“Never in our lifetime could we look up at the moon and say, ‘People are up there.’ But right now, four are on their way.” I said this to my wife—and to whomever was with me—almost every night after the launch of Artemis II on April 1st, 2026. When I first gazed up at the sky in pensive thought and delivered this line of eloquence to my wife, she said, “Cool!” and headed inside.
Despite my wife’s seeming disinterest, the attention on outer space only grows. With our expanding cultural fixation on space travel, the rise of commercial rocketry (Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, etc.), the increase in foreign space capabilities, and the onset of NASA’s mission to Mars through Artemis, our generation is rapidly counting down to an explosion of extraterrestrial exploration. This immense, building pressure tells us a great deal about our hearts—human space exploration is a sign of our desires for 1) transcendence, 2) for significance, and 3) for connection to God.
When we look at the stars, we ought to feel our smallness and God’s greatness. And in his greatness, he has decided to exalt us and imbue us with worth.
God in Outer Space
There is something about space that makes people think about reality, about nature, about God. A feeling of transcendence enters into an astounded heart. Two kinds of transcendence accompany exploration and discovery: 1) a desire to rise above nature and 2) the feeling that nature overwhelms and overtakes us.
Humans made in the image of God have a tenacity that compels them to conquer creation. Deep in our DNA is a call to cultivate the Earth and have dominion over it (Gen. 1:28). Or as Solomon said, “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out (Proverbs 25:2). We desire to traverse freezing oceans, to explore icy rocks. Whether you are Shackleton crossing the Southern Ocean and the icy rock is Antarctica, or you are Armstrong crossing the frigid ocean of space and the moon the frozen rock, there is such a strong pull to plant a foot and a flag on every mountain and take in the exclusive view. As Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, said, “This has been far more than three men on a mission to the Moon; more still than the efforts of a government and industry team; more, even, than the efforts of one nation. We feel this stands as a symbol of the insatiable curiosity of all mankind to explore the unknown.”[1]
But in such environments, nature can quickly show her bitter side. Imagine yourself as an astronaut and feel the power of creation against you. As you look out the small window of your pod, darting away from home at 23,000 mph, you can see the entirety of spaceship Earth. As Neil Armstrong said, “It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.”[2] You sense the unforgiving, coldness of space, as it were, a more callous ocean than any on Earth. You are a fish not only out of water, but one piloting a warhead through a sea of radiation. Everything is alien, everything is hostile. As Victor Glover, the pilot of Artemis II, said, “There are no atheists in foxholes. There aren’t any on top of rockets, either.”[3]
We have a deep desire to have dominion over nature, and its power and beauty often bring us to our knees. Despite all our advances in technology and the development of our understanding of nature, we haven’t solved our desires for overcoming, for adventure, for transcendence. In fact, the further we explore space, the deeper these impulses become, illuminating our God-given impulse to have dominion over creation.
God Outside of Outer Space
One common atheist and agnostic apologetic is, “If there is a God, why would he make so much vast, useless, emptiness in space?” Not only is there so much unseen, “wasted” space, the fact that there are so many other “useless” planets and solar systems can be troubling and overwhelming.
The Grand Canyon often has this effect itself, and if the Grand Canyon can make you feel small and existential, try to wrap your head around the scale of our universe. It would take the length of about two sextillion (two followed by 21 zeroes) Grand Canyons to stretch across the diameter of the universe. That number is roughly the same as the estimated number of stars in the observable universe.
Humans seem utterly insignificant when compared to the unfathomable breadth of the universe. If there is a God who cares for humanity, why would humanity be just a blip on the radar of the cosmos? David questioned this very idea when he wrote, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3–4).
Yet the Bible has a unique perspective on human identity. It affirms our vapidity but also upholds our worth. We are made of dirt, yet we are the image of God (Gen. 2:7; 1:27). We are mortal, yet eternity is on our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11; Genesis 3:19). We are beggars, yet princes (1 Samuel 2:8). The Bible humbles Christians to the dust but exalts them to the heavens. So it makes sense to wonder, what is man that God is mindful of him. David continues: “Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:5).
We are not the center of the universe—neither physically nor metaphysically. That fact is not an embarrassing admission for the Christian. When we look at the stars, we ought to feel our smallness and God’s greatness. And in his greatness, he has decided to exalt us and imbue us with worth.
God in Space Itself
But even still, God is outside of physical space itself, outside of our reality. Doesn’t that make him far off, inaccessible, or disengaged with us?
Then Job answered and said: “Truly I know that it is so: But how can a man be in the right before God? … he who commands the sun, and it does not rise; who seals up the stars; who alone stretched out the heavens… who made the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the chambers of the south… How then can I answer him, choosing my words with him? For he is not a man, as I am, that I might answer him, that we should come to trial together. There is no arbiter between us, who might lay his hand on us both.” (Job 9:1–2, 7–9, 14, 32–33)
The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, when entering suborbital space and looking around, is often cited as saying, “I went up to space, but I didn’t encounter God.”[4] If God is in the heavens, why did Gagarin not find him? C. S. Lewis commented on this event in an essay called “The Seeing Eye,” saying, “The Russians, I am told, report that they have not found God in outer space… Looking for God—or Heaven—by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare’s plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters or Stratford as one of the places.”[5]
As I write this, there are humans suspended in the heavens, but forevermore, there is a human enthroned in heaven—the God-man, Jesus Christ.
For Hamlet, the character, to truly know Shakespeare, his author, Shakespeare would have to write himself into the story. God has done this very thing. He, the author of history, has entered the story. Answering Job’s distress, Jesus has become the very arbiter who is able to lay his hand on both God and man, for he is the God-man. The Word, who is bigger than the entire universe, became a small human on our small planet. God has entered space itself—he has condescended into space-time—and made himself immanent and accessible. As James Irwin, the 8th man on the moon, said, “Being on the moon had a profound spiritual impact upon my life… The entire space achievement is put in proper perspective when one realizes that God walking on the Earth is more important than man walking on the moon.”[6]
Rick Husband, the mission commander during the Columbia space shuttle tragedy, recognized the importance and primacy of God on Earth. As was standard practice for astronauts, he would fill out last-request forms before every mission. Though he didn’t know it would be his last flight, one of his last request notes was to his pastor: “Tell them about Jesus; he’s real to me.”[7]
As I write this, there are humans suspended in the heavens, but forevermore, there is a human enthroned in heaven—the God-man, Jesus Christ. He is real for all of us.
Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars!
Psalm 148:3
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