The news is full of conjectures about life on other planets. It is all the rage nowadays to hear that a dewdrop might be found on Mars or that extraterrestrials are coming for us. Let’s examine this obsession to discover life on other planets, biblically. What can we deduce from what we already know of God and what the scriptures may implicate on the subject?
The most frequently used appositive, or description of God is “The God who created the heavens and the earth.” His name and His essence are inseparable from His great act of creation. That He created it all may be His most unshakable feature—the main qualifier— just like the name George Washington will be forever linked to the phrase “the first President of the United States.”
Every creator of anything has a purpose. A contractor may construct a house for a paying client, or may use the plans to build his own show home to garner further business. What he does not do is build a house to have it soon be demolished, or build it in such oblivion that nobody ever sees it, or randomly throw a house together just to get rid of a chronic stomachache. He builds with and for a purpose that becomes an extension of himself. He and his actions matter, otherwise he would stay in bed every morning. Nobody, except a person who has lost his mind, works for no reason at all.
When we analyze why God created the heavens and the earth, it appears for all the world to have been made for man. As C. S. Lewis stated, “Earth, the dirty little tennis ball in the solar system, is the only visited planet.” Earth was the site of divine redemption. Great dramas are played out here. It appears that during the week of Creation the Earth might have been designed to be the stage for some future theater—the backdrop for some remarkable relational story, a waltz of God and mankind. True, Earth has built-in protective physical parameters that are hard to mistake. If the Earth were slightly further from the Sun, we all would freeze; slightly closer and all life would have been fried long since. The Sun was made for the Earth, not the Earth for the Sun. In fact, the entire starry host, may have been set in the heavens to create awe and wonder to help man worship. We are told specifically that the greater light would rule the day and the lesser light rule the night. Who benefits from this? Certainly not asteroids or comets. Why would they need day and night? It appears that much of our solar system was made exclusively for mankind. Such an awesome expanse, made just for us? It seems incomprehensible, and yet this may very well be the case.
God is a very big God and He may, in fact, have other universes in His grand scheme of things, with other types of stories going on, but for this particular story it strongly seems that our entire solar system was made just for us.
Now back to the matter of Creation’s why. We are told repeatedly in scripture that God created the heavens and the earth, our heavens and earth, to display His glory. That was the reason for his creative extravagance. He pulled out all the stops and ambushed terra firma with the entire microscopic and macroscopic worlds of plant and animal life so that we, as humans, would never exhaust our exploration, nor even see it all in nine lifetimes. God was saying something here in this lavish outlay, like what He says every spring in all the billowy white fluff of wasted dandelion seeds that never take root. Abundance was not (and is not) an issue to Him, but it might be a “wow” for us. He was loving His humans with His infinite giving self, becoming the ultimate godfather of riches in earth and sky for humanity. He was showing us that He is worthy of worship and that we can place our hope and confidence in Him in all the eternal future. Via His creation He was seeking to woo the humans he knew would live here, all eight billion in the here and now, plus another eight billion or so in accumulated history. He would later come to visit them, walk with them, and bleed for them. All this is to say that there is and was no need for further creation. This display is enough. How much would ever be enough, if this isn’t? That is why one could strongly suspect that there is no life on other planets: the purpose is not there. God has currently turned His face to a different agenda, that of holding the realms together. If He were absent it would all go asunder. His energy is in sustaining the cosmos; it rides on His back. That is what God is for.
It is interesting to note that after six days God stopped creating. After His creative fling, with the floor of the earth undulating/pulsing with life and the heavens filled with the wings of soaring birds, He ceased. This was not rest from exhaustion. This was rest from the creative act, because it was now enough. Who needs more than 300,000 versions of insects?!!! Why would we need to hunt for any more of them on other planets? What would be the purpose of more? After He completed His work of creation He turned His attention to something else. Several something “elses.” Now His focus and His work are invested in the reproduction of what He created, spawning generations, and then the work of repair, sanctification and refinement of every human soul who would offer his or her heart to Him. Even in comparison to Creation, this is His greater work: the work of ravishing the soul with Himself and purifying the attitudes of His creatures, helping them to lose the self in their own love stories, both of Him and of each other.
To whom do the heavens declare the glory of God? Certainly not to dew drops on Jupiter or microbes on Mars or even munchkins or elves on Pluto. The heavens declare the glory of God to humans. The implication that mankind is the center of God’s purposes is so strong that instead of the text reading “God created the heavens and the earth,” it might as well read “God created the heavens for the earth!”
The creation of heaven and earth was spectacular, but it pales in comparison to the living temple that God is creating now out of you and me. God is driving history toward the creation of the New Jerusalem. It will be His most extraordinary wonder. It is said that we will not only live in the New Jerusalem but, in fact, be the New Jerusalem. “See the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:2). This is a transformation so colossal that it requires a new stage for its existence, in short, a new (or re-newed) heaven and earth.
In this context, we can see that life on another planet would merely be a distraction to God’s greater purpose of redeeming mankind for a future larger existence. His focus is elsewhere. This story is bigger than we know.
The UFO’s that we now see are not evidence of life from another planet, but rather of a different dimension here. They are vehicles of Satan, the current prince of the power of the air. They zip in and out of this domain with greater and greater boldness. Ephesians 6:12 says, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers in heavenly places.” In the consummation of God’s eternal purposes these will be seen only as so many mosquitoes driving man to choose between two opposing destinies. The devil and his tools will be used of God for a season and will eventually be destroyed.
- God’s passion is us.
- Life on other planets?
- Whatever for?
Read our book, Impossible Evolution. Problems with the Theory of Evolution, a succinct explanation of both sides of the Creation/Evolution debate, sure evidences that an Intelligent Design spoke the Creation into being, and thoughts on why it all matters. This softcover 70-page book is illustrated, and contains lots of debate points, object lessons and questions to answer. Also available in PDF format as an e-Book.
