Last time we talked about what Christianity has to say about the not-too-distant future of human civilization. Specifically, the progress of humanity into a Type I civilization—one that can harness all the power of its home planet.
While we are approaching that landmark shift in the relatively near future (likely within a couple hundred years), the nearest civilization type after that, according to the Kardashev Scale, is a Type II civilization, which is one that can control the energy of its host star. For humans, we’ll be a Type II civilization when we harness the full power of the sun.
In all likelihood, by the time we can do that, we’ll also be able to employ the power and natural resources of the Moon, Mars, and probably the other planets we know so well. Harnessing the sun will entail harnessing our local solar system.
A model of a Dyson Sphere.
While this is a ways off, likely a millennia or more, there are already numerous theories on how we might achieve it—most notably, Dyson Spheres and Alderson Disks (which sort of harvest the sun for fuel), as well as a Shkadov Thruster (which kind of turns the sun into an engine/steering wheel that allows us to move the solar system as we choose, like a massive spaceship).
And while yet these are purely science fictions, they’re also not impossible to imagine. Basically, they just require incredible amounts of resources and construction capabilities.
Does God’s Word have any wisdom for a Type II civilization?
A few things come to mind as I ponder our civilization gaining total mastery of its local star system. At the point where humanity, God’s image-bearers, become a Type II civilization, the faithful must be aware and alert to these realities:
- Earth Is Not Our Home
- We Are Always Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve—and Heirs of Christ
- Spreading Eden
Earth Is Not Our Home
As we said last time, Earth is temporary. It will pass away (Matthew 24:35).
And while humanity and the gospel story tend to be geocentric (focused on Earth), we also know that God is God of “the heavens and the earth.” God is a God of the cosmos, not just our present orb.
He made the sun and the moon to govern the day and night, and to be signs for days and seasons and years (Genesis 1:14–16; Jeremiah 31:35; Psalm 104:19).
That being the case, while we are called to value and steward and see God’s goodness in the creation of our own Earth, it is not central to our image-bearing selves to be bound to the borders of our terrestrial ball. We are allowed to explore beyond Earth.
This is already a reality we’re facing as Christians. Humans already live outside of Earth.
Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union was the first to travel in space in 1961. Less than a month later, the US sent Alan Shepard beyond the sky. Apollo 11 put human beings on the surface of the moon in 1969. Twelve humans have walked on the lunar surface in human history.
Since 2000, the International Space Station has been continuously occupied. In the last decade, as space travel has been taken up as private enterprise, progress has accelerated. Elon Musk’s team just sent one of the most powerful rockets in history hurtling around the sun. He aims to put humans on Mars—not to visit, but to start a permanent colony—by 2025. Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing’s CEO, hopes to beat him there.
We will likely see significant human populations on other planets in our lifetime. We will see humans born in space. We will see Jamestown-type colonization of our solar system.
This is important only insofar as we recognize that God is not bound to Earth—even infinitely less than our slowly space-faring species remains bound to the only globe we’ve ever known.
God is not bound. Soon, already, we will not be bound either. And that is okay.
God is on Mars. And the Sun. And across the galaxy, and the cosmos.
And while we can know that the Earth is not our home, we must also remember, as our interplanetary travel begins to increase, that space is not our home either. Our home is with God.
Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve—and Heirs of Christ
As humanity propels into the Great Beyond of our solar system, captivating the sun and inhabiting other planets, it can never be forgotten that we are still humans. Leaving Earth does nothing to remove or diminish our created-ness, our imago Dei, or our inheritance of humanity from Adam.
When humans live on Mars or on a disk built around the sun, it will make them no less descendants of Adam.
And it will not make Christians any less heirs with the second Adam, Christ.
This is important because there may be a temptation, as we leave our home planet behind, to also leave our story and faith behind. But this can never be.
Even living at the outer edges of our solar system, we are still as in need of the saving work of Christ as ever. We would still be sinful, and in need of forgiveness. And we would still maintain the same mission, to know God and make him known.
The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. “For in him we live and move and have our being.” As some of your own poets have said, “We are his offspring.”
This passage from Acts 17 assures us that humanity will always have the same source, no matter where we travel in the cosmos. It also tells us that wherever we go, our times and boundaries are determined by God.
This need not be some “Martian” Manifest Destiny, but a simple assurance that God himself goes with us even outside of Earth. He does not live in temples or on any mountain, but in the hearts of men, even when they become spacemen.
Wherever we go, God was already there.
Spreading Eden
Not all of the creation was Eden (Genesis 2:8). God’s call to fill and subdue and grow and care for the land expands outside the garden, into the cosmic wildernesss.
We already know that God has utter control over the whole heavens (Isaiah 40:26).
Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.
They are part of the vast world he has made and maintains—and which we can go into. We know that God’s creations, including men and angels, can affect and explore his creation. Joshua, through God, made the sun and moon stop in place (Joshua 10:12–13). The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun (Revelation 16:8).
You have made them [mankind] rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet. (Psalm 8:6)
It seems we are granted dominion over the cosmos.
In exploring the sun, moon, and planets of our solar system, and gaining mastery over them as a Type II civilization, we must maintain a kingdom perspective in what is created, how it is maintained, and what our purpose in our mastery is.
Christians who come to dwell on the Moon or a solar system-sized disk must remember what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:19:
For God was in Christ, reconciling the world [κόσμον/cosmos] to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.
That is, we are reconcilers also. Not only between men, but in the world—the cosmos.
So in the same way that a Type I civilization must care for the Earth, by the power and leading of the Spirit reconciling it to God, so too a Type II civilization has the same mission—to increasingly bring the ministry of reconciliation into the wilderness of our star system.
Great stuff!