Some weird things have happened recently that ten years ago no one would have thought possible: Kamala Harris running for the Oval Office against Trump; the political assassination of Charlie Kirk; and the government officially disclosing top-secret research into UFO technology. Outside mainstream political coverage, not everyone knows, let alone cares, about the release of documentation confirming the existence of recovered space craft.
I was immediately drawn to this news and absorbed as much information as I could as a science fiction fan. In no time at all, the idea of aliens moving about our airspace and abducting people became more than a fun, sci-fi notion – it felt terrifyingly real, as if I was suddenly living in a real-world version of the sci-fi video game Mass Effect. I felt this urgency to sort out my faith in light of this new world I found myself in, a world in which aliens can – and very well might – exist.
In this age of digital media, especially YouTube and its undeniable power to arrest hours of attention with compelling narratives, I knew that no amount of video footage could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt the existence of aliens. But the next best thing was a close examination of the theological framework I already believed in and how aliens might fit in it logically. A good starting place, of course, was understanding God as Creator.
God as the Creative Entity
As Christians, we believe God created all things, and that such an origin story is detailed in the Book of Genesis, the first book in the Bible. In this story, God is the Creator. But not only does he create, but he acts out his own spirit of creativity in how and what he creates. Genesis is the origin story, not just of creation, but the spirit of creativity, which all artists – those who create value out of anything from a blank page to scrap – embody. It’s innate to creative people, whether they believe in and given credit of their creativity to God or merely look no further than themselves for the outpouring of creativity. In other words, contrary to Hollywood’s message of the enduring human spirit, creativity is a spirit imparted to us by God, residing in the ever-mysterious depths of the human soul. God set the limits on creativity itself, limits that we might not be meant to ever fully understand. Some mysteries God means to keep just so, which leaves him in ultimate control, not us.
Telling stories is in our nature. It’s in our DNA, and outside of seeing ourselves reflected in God’s spirit, we have no hope of better understanding this creative capacity, let alone harnessing it towards full potential. So, with that, God is far more creative than we can imagine. Understanding is not a pre-requisite to appreciating God. Knowing him is another matter. Knowing God as the originator of creativity, framing his capacity for creative expression must be more expansive than we can imagine, which means we can only resign ourselves to a conceptual understanding. And the first wall that must come down is the claim that God only made humanity and angels, nothing else beyond that which Scripture explicitly names.
At this point, it should be obvious where this line of thinking is headed: such a claim is an underestimation of God’s characteristically limitless nature as the Creator.
A Theological Fallacy
Some Christians insist that the Bible’s silence on extraterrestrial beings means that they cannot exist. To them, the little green (or grey) men of government conspiracy stories should be relegated to pure entertainment and atheist frameworks. But the absence of aliens in the Bible is a poor reason to denounce their existence. For existence of aliens to die permanently as an idea at the debate table, the Bible would have to become near-infinitely thicker to account for the infinite record of every single thing God has ever done. Apart from the Book of Life, we all know that’s not possible. Night stands simply aren’t big enough.
A more accurate characterization of the Bible would be that it is a revelation of his plan for spiritual redemption through his son, Jesus Christ. Describing it as anything more – a wholistic template for a comprehensive worldview incorporating all that does and could exist – would be an uneducated misutilization of the text, a misreading that strongly suggests ignorance on part of the uneducated party on the purpose of the text that they are defending.
To insist that “man and angels are all that which God made” is akin to standing before a curated gallery of thousands of paintings, pointing to point at two that you can understand, and declaring: This is all the artist accomplished. The rest I reject because I don’t get them.” That is something other than theology entirely. It’s human-centric at best, out of line with the spirit in which God breathed creation into existence for by the work of his hands, God made creation divinely centric. God is the only focus, not what we can fit into our minds. The belief that God made man and angel exclusively is a verifiable fallacy of logic within theological discussion.
God’s Glory in Creation
Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” When David wrote that, he was only describing the night sky as he saw it – stars, moon, and sun. But today, with telescopes and science, we know the heavens are far vaster than David could have imagined: billions of galaxies, countless stars, and endless worlds. So, where would aliens fit into this biblical paradigm and how? If aliens exist, and they belong in the heavens, which “declare the glory of God,” then are these aliens good? Abductions don’t sound friendly, and experimentation doesn’t either. So, are these aliens evil? If they are, they certainly aren’t the only forms of life rebelling against their Creator and abandoning their intended design. We humans are guilty of the same sin, as are angels, some of whom defected long, long ago and now take on evil shapes.
The first time I entertained the idea of aliens was in a discuss with my dad, who more than entertained the notion – he stood by it on a mathematical basis of probability. I remember his reasoning. Growing up, I heard him question why God would make such an expansive universe, filled with unimaginable diversity, only to leave it barren except for Earth? “The number of planets sustainable for sentient life is astronomical,” he’d say, while eating a bowl of Reese’s Puffs. Scrambling for a proper theological rebuttal, I was at a loss for words. For years after that, I held onto the belief that aliens don’t exist. They’re good for my favorite genre, science fiction, but as a serious notion in theological musings, it was not, I thought.
But due to an outbreak of new information – recent government disclosures, testimonies, and theological reframing by credible Christian thinker and modern Indiana Jones Timothy Alberino – I can’t say that aliens as members of God’s cosmic family is not in line with God’s creative nature. It’s in line, logically. Within God’s infinitely creative hemisphere, the existence of other sentient life is undeniably a serious possibility.
The Limits We Set vs. The Limits of God
Christians often fear that there’s an undermining of human uniqueness in the entertaining of the idea of aliens. But the idea that aliens might exist has no negative bearing on our uniqueness as image bearers of God. The gift of salvation is uniquely ours to claim by faith. Christ died on the cross for the redemption of humanity through his sinless blood sacrifice. Aliens, with whatever nature they possess, would be equally unique apart from us, and their relationship with God, their Creator, would be a story adjacent to ours, not one that’s overlapping ours. So, whether or not life exists elsewhere, Christ’s work remains central to our story.
If God wanted to fill the universe with endless varieties of life whether we were ever meant to meet them or not – that does not diminish his plan for us. What’s more, who at the foundation of the universe had the authority, let alone power, to prevent God from carrying out his desire, the creation of endless varieties of life and plotting them within one reality – this universe – or infinite ones? Certainly not anyone made of flesh and blood. Even if, by some cosmic joke, we were given such authority, we’d be doing so purely for the sake of preserving limited, fragile, theological doctrines not of the same value as the power to create life. That would be a gross misuse of divine authority, and that’s one thing we really have to be conscious of and keep in check, the desire of our human ego to box God within paradigms that suit our comforts.
Ultimately, the belief in aliens not only magnifies his glory as Almighty Creator in our hearts but it sets a new high bar for discernment as we navigate this reality in which we journey towards the fabled Eden of paradise lost, forces of cosmic power ready to apprehend us from claiming our God-given birthright.
Conclusion
So, why do I believe in aliens? It’s certainly not because I’ve seen them. I simply believe in a God whose creativity is beyond measure, and the catalyst for this reframing of believe is indeed the outbreak of UFO reports and sightings, as well as government disclosures and solid theological reframing that asks nothing of scripture in the way of re-interpretation. A shrewd grasp on the Holy Scriptures actually leads to a radical narrative that leaves a comfortable amount of room for valid speculation on the existence and role of aliens in our universe.