It’s Time to Develop a Biblical Ufology
Photograph ostensibly of a UAP taken in McMinville, Oregon, 1950. (Alamy Stock Photo)
UFOs exist.
Well, that’s what the U.S. Department of Defense would have us believe anyway. A government task force is set to submit a report to Congress next month on ‘unidentified aerial phenomena,’ or UAPs, after decades of seemingly opaque indifference to the subject.
The report comes after efforts by concerned officials, among them former Nevada Senator Harry Reid, to raise awareness of near habitual incursions into restricted U.S. airspace by unknown, and sometimes unimaginable, flying objects. For decades, these objects have been observed by military eyewitnesses, advanced detection systems, and targeting equipment.
After circulating on the internet for a few years, the Pentagon confirmed the authenticity of three videos that captured footage of UAPs, one from 2004 and two others from 2015.
In one case, eyewitness observations by four Navy pilots—whose job depends a great deal on their ability to make accurate observations—described a Tic Tac-shaped object in the sky that intelligently traveled at speeds and maneuvers impossible to any presently and publicly known aircraft, including the most advanced drones, e.g., descending from 80,000’ in one second, arriving at planned waypoints known only to Navy officials, etc. F/A-18 instrumentation recorded the object’s movement. Radar from regional Navy warships confirmed their presence.
In another case, a fleet of objects was observed by F/A-18 pilots and equipment. The objects bore no discernible control surfaces and left no propulsion exhaust while traveling in a steady direction against 120 knots (138 mph) of headwind while rotating.
Still, with unprecedented disclosure and an imminent government report, the subject seems largely ignored by Christians (at least publicly) and neglected by Christian leaders. Specifically, I’m writing to pastors. You will be on the front lines of the inevitable tsunami of questions from your people. Members in your congregation are already wondering and chatting privately. It’s only a matter of time until they approach you for guidance.
Perhaps, like most people, we pastors don’t know what to think, let alone what to say. And, even if we wanted to speak up, maybe the tired stigma of the tin-foil hat muzzles us into silence, but it seems those days have passed. The UAP phenomenon is real. Are Christian leaders ready to address it?
Okay, what are they?
I’m willing to bet that most of the parts of the pending report will disappoint UFO enthusiasts looking for tangible evidence of what they’ve long suspected to be reality: our planet has been host to myriad extraterrestrials. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the report is nothing more than a terse, reluctant admission from the government that it has witnessed technology it cannot identify as either domestic or foreign, and that they are committed to the continual analysis of the data. That's it.
Even if they identify specific events, I’ve read many reports from plenty of skeptics who have traveled great lengths to offer more earthly explanations for UAPs. Most of them make compelling arguments, although I’ve not come across impeachable answers to the more difficult questions. Oftentimes, eyewitness accounts are either ignored or dismissed altogether, and the apostle Paul would have something to say about the value of many people all seeing the same thing at the same time (1 Co 15:4-6).
But it’s not necessarily cause for comfort that UAPs are human-made. If UAPs have prosaic explanations, some of your people—especially veterans of national defense—will need a godly dialogue through the implications of the possibility that adversaries of the United States possess technology far beyond the horizon of what we though possible in our lifetime.
Near-peer threats to our safety at home and abroad are already the centerpiece of defense concerns. It is alarming, to say the least, that some UAPs can effortlessly invade sensitive and restricted airspace without the worry of being challenged. Such a reality is especially chilling for members of your congregation who spent military service and government careers defending such spaces.
But let’s say other parts of the report can’t be explained by human technology, that the conclusion our government reaches is the one we’ve all wondered but haven’t thought through very well. What if UAPs are extraterrestrial, trans-dimensional, or beyond the frontier of our imagination? What if UAPs end up exceeding the parameters of common theology?
If intelligent life beyond our planet or reality exists, the paradigm shift will be massive, and we will need to answer questions that have rarely (if ever) been asked before.
What is the relationship, if any, between UAP phenomena and Christian angelologies and demonologies? How does the doctrine of the imago Dei fit in? Can our theology of the fall address extraterrestrials? What if they arrive denying the lordship of Christ (Gal 1:8; 1 John 2:22)? What if they arrive proclaiming the lordship of Christ (Rom 10:9)?
Developing a Biblical Ufology
Fortunately, the Christian faith is robust enough to address these questions. In fact, C. S. Lewis tackled this issue, especially in his little-known—but excellent and highly-recommended—The Space Trilogy.
He all but concluded that animal life exists on other planets, but what about intelligent beings? Lewis essentially shrugged his shoulders, wondering why it would matter in the grand scheme of theology. His primary concern seemed to be the incarnation. Why would the Son of God don human, not alien, flesh? Is it because they do not bear the imago Dei? If not, where does that place an intelligent, moral-decision-making being in the scheme of redemption? Christian demonologies and angelologies have long addressed these issues in parallel.
At any rate, says Lewis, however foreign extraterrestrials seem to us, we have one thing in common—humans and aliens belong to the created order. And as part of creation, which groans under sin, they too are part of an order waiting to be “set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). And a critical element of that coming freedom is redemption and restoration by the Lord Jesus Christ.
So, Lewis concludes, “[it] may be that Redemption, starting with us, is to work from us and through us.”[1] In other words, no matter how advanced, no matter how intelligent, no matter how moral or immoral, aliens are still part of God’s created order. And maybe, as God’s redeemed image bearers, we have a role in their renewal.
In fact, Lewis was far less concerned about any violence aliens would bring to us than he was about the human sin we would pass to them. His idea was quite radical at a time when aliens were always portrayed as terrible monsters, invaders of innocent planet earth. Not so, said Lewis. We might be the terrible monsters who teach them to be selfishness, filled with pride and folly.
But there is a more sinister thought. What if aliens don’t exist but the fallen beings of a spiritual realm want us to believe that they do exist? What if the same power behind the Egyptian magicians’ counterfeits of God’s miracles is staging yet another show of fraud, only this time on a global scale. From time to time, I wonder what inconceivable power is coming to aid the ferocious deception that Christ warned was on the horizon. False messiahs and prophets, he said, would “perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect” (Matt. 24:24).
Imagine for a moment that in our immediate future beings from another world will promise the cure to our violence, tribalism, illness, disparity, and mortality, but there’s a catch. We must jettison unhelpful and fanciful myths like Christianity. Imagine them coming to deny the Father and the Son, fulfilling a general warning from John that “[this] is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22).
Whatever the report concludes next month, there are serious conversations to be had in the local church.
If the explanations are straightforward, they will nevertheless be troubling. Western technology isn’t where we thought it was, at the front of innovation. If that’s the case, many of us are about to discover how heedlessly—whether implicitly or explicitly—we’ve placed our trust for safety in modern chariots and horses. Pastors will need to remind their people: “we trust in the name of the Lord our God” (Psalm 20:7).
But if the explanations are preternatural, then it’s time to develop a biblical ufology.
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