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A few weeks ago, the world famous physicist Stephen Hawking came one step closer to his dream of going into space: He took a flight in a “specially modified aircraft” that allowed him to experience weightlessness.
Hawking, who is almost completely paralyzed by Lou Gehrig’s disease, said that the purpose of his flight was to “encourage public interest in space.” Not out of the kind of “new frontier” optimism, but out of a despairing view of humanity.
For Hawking, the goal for space travel isn’t to seek out new life or even to boldly go where no man has gone before—it’s to ensure the survival of the human race.
After the flight, Hawking said that “life on Earth is at an ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers.” Thus, colonizing other worlds may be our only chance of surviving our own folly.
If this sounds like Hawking—who is Isaac Newton’s successor at Cambridge University, the most prestigious chair—has been watching a bit too much of the Sci-Fi Channel, he’s not alone in his bleak assessment. In a recent New York Times’ op-ed, Robert Wright of the New America Foundation described what he called “an apocalyptic vibe in the zeitgeist.”
Wright argued that it’s “not hard to imagine how the technological sophistication that got us to the brink of global civilization could be our undoing.” He cited “classic nuclear apocalypse,” “eco-apocalypse,” and “terrorism” as three possible factors that could lead to a “planetary death spiral.”
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These are hardly isolated examples. These days, if you want lectures on human depravity and the looming apocalypse, the best places aren’t churches or Christian book stores—it’s prestigious op-ed pages and science departments of universities.
It’s clear that the anti-religion crowd is growing desperate, the result of all their angry rejection of the hope of the Gospel.
Oddly enough, there is something almost biblical in this kind of talk. Almost, that is. This recognition of the human capacity for folly and self-destruction is a welcome alternative to the naïve utopianism and belief in progress that dominated so much of twentieth-century thinking. But it’s only part of the truth.
What’s missing is the solution to what C.S. Lewis called our “bentness.” After all, even if we do escape the bounds of Earth to colonize new planets, our fallen human nature will accompany us on the trip and the cycle of folly will start all over again.
That’s why the real “logic of human destiny” (to borrow a phrase from Wright), is the Gospel. It not only describes the human condition correctly, it provides an answer to that condition—an answer that can be implemented on this world, not Rigel IV.
Instead of removing us from this planet, God came down to this fallen world. In living and dying as one of us, He transformed our humanity in a way that can break the power of sin and folly.
What needs modifying is us, not our spacecraft. The best antidote to the “apocalyptic vibe” Wright describes is hope—not in what man can accomplish on or off this planet, but in what God has done and continues to do, His kingdom, and the assurance that our human destiny is Heaven, not Mars.
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From BreakPoint®, May 16, 2007, Copyright 2007, Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with the permission of Prison Fellowship Ministries. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced or distributed without the express written permission of Prison Fellowship Ministries. “BreakPoint®” and “Prison Fellowship Ministries®” are registered trademarks of Prison Fellowship Ministries
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