What UFOs might tell us about God or about life beyond the heavens
In 30-odd years of writing newspaper columns, I’ve written about nearly anything you can name that has to do with religion, faith or values.
But this is one column I never imagined I’d write: What might be the spiritual implications of UFOs?
A June 1 story on the Washington Post’s website bears this headline: “Close encounters: Democrats and Republicans unified in taking UFOs seriously.”
The Post’s story parallels similar stories over the past months and years by august journalism institutions ranging from the New York Times to “60 Minutes.”
As the Post’s Ashley Parker reminds us, President Joe Biden’s director of national intelligence will release a report this month revealing everything unclassified the federal government knows about UFOs. That was part of a provision contained in former president Donald Trump’s pandemic relief package.
I came of age in an era when talk about UFOs was the domain of the tinfoil-hat crowd. No one who took him- or herself seriously thought these flying objects were anything other than science fiction and urban legends.
Now it’s turned out the tinfoil folks were likely right, and the joke is on the rest of us. UFOs lately have been chased by U.S. Navy fighter pilots, captured on military radar and studied by the federal government. (By the way, UFOs are alternately called unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs.)
These craft fly at phenomenal speeds beyond the capabilities of any known aircraft, have no visible means of propulsion, materialize and disappear at will, make sharp and instantaneous turns at full speed and operate as efficiently underwater as in the sky. They seem especially interested in our military jets, navy ships and nuclear silos, and effortlessly outwit them.
We’re apparently past speculating about whether these phenomenon are real and are controlled by some advanced intelligence. That’s settled, or nearly so. You can go online and watch declassified videos for yourself.
The speculation now is about who or what is behind them. There are multiple theories, including:
▪ They could be an ultra-secret U.S. military craft that even high-ranking politicians, intelligence experts and generals haven’t been told about.
▪ A nation such as China or Russia could have achieved a scientific breakthrough catapulting it between 100 and 1,000 years beyond currently recognized laws of physics and manufacturing capabilities.
▪ These are spaceships from another planet, their origins and intentions unknown.
Of course, the latter possibility is most tantalizing. If it turned out to be true—and I emphasize, that’s a big if—it might force us to reconsider all manner of religious issues, among other things.
If the intelligence that’s programming or piloting these craft comes from a distant galaxy, what does that say about our own place in the universe? About the existence or absence of God? About angels?
I’ve been thinking about these questions as, if nothing else, a sort of spiritual exercise.
I speak as a Christian minister. I can’t address the implications for other faiths.
But if the existence of visitors from other planets were proved, it probably wouldn’t change much about Christians’ view of God. To my knowledge, there’s nothing in our religious cosmology that says this planet is the only inhabited place in the universe.
It also wouldn’t change the views of non-believers. People who don’t believe in God here would find no more or no less reason to believe there’s a God on another planet.
For Christians, the God we believe created life here might easily have created life elsewhere. That would appear consistent with his personality. God loves life and loves making new things.
What might come up for speculation would be whether the God of Earth also rules another world 500 galaxies away—or whether the two worlds are run by altogether different deities (or life forces, or cosmic intelligences, or whatever label we might give them).
Another Christian concept that could come in for discussion is our historic thinking about angels and related visions and visitations.
When the prophet Elijah interacted with chariots of fire in the sky, presumably driven by angels, or Ezekiel saw his spectacular wheel within a wheel, the biblical descriptions sound spookily similar to what modern pilots and others have witnessed in UFO sightings.
Might it turn out that what the ancients beheld were spaceships making early visits? Or, conversely, could it be that what we interpret now as spaceships are divine chariots from a place we refer to as heaven?
My point is not that any of these propositions is true. I have no idea what truths will eventually emerge about UFOs. Maybe there will be no truths, except that the whole phenomenon is a grand hoax. I wouldn’t hazard a serious bet either way.
My point is that even if it turns out we’re being visited daily by ETs from a world light-years away, it won’t change much about our present religion.
It will give us a few fascinating twists on very old scriptures—which we’ll continue speculating and arguing about ad infinitum until, like Elijah, we’re at last beamed up.
Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.