Do You Feel Safe in God’s Good World?
Don’t ever call C.S. Lewis’s science fiction series the “space trilogy.” Why? We find the answer in chapter 5 of Out of the Silent Planet:
“A nightmare, long engendered in the modern mind by the mythology that follows in the wake of science, was falling off him. He had read of “Space”: at the back of his thinking for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds. He had not known how much it affected him till now–now that the very name “Space” seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam.”
Personally, I’ve always found the tagline to Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci fi-horror classic Alien much more compelling: “In space, no one can hear you scream.” But that would be because I’m still in thrall to the very nightmare Lewis describes in the above passage. For the record, I still think it’s a stretch to describe outer space as an “empyrean ocean of radiance,” but let’s lay bare the assumption guiding the nightmare. If the universe is a byproduct of random unguided forces–a cosmic accident–it makes sense to look on the vastness of the universe with a combination of loneliness and horror. This was the vision that animated the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, a rough contemporary of Lewis’s and a man who would have sneered at the notion that space had anything to do with radiance.
Meditating on the end of Matthew 6 where Jesus instructs his followers not to worry about their lives, Dallas Willard once asked, “Is Jesus nuts?” Willard goes on to argue that this world is a “perfectly safe” place for us because it is God’s good world and he hasn’t placed us here by accident.
The problem is that we often don’t believe that; I often don’t believe that. I look at the day’s headlines with a growing sense of trepidation. I look at Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine and shudder. I look at the ongoing fallout of the ministry I once served and I’m filled with shame, anger, and dismay. In other words, I take a long, hard look at the fallenness of this world and think, “Jesus is nuts. In space, no one can hear you scream.”
The Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin is reported to have said, “I went up to space, but I didn’t encounter God.” The quote is possibly apocryphal, but the sentiment is instructive. It’s a bit like saying, “I went digging through The Shining, but I couldn’t find Stephen King anywhere.” Both statements confront us with the question of authorship. Where did all of this come from in the first place? Why is there anything at all?
Blatant skepticism simply calls God’s existence into question. Fear offers a more subtle kind of skepticism, one that rears its head when we look on God’s good world as inherently hostile and threatening. Speaking to Christians, do we believe that the author of our salvation has placed us here for a definitive purpose and that he will keep us from any ultimate harm?
For many of us, our default is simply to assume that death is the worst thing that can possibly happen to us. It’s an assumption we share with many outside the church. If you’re like me and you find that fear frequently plays an outsized role in your life, it may be helpful to begin by asking, “Is Jesus nuts?” because the question gets to the heart of the deepest levels of our unbelief. If he is indeed God incarnate, the author and perfecter of our faith, as I believe he is, then we have nothing to fear. No ultimate harm will befall us and the best is yet to come.
