Hebrews 11.3 (CEB)
By faith we understand that the universe has been created by a word from God so that the visible came into existence from the invisible.
Thich Nhat Hanh
True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. There’s no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected. Once you are aware of that you are no longer caught in the idea that you are a separate entity.
Astronomers, astrophysicists, and cosmologists estimate there are at least 36 intelligent alien civilizations in our Milky Way galaxy. That might not sound like many, but considering we’re the only “intelligent” life we know of (which is disappointing, you have to admit), another 36 chances for sentient lifeforms to live in peace, love, and harmony is kind of inspiring.
Also, considering there are hundreds of billions of solar systems in the Milky Way, that means there are possibly 3.6 trillion intelligent civilizations in our galaxy alone. And there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. And who knows what’s beyond our universe?
Galaxies extend as far as the Hubble Space Telescope can see. Every dot is a galaxy like ours.
Look at this Hubble photo, an amalgamation of galaxies, each with multiple solar systems like ours capable of supporting life. I don’t know much, but I know this: God is expansive and endlessly creative. Think about those numbers for a moment: Hundreds of billions of solar systems in hundreds of billions of galaxies. All of them pondering God at some point in their evolution, just like us. Imagine the conversations we could have with them! Why do you believe this? Why did you believe that but don’t anymore? What do you mean you build with sound? Fascinating!
Imagine the peace that might develop if we would ask each other, here on Earth, these same questions without judgment, purely to learn from one another because we understand we are all exploring for God.
The people of the Bible didn’t know very much about the cosmos. This doesn’t make them ignorant. They were, in fact, remarkably advanced for their era, and they made some excellent, educated guesses about a lot of things.
They suggested that there was a vast sea beyond the atmosphere. Beyond that watery realm was the endless “heaven of heavens.” As we know, beyond our atmosphere is the grand, infinite sea of space. And today, we also know that it is teeming with life, just like the salty water seas on Earth.
The people portrayed in the Bible were awed by the possibility of a God that was so immense it could create the heavens and the Earth. Today, pictures from the Hubble reveal just how enormously endless our galaxy is.
When I consider the galaxies upon galaxies in the known universe, a shiver of awe electrifies every God molecule that forms me. Seeing pictures of galaxies convinces me there are other self-aware lifeforms in the cosmos. I’ll bet our faith forbears felt the same way when they looked up at the stars. The statistical probability alone favors alien life next door, in our Milky Way galaxy.
As the people portrayed in our holy texts learned more about each other and the natural world, their interpretation of God’s work, nature, and being evolved. For example, in the First Testament, God is known as a vengeful creator, covenant partner, and even as a warrior who chooses sides. Most of that change occurs in a single text, Exodus.
One of the primary struggles portrayed throughout the Bible is that of the Jewish people trying to understand how and why their God, the one who said they were the chosen people, was now accepting Samaritans, Greeks, and even Romans into the fold. Of course, their struggle goes back even further, to the Babylonian exile and Egyptian captivity.
How can my God, who saved me from people like you, now be your God, too?
We still have a problem accepting the idea that God loves us all equally, no matter what we call ourselves or whose philosophy we follow. Humans today are as tribal as they were 2000 years ago, so we still tend to hold to the idea that our ideas about God are better than yours. We don’t learn from one another often enough. But today, we must also contend with the knowledge that we are not alone in the universe. So maybe we should start working together toward a cooperative future a lot more heartily.
I don’t need to believe in the existence of extraterrestrial life to know that we need to stop treating each other as aliens. If we believe in God, then God must be part of all people, including other intelligent beings in other galaxies. At some point, hopefully before we make first contact, we’ll have to reconcile how our earthly religious traditions and stories, how ideas like salvation and redemption and forgiveness, play out in a galaxy with cultures that might have extremely different ideas about God and God’s purpose.
Think about being on the receiving end of an advanced species who are convinced it is their manifest destiny to conquer Earth and turn all us savages into slaves. Or Worse.
That humbles me pretty fast.
We shouldn’t presume, though, that because our human experience has primarily been about building empires, life in other galaxies would develop the same way. We’ve had many opportunities to change here. Perhaps another civilization figured out a better way and turned toward love earlier in their development than we, who have yet to discover that road, now overgrown from thousands of years of neglect.
Yet, we all have something in common—every species on the planet, every lifeform we have yet to meet. We are all made from God.
One unseeable molecule forms everything. From one consciousness, trillions of sentient beings populate the universe—one God in all things.
Imagine being God for a moment, and simultaneously experiencing every thought, feeling, dream, and nightmare not only every human but also every being in the universe, is going through. Trillions of children crying out in joy and sadness, doing their best and their worst, simply being. I pray God finds exhilaration in the experience of our being, even if we’re not being very good at the moment.
Hold that God-space a moment.
Now, imagine what it would be like if all the semi-intelligent, self-aware species in the universe could simultaneously sense each other’s pain and joy, hopes, and fears the way God does. And I don’t mean we discover each other through space exploration, physically, although that would be infinitely cool.
I mean, what if something magically mystical happened one day, and we could all sense each other’s existence through the connective dark matter of God’s love? Do you think humanity could handle the power of such an undeniablycollective experience? Would it finally change us?
Knowing there are trillions of us in the universe makes me love God all the more intensely. I respect God in each othereven more reverently and speak out against injustice more fervently.
Because the story of God is not only about us, it’s about universes upon universes of us.
Amen.
