First of all, a brief disclaimer for those who have read my previous blogs. I’m not really a Star Trek fan. I’ve watched a few episodes. I enjoyed them. I watched some of the Star Wars movies. I enjoyed them. I never bothered to watch them all. I’m not a real big fan of science fiction.

One more bit of information: I REALLY DO WANT TO GO TO MARS. I didn’t make that part up.

Here is why I think a trip to Mars would be worth it – in 1,000 words. I am not too good with understanding the vast distances of the universe. I’m not any better with the vast amounts of time. The most distant star ever detected no longer exists, as it was detected as a supernova. ESO8802 existed at a distance of about 5 billion light years. That means the light we detect here, left that star 5 billion years ago. I’m having trouble figuring out what it means to be 60 years old. 5 billion is really beyond my comprehension. I know that is a long way off and I know that the light started traveling a long time ago, but I don’t really know what it means. Actually, I can’t figure out how to understand the number of stars there are in the universe. If there are 400 billion stars in our galaxy and a recent German supercomputer simulation estimated that there are 500 billion galaxies. I don’t even know what you call 400 billion times 500 billion. That’s a big number.

I think that part of the problem with my understanding is that the average human brain has only about 6 trillion cells. I don’t have enough brain cells to devote one cell to each object in the universe. The only thing that enables me to even think about the universe is the assumption that there must be some patterns in the universe. If it is all pure randomness, then it is literally incomprehensible.

I do love the patterns, however. And the study of the patterns is part of Cosmology.

One of the problems with too many contemporary Christians (sorry for the criticism) is that they don’t read the whole Bible. Too many people have started reading with Genesis and gotten through Exodus and stopped reading somewhere in Deuteronomy. They picked up a few Psalms and read a bit of Isaiah and Jeremiah and then skipped to the New Testament. The problem with this is that too many contemporary Christians think that Genesis and Exodus are the two big themes of the Hebrew Scriptures. I don’t think this is the case. I believe that the two big themes are Exodus and Exile. Genesis is a sub category of Exile.

Our people didn’t need a story about our origins that went deeper than “A wandering Aramean was my father and he went down to Egypt with a few people and lived there and . . . “(Deuteronomy 26:5). Then we were carried off into exile and we started to hear Babylonian and Assyrian tales of cosmology. They posited that people came from a conflict between two equally powerful gods who battled it out, forming the earth and the people within it. They used these stories to explain violence and pain and a lot of other things. Our people, however, knew that this was not true. We knew that there is only one God and that God is greater than anything else. We had experienced it in the Exodus. Our God had proven to us beyond the shadow of a doubt that we were born for freedom and justice. So we started to tell our own story. If there had never been an Exile, we would not have needed a Creation story that started, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. . . “ (Genesis 1:1)

To read Genesis 1:1 – 2:4 as a scientific explanation of the universe is a betrayal of the stories of our people. I wish people would read the whole book.

Having said that, I want to say that the God of our people is not restrained by a human understanding of time. Our God is the God of all time. And our God is not restrained by distance. Our God is the God of the entire universe.

In the process of creation, some amazing things happened. When creatures first emerged from an aquatic environment, evolution sped up. There were so many new possibilities. That set in chain a series of events that eventually led to the development of mammals and eventually to people. And, as the stories of our people teach us, it was the emergence of people that made a relationship with God possible on a whole new level. We did not become fully conscious of the total nature of God, but we became capable of thinking of God and understanding love. It made God happy. And it made our faith possible.

Every new discovery about the vastness of the universe or the length of time gives us a small window on the nature of God. We used to think that God was constrained to a small area in the Middle East. Then we discovered that God is the God of the whole planet. It was hard to make the leap, but then we began to observe that God is much bigger, much grander, much more than just God of a single planet.

We know that God came to us in human form to reinforce the relationship. To demonstrate that there is a lot more to our relationship with God than just death. The story doesn’t end there. Love wins. And Love is bigger than the universe. And God is love.

So, it seems to me that when we (or our descendants many, many generations from now) make the transition from living on a single planet to living in the universe, our understanding of God will take a leap forward. Just as amphibians creeping from the ooze of a primordial swamp were not fully capable of relationship with God, we are very primitive in our understanding. As we grow in our capacities, we might just grow in our capability to understand – to see the patterns – to embrace the love.

And so I actually believe that going to Mars might enable humans to take a step forward in our ability to understand God’s love. It isn’t the destination, just one small step in a journey that is a lot bigger than I can imagine. So I would like to go.

So much for cosmology. I haven’t really explained the whole universe. OK, I didn’t make it in 1,000 words, either. But 1118 isn’t bad.

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