the nucleus of an atom, is so finely tuned that an alteration in its value by even one part in ten to the thousand thousandth power would have prevented a life permitting universe. Astronomer Fred Hoyle says this a common sense interpretation of the facts. Now listen for you mathematicians and for you scientists out there, but naturalists, you're atheists, your skeptics, your agnostics, listen Fred Hoyle A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics as well as chemistry and biology. And there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The bottom line is the math shoots to the idea that there is a creator, there is a mind that actually put all of this into play and said, now it's going to come about. Now, if all of that is true, the argument is this, if all that data had to be true about our life giving universe coming into existence, what are the chances that that happens somewhere else again? That there's four of those kind of planets or a hundred of them, and that therefore there's life and it evolved in the aliens. All of that, the facts that we are here are miraculous, let alone it happening again and again. Now, I think it's a good argument.
Mark Clark [00:18:25]:
I think it's a good argument against aliens. However, I don't think it's a great biblical argument, because our whole point is we don't exist here by chance.
Speaker C [00:18:33]:
We exist here because God lovingly created
Mark Clark [00:18:36]:
us and actually said, I want to do something. Which means the more you believe in
Speaker C [00:18:40]:
God, in a sense, the more you can believe maybe God did it again, maybe somewhere else God actually created people.
Mark Clark [00:18:47]:
So we don't have any direct evidence for the existence of aliens. But lack of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence.
Speaker C [00:18:55]:
That depends upon how likely it is that we would ever find evidence of extraterrestrials if they actually existed. I think God here's the point is so vast that he can create anything he wants, because human beings aren't the point of the universe. Theology says that God's the point of the universe. His glory is the point of the universe.
Mark Clark [00:19:14]:
God would have been entertained and fully in awe and full of love and totally full if he never created us. If he created that vast universe and then just sat and watched it, it proclaimed his glory to creation, he would have been fine. The Trinity would have existed. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Because the point of the whole human story isn't about human beings. It's about the glory of God. That's the point. Which means your life is supposed to
Speaker C [00:19:43]:
be about the glory of God, by the way.
Mark Clark [00:19:45]:
So every time you sit and you look in awe of the stars, the deduction has never, from a Christian standpoint, but my gosh, look at the expanse of the stars. I must mean nothing. The universe must be meaningless because it's so vast. It's man. Look at all of this. God did this for his glory and he made us, and he made me
Speaker C [00:20:05]:
and I matter in the midst of this vastness. That makes it more beautiful.
Mark Clark [00:20:14]:
That should stir you to actually say, my gosh, in the midst of all this, God actually cares about me. And so the Vatican theologian Jose Gabriel Funes says this. Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on Earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent, created by God. This is not in contrast with our faith, because we can't put limits on God's creative freedom.
Speaker C [00:20:40]:
The reality is, you might have heard of SETI before, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Mark Clark [00:20:47]:
Seti, S E T I.
Speaker C [00:20:48]:
It's.
Mark Clark [00:20:49]:
It's what that Contact. You've seen Contact. Jody Foster and Carl Sagan book. It's what that's based on. You shoot out a bunch of program numbers out into the universe, and hopefully, if we get a repeat back to us that is a certain length and has a certain rhythm, we know that somebody actually is returning the message.
Speaker C [00:21:08]:
And we know that there's life, which
Mark Clark [00:21:10]:
is a fascinating philosophy, by the way. Go back and watch Contact and apply the same ethic to biology that we said to ourselves in seti. And we do this now that if we shoot out a certain number of
Speaker C [00:21:21]:
numbers, it can't just be, like four numbers or four digits, because that could be random.
Mark Clark [00:21:26]:
But if we set out a certain amount of numbers in a certain Morse code kind of pattern.
Speaker C [00:21:30]:
Rhythm of mathematics, which would be the language of the universe, I think. And there's a lot of philosophy on this.
Mark Clark [00:21:35]:
I don't think that they're going to
Speaker C [00:21:36]:
speak Italian if there are extraterrestrials. Okay, they could. Sorry for the Italians in the room,
Mark Clark [00:21:42]:
but they'll probably speak math because math is kind of a universal language. So if they do show up, we
Speaker C [00:21:47]:
could probably do math equations together, which, you know, I'll be checking out at that point.
Mark Clark [00:21:51]:
But. And so the reality is, so we say, let's shoot out all these rhythms, and then if these rhythms come back, that means they're intelligent. And then, okay, so that's beautiful. There's an intelligent life. If there's form, if there's structure, if there's intellect, if there's rhythm, if there's pattern, if there's, you know, cognitive ideas. And yet then we look at biology and apply the same thing. There is literally in our DNA a math equation, codes that are intelligent, that define everything about you.
Speaker C [00:22:21]:
In.
Mark Clark [00:22:21]:
In our DNA, we've mapped it out. It's called the human genome. And the guy who did it ends up going, I want to give my life to Jesus, because this is crazy. There's an actual language in your DNA. And so when we say it about aliens, we got to say it about ourself. And we got to go. Yes. Any sign of any kind of rhythm or information that seems encoded points toward a creator, points toward a mind behind all of this.
Mark Clark [00:22:48]:
And so Christians could actually be the ones leading seti, leading the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. But Oxford chemist Peter Akin says this, and you're surprised.
Speaker C [00:22:59]:
I actually have found this many quotes about this issue, haven't you?
Mark Clark [00:23:04]:
I've always thought that I was insignificant. Peter Atkins says, getting to know the size of the universe, I see just how insignificant I really am. And I think the rest of the human race ought to realize just how insignificant it is. I mean, we're just a bit of slime on a planet belonging to one sun. And that's the difference of a worldview.
Speaker C [00:23:27]:
You have David in Psalm 8 saying, look at me. I'm one person in the midst of the heavens. I see the moon, I see the stars. Man, I can't believe you care about me versus, boy, I'm one person in the midst of the stars. Who cares? Nobody must care about me. Life must be meaningless. See, that's a philosophical deduction that you're making. Now you're in the realm of metaphysics.
Speaker C [00:23:57]:
Now you're in the realm of philosophy, not science.
Mark Clark [00:24:00]:
You say, here's some data, and here's
Speaker C [00:24:01]:
my conclusions about it. Here's what the psalmist said.
Mark Clark [00:24:04]:
Psalm 19 says this. The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands, and day after day they pour forth speech. Night after night, they display knowledge. I mean, this is fascinating. The Bible actually says that when you're looking at this, all right, not that you're looking, but when you see it, there's one of two things you can say. I mean, nothing. There is no God.
Mark Clark [00:24:29]:
It doesn't matter. Or, my gosh, this is displaying. The psalm says, the skies proclaim the work of his hands. It means two different ways of interpreting this data. And the question I have for you is if you choose to interpret the data and say, this means I'm nothing, the vastness means life is meaningless. Here's my question. Why?
Speaker C [00:24:53]:
Because there's always a thing behind the thing. I've been.
Mark Clark [00:24:59]:
Romans chapter one says, you have all this data, you, These visible qualities that show the world an invisible God. And he says, and yet people suppress the evidence. See, in the end, what's the problem? It's that humankind. It's not the lack of evidence. The evidence is right here. The issue is the suppression of the evidence. Why do you suppress it? Why spin it? Why go the extra mile to reinterpret something that seems according to reason to be saying, hey, I exist. The reason I made this was so that you would come to me.
Mark Clark [00:25:38]:
I'm preaching to you, I'm welcoming you. I love you. And then we choose to interpret as, I'm meaningless. There is no God. Why? What's the why behind the why? Paul says, there's something else going on, bro. Look at yourself. And I'm not gonna project on you what it is, but look into your own soul. Look into your own heart.
Mark Clark [00:25:54]:
Look into your own life. What are the reasons that you wouldn't necessarily say, there is a God and he gave us his son, Jesus, and I want to give my life to him. I'm not sure it's just because of the data and because you're smarter than everybody in the room. I think that it may have to do with something behind the something. Maybe a fear that you have, maybe a cowardice that you're afraid of what people might think of you. Maybe you're afraid of what it means for your sex life. The fact that you don't just get to do whatever you want anymore. You.
Mark Clark [00:26:22]:
Because now there's an authority over your life. Be honest with your reasons. Because there's always a thing behind the thing. Is it because you don't get to control your money anymore? Because God says, you know what? I know you made this and you go after shiny stuff, but all that stuff's gonna burn in the end. I want you to use it for kingdom. I want you to help people. I want you to take your things and use it for the people coming to know Jesus, kids who are dying, sex trafficking. I want you to take your time, your energy to actually do stuff beyond you and your life and your redoing your little kitchen tiles.
Mark Clark [00:26:57]:
The world is bigger than that. It's bigger than what you think it is. It's bigger than your kid getting straight A's and making sure they make the basketball team wake up. Look at this. Your kid ain't going to the NBA, bro.
Speaker C [00:27:11]:
I'm just letting you know right now.
Mark Clark [00:27:15]:
Look at this. Be honest with your own heart. What's the reason behind the reason that you might interpret this in a different way than it's asking you to.
Speaker C [00:27:29]:
The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day and night, they pour forth speech. Night after night, they display knowledge.
Mark Clark [00:27:39]:
There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth. Their words to the ends of the world.
Speaker C [00:27:48]:
Is it because you don't get to do marriage the way you wanted? Is it because you don't get to do work the way you wanted? Is it because you have to come under the authority of the scriptures and now they get to define what you
Mark Clark [00:27:59]:
have to deal with and what your
Speaker C [00:28:01]:
opinion is on things and how you're going to live your life?
Mark Clark [00:28:03]:
Is that the thing behind the thing?
Speaker C [00:28:05]:
Just be honest with that.
Mark Clark [00:28:06]:
And maybe that's the most important thing out of all this alien talk for
Speaker C [00:28:09]:
you, isn't the question of aliens, it's the question of how you interpret the universe. Because there's one of two ways it's vast, meaningless nothing, or there's something in it. You know, it's fascinating.
Mark Clark [00:28:24]:
Look at.
Speaker C [00:28:24]:
Compare Star Treks, okay?
Mark Clark [00:28:26]:
For you geeks out there, compare Star Treks.
Speaker C [00:28:29]:
The Star treks of the 60s were
Mark Clark [00:28:32]:
of course about the future.
Speaker C [00:28:34]:
And they were about traveling around and going to different galaxies and visiting green women and whatever. And that's what it was about. So there's no religion in that original Star Trek series because the projection was
Mark Clark [00:28:50]:
that as we went forward with technology and the world evolved, religion would go out of style and be done because
Speaker C [00:28:59]:
no one would actually believe stupid myths anymore.
Mark Clark [00:29:02]:
But then you look at the Star
Speaker C [00:29:04]:
Trek the Next Generation with Picard in the 90s, the late 80s and the 90s, and what you have is religion everywhere.
Mark Clark [00:29:11]:
They have people on the ship that are religious. Everything's metaphysical, everything's spiritual, everything's existential. Why? Because that 30 years went by and we realized more people were becoming religious as they followed science, not less. And they began realizing that science itself raises a lot of existential metaphysical questions. It doesn't say, let's stop with it and I'll just become more secular. That's not where science has gone. I don't know what you're reading, I don't know what your one year at SFU told you, but that's not where the world went. The world went, look at the data.
Mark Clark [00:29:49]:
And then it said, it's crying out for an answer. And the answer is not matter. Because matter can't ever create mind. If you just give it enough time, given enough chance, matter and meat will over time create a cognitive thing that can self reflect and do art and music. Not gonna happen. Mine comes first.
Speaker C [00:30:16]:
That's where all the evidence leads. So Alvin Plantaga, greatest living philosopher Christian, says this. It would seem strange if God would have created this entire universe and have creatures in only one small corner who are able to witness and see what miraculous work he has done. So the natural thing to think from a Christian perspective is that there are lots and lots of different intelligent species out there. Now let me give you a third and then a movement here, and then I'll give a final reflection. The third thing is that this, of course, raises one of the most critical questions toward a Christian would be, okay, what about the incarnation, which is, of course, Jesus becoming human? And what about the atonement, where on the cross Jesus dies for the sin of the world? What do you do if there's intelligent life out there with those questions? Because on the one hand, you have Romans chapter five, which of course says that Jesus died for man, that as man was disobedient, and then God's going to save man through the death of Jesus and so on and so forth.
Mark Clark [00:31:18]:
But I think there's.
Speaker C [00:31:20]:
I think there's an interesting reflection on the Bible on this, and it doesn't necessarily need to be a problem. Colossians chapter one is this beautiful cosmic chapter in the Bible. You should go home and read it this afternoon. Talks about Jesus through. Through Jesus, everything was created.
Mark Clark [00:31:38]:
And then it says this.
Speaker C [00:31:40]:
Colossians chapter 1, verse 18.
Mark Clark [00:31:42]:
He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning. This is talking about Jesus, the firstborn
Speaker C [00:31:47]:
from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.
Mark Clark [00:31:50]:
For in him all the fullness of
Speaker C [00:31:51]:
God was pleased to dwell, and through
Mark Clark [00:31:54]:
him to reconcile to himself all things. So here's what the cross did, right? The atonement is a reconciliation issue. It's trying to reconcile what we talk about, often humankind, to God. But he says it's bigger than that. He's reconciling to himself all things. This is the Greek word panta. It means all things. And then he says, I know it's a little heavy already.
Mark Clark [00:32:21]:
So I didn't want to get into,
Speaker C [00:32:22]:
like, Alexa con for you.
Mark Clark [00:32:25]:
It's like, all right, okay, so it's all things really technical, whether on earth. So you have a couple. You have a couple different spots you have on Earth or in heaven, right? In the heavenlies. Uranun. It's in the heavenlies, in heaven there, but vast. And he's trying to explain this cosmic making peace by the blood of his cross. So what's the means by which Jesus Christ. What's the means by which he did all this? He did it by his cross.
Mark Clark [00:32:57]:
That's the means by which salvation in your life happens. But he's saying it's not just about your life personally. There's A cosmic vision where the cross actually creates a reconciliation in the heavens. There's, there's, there's the, the cosmic vision of what the cross actually accomplishes, the
Speaker C [00:33:16]:
reversal of death, all creation in every corners.
Mark Clark [00:33:23]:
So it's not a problem in regard
Speaker C [00:33:24]:
to incarnation necessarily because of course, Jesus, as theologians say, maybe we're not the only place he incarnated. Now, it doesn't really make much sense because once he incarnated here, he went to be in the heavens and he's a person forever. Which, by the way, as an aside,
Mark Clark [00:33:42]:
is one of the things I think Christians miss about the sacrifice of Jesus. Here's what I think most of you grow up with.
Speaker C [00:33:47]:
I think you grew up with a, with an incarnation vision of Jesus where you know, he exists somewhere as a
Mark Clark [00:33:52]:
blob or something, and then he becomes a human being and he roughs it out for 33 years.
Speaker C [00:33:57]:
And yeah, he's, you know, he's poor, he doesn't eat very much and he's hanging and then he gets beaten, which is terrible. Then he goes to the cross.
Mark Clark [00:34:03]:
But don't worry, because in the back of your head he goes back to glory and he's fine and everything's great. And, and for you, that 33 years was the sacrifice.
Speaker C [00:34:11]:
The problem is, as theologians have pointed out, that's not actually the proper vision of what happened because Jesus, when he became a human being. And this should make you, next time you're reflecting on the body and the blood of Jesus for you just have this in your mind. The picture of Jesus now is a picture of a Jesus who actually is limited in a sense to the human body forever. It wasn't a 33 year sacrifice, guys. It was, it was infinite. It goes on even now.
Mark Clark [00:34:43]:
He's at the right hand of the
Speaker C [00:34:45]:
Father interceding on our behalf right now.
Mark Clark [00:34:48]:
So obviously he's not off at another,
Speaker C [00:34:50]:
you know, planet doing whatever maybe he could have before he came here. We're not really sure, C.S. lewis.
Mark Clark [00:34:57]:
And you were like, at least we're not going to get a C.S. lewis quote today, because there's no way C.S.
Speaker C [00:35:03]:
lewis wrote about this.
Mark Clark [00:35:04]:
Well, I already quoted him once. CS Lewis has a sermon called Religion
Speaker C [00:35:10]:
and Rocketry, and here's his reflections. And this is what I think is a fascinating question in regard to redemption and incarnation and atonement.
Mark Clark [00:35:20]:
So we got the question of was
Speaker C [00:35:22]:
it just for man? Maybe we got the question of Colossians 1 being a cosmic vision of possibly what the atonement meant and that if, you know, people need Redeeming, then maybe the cross actually does it for them. But then Lewis goes one deeper and he asks this question. If there are intelligent beings out there, maybe they're not fallen yet. And here's what he says. If there are species and rational species other than men, are any or all
Mark Clark [00:35:51]:
of them like us, fallen? This is what we always seem to forget. We seem to think that the incarnation coming of Jesus implies some particular merit or excellency in humanity. But of course it implies just the reverse, a particular demerit and depravity. No creature that deserved redemption would need to be redeemed. They that are whole need not the physician. Also, if all of them or any of them are fallen, have they been denied redemption by the incarnation and cross of Christ? For of course, it is not a very new idea that the sun may, for all we know, have been incarnate in other worlds than Earth and so saved other races than ours. Perhaps of all races we only fell. Though perhaps man is the only lost sheep, the one therefore whom the shepherd came to seek.
Speaker C [00:36:41]:
It's a fascinating question. If there are other planets and other intelligence, maybe they're not fallen yet. Maybe they don't need the redemption of
Mark Clark [00:36:49]:
Christ yet because they're living in an Eden state of perfection.
Speaker C [00:36:55]:
Richard Randolph, Kansas City University ethicist, says, would sin be the same on other planets as we can see receive of it here? Would there even be sin?
Mark Clark [00:37:03]:
Or would God be present to that
Speaker C [00:37:05]:
species in a completely different way? So here's the other thing. Lewis says. If they came here and they were fallen or weren't fallen, what would our call be in every movie? We shoot them, we kill them, we blow them up.
Mark Clark [00:37:20]:
We're scared, we run.
Speaker C [00:37:21]:
But he says, if they're not fallen and they arrive here in perfect godlike state, almost like we were in the
Mark Clark [00:37:29]:
garden, what should we do? Shoot them? That would be bad. He says we should learn from them. And then he says, but if they are fallen, what should we do?
Speaker C [00:37:39]:
Shoot them or evangelize them?
Mark Clark [00:37:45]:
If they're fallen and in need of Jesus, what would our response be?
Speaker C [00:37:49]:
He says, this two paragraphs are great.
Mark Clark [00:37:52]:
We know what our race does to strangers. Man destroys or enslaves every species he can. There are individuals who don't, but they aren't the sort who are likely to be our pioneers in space. Our ambassadors to new worlds will be the needy and the greedy adventurer. What will they do if they meet these beings? If they're weaker than them, they will be destroyed. How would things go if those types met an unfallen race. At first they'd have a grand time jeering at them, duping them and exploiting their innocence and. But I doubt if our half animal cutting would long be a match for a godlike wisdom, selfless valor and perfection.
Mark Clark [00:38:30]:
Can even missionaries be trusted? He says gun and gospel have been horribly combined in the past where they continue to press upon creatures that did not need to be saved. The plan of salvation which God has appointed just for man, I don't know. Then he says, this I love. This is crazy. Our loyalty is not to our species, but to God. Those who are or can be his sons are real brothers, even if they have shells or tusks. It is spiritual, not biological kinship, that counts. And then he says this.
Mark Clark [00:39:06]:
I have wondered whether the vast astronomical distances may not be God's quarantine precaution. They prevent the spiritual infection of a fallen species from spreading. Basically, he creates that to keep us away from everybody.
Speaker C [00:39:26]:
Now let me end this way. Let's get practical. We don't know about aliens. We could have ended the sermon in 30 seconds. But you know about your neighbor. Your neighbor doesn't know Jesus and he's fallen. So instead of sitting around listening to Bob Lazar on Joe Rogan all day, go tell your neighbor about Christ. What does the fact that we even ask this question mean about us? What's the mirror? The mirror is this.
Speaker C [00:40:03]:
I think. I think a lot. I think we all have in us this desire for something transcendent, something bigger than your boring life, than the natural world. I. You know, when Avatar came out in 2009, people left and reported that they wanted to take their own life after Avatar was over. Now, some people said that just because it was so horrible. Other people said that when they entered into the world of Pandora, they experienced
Mark Clark [00:40:32]:
a kind of
Speaker C [00:40:34]:
transcendent experience that made them want to go back again and again and again. And they wanted to be able to live in that reality so much that it sucked. Coming back to the real world of marriage and bills and work and the natural physical limitations where we can't fly around on dragons and go all of this stuff. There was a limitation, but the minute you start to feel that way about anything, and one writer has says this, if nothing in this world can satisfy and fulfill you, it means you were made for another world. What is that constant, elusive yearning we all have?
Mark Clark [00:41:12]:
That thing that's like I. I grasp it for a quick second, then it was gone. Like, I want more of that. I want that. Why you wouldn't have that if you
Speaker C [00:41:19]:
were just an animal, by the way,
Mark Clark [00:41:20]:
you wouldn't know anything other than eating stuff, procreating and moving on. That's the reality. Zebras aren't asking the big questions about existential reality. They're just having sex and eating and trying not to get eaten by the lion. That's it. They're not going, what's my place in the universe?
Speaker C [00:41:37]:
And I wonder if there's a place where my soul could dwell forever, right? And they don't write stories like Peter Pan where we all get to fly. They don't write stories like Beauty and
Mark Clark [00:41:47]:
the Beast where the beast gets to
Speaker C [00:41:49]:
turn into a beauty because the love and stuff, sacrifice of a person. Don't write these stories.
Mark Clark [00:41:53]:
Why do we write these stories? Why do you have that yearning? It's because, listen to me. There is a place where we don't die. There is a place where the beast gets turned into a beauty because of the sacrifice of another. There is a place where there's no more death or pain and you could fly. And it's new creation and its perfection and it's such pleasure and delight, you can't even imagine it. And once in a while we get this little, little plant that pops up through the concrete of the nonsense of real life and it goes, you know, there's another world, right? And that other world has started because of what Jesus Christ did on the cross and in the resurrection and the power of the spirit in your life. The one who came from another world and came into our world and gave his life so that you might experience that kind of cosmic, insane joy and delight forever, for all time. Here's the problem.
Mark Clark [00:42:57]:
You refuse to follow that yearning to
Speaker C [00:42:59]:
where it's leading you.
Mark Clark [00:43:01]:
And instead of following it where it's leading you, like a holiday at sea,
Speaker C [00:43:05]:
you sit around making mud pies with sex and ambition and. And drinking. It's so small, it's so rusty. Don't settle.
Mark Clark [00:43:18]:
You settle too easy.
Speaker C [00:43:19]:
Your soul settles on nonsense. When Jesus going, the reason I came from another world is so you can join me there. Father, I just pray that that yearning in our soul that wants to talk about this kind of stuff, the movies, every time we see one, the shows, the.
Mark Clark [00:43:42]:
I want to believe the desire in us to experience something that transcends our thing, all of that, that we would interpret that right, that we would follow the path to where it leads, which is Jesus welcoming us through his own work. He came for the one lost sheep so that we could join the Father in absolute perfect delight and passion and pleasure forevermore, as the psalmist says, that
Speaker C [00:44:13]:
we'd actually follow it. We'd have the courage. You burn away fear, you burn away
Mark Clark [00:44:16]:
the questions, you'd burn it all away. And people, even right now, over this kind of crazy, silly question, would actually
Speaker C [00:44:23]:
give their life to you as they're sitting in seats across these sites, that they would actually pray to accept Christ into their life and say, I will take him as the cosmic Lord over heaven, over earth, and over my life, because he reconciles me to God, he forgives me of sin, he offers me delight and pleasure that nothing in this world can offer me. And he's the only way to get it. I pray they'd have the courage to give their life to him and Holy Spirit, that you would move and when people would feel that in their heart and their soul, the sweating, the nervousness, whatever, to start a new life.
Mark Clark [00:45:01]:
It's the new world trying to break
Speaker C [00:45:03]:
into the old world right now. And I just feel that tension even in the room.
Mark Clark [00:45:07]:
The new world is pressing through the
Speaker C [00:45:10]:
veil of the old world, trying to
Mark Clark [00:45:12]:
get us to follow it, and we resist and we resist and we fight it. Holy Spirit, I just pray that you
Speaker C [00:45:18]:
would burn that resistance away and we would embrace
Mark Clark [00:45:23]:
the love of God, the
Speaker C [00:45:25]:
uniqueness of ourselves made in your image and all you did to bring us back to yourself. In Jesus good name we pray. Amen.