I have been kicking around a blog idea for the last few months and finally decided to write about why I decided not to write about my idea.
First, though, my idea. The headline was going to be: “It Will Take Space Aliens to Save Us.”
Seriously.
My point was going to be that only an invasion by an otherworldly force could unite humanity in order to stop the downfall of modern civilization. Would Putin use his military in Ukraine if there were three-eyed green creatures landing in Moscow? Would Israel be intent on crushing Palestine if spaceships were flying around Tel Aviv? An alien invasion would give Donald Trump some foreigners to really worry about. Think of it—would your interpretation of the word “unchastity” in the Heidelberg Catechism matter if some previously unknown life form was pointing a ray gun at you? In the blog I never wrote, an extraterrestrial threat would unite the world and we’d use AI to save, not destroy, humanity. And consider this—surely the aliens would not arrive here powered by fossil fuel. Their technology would open up energy possibilities that would save the planet.
You get the idea. I never wrote it because no one would take it seriously. Even if I kept using the word “seriously.” It all sounds like a joke, but my motivation wasn’t a joke. Can anything save modern civilization? I used to hope the answer was yes. Now I don’t think so.
Wise friends have been trying to get me to understand this for some time. For example, I can’t tell you have many times one particular friend has said things like, “Economic expansion is finite. Fossil fuels are finite. The resources of our planet are finite.” I would nod in agreement and say, “Yeah, but how about those Tigers?” He’d smile and then we’d talk about the Detroit Tigers, because he doesn’t like dwelling on our doomed state either.
While a certain American president declares we’re living in “The Golden Age,” we know better. We aren’t in the Golden Age. We’re a tyrannosaurus rex saying to his wife, “Nobody has it better than us” a few days before the asteroid hits.
We’ve missed the climate goals necessary to turn around global warming and there is no collective resolve to work together to reach new goals. But it’s not just the climate. It’s the failure of our institutions, including the church. It’s the distribution of wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer people. It’s our broken political system. It’s our addiction to guns and violence. It’s our addiction to consumption to numb ourselves from reality.
When I thought humanity could be saved, I thought Donald Trump was our biggest problem. In his first term, I hoped he’d be impeached. Then after he was out of office, I hoped he’d be arrested. My wishes came true, and yet, we see how those things have worked out. The guy is a regular Rasputin.
I’ve come to see Trump isn’t the problem. He’s an accelerant. The fire was already burning before he came along—he just pours gasoline on it. Here’s evidence of a much bigger problem: after a few months of chaotic destabilizing and destructive executive orders and DOGE escapades, 50% of the population believes the country is on the right track. The other day I saw someone explaining all the things that were going to have to be done after Trump leaves office to restore democracy in America and I laughed out loud. There is no reason to think that after Trump leaves office his successor or the American people will want to do anything other than keep making America great again.
Yet the problem isn’t partisan. It isn’t Republican or Democrat. The problem is our climate disregarding-fossil-fueled-consumer-capitalist way of life is not sustainable.
For a long time, I lived in denial, afraid of acknowledging that truth. But embracing that things aren’t going to get better has been incredibly liberating. Instead of feeling despair, I’ve felt freedom. Despair was my companion when I felt things had to be fixed and it was my job somehow to fix them.
The Christian Reformed Church in North America and Reformed Church in America aren’t going to get fixed. There’s no making these denominations great again. The climate isn’t going to get fixed. We’re going to continue the slide toward devastation. Political discourse isn’t going to turn civil. The world’s billionaires aren’t going to climb down from their trees like Zacchaeus and share with everyone. Fox News and MSNBC aren’t going to repent of their excesses. Oil companies aren’t going to stop drilling. People aren’t going to renounce social media and actually start talking with each other.
Beyond that, no one from outer space is coming to save us. Christians quickly assert “Jesus saves,” but Jesus has never shown much inclination to save us from destroying ourselves. Jesus isn’t going to fix the climate nor the excesses of consumer capitalism. Jesus isn’t even going to save the church.
The question for us, then, is, “How do we live faithfully amid devastation?”
That’s a great question and worthy of extended contemplation. Here’s a short answer. If you haven’t watched this conversation between Nick Cave and Stephen Colbert, take a minute to do so. (You can also search online and find the whole 20-minute segment, which I highly recommend.) Cave reads a letter from someone despairing about the world and then reads his answer. He has some great thoughts about hope being adversarial, but my favorite line is this: “Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like, such as reading to your little boy, or showing him a thing you love, or singing him a song, or putting on his shoes, keeps the devil down in the hole.”
Despair is the devil.
I spent four days last week with dear friends at a cottage on the shore of Lake Michigan. We were in seminary together and have spent our entire careers in ministry. The church, the institution that each of us in one way or another has given our professional careers to, has fallen apart on our watch. Yet as we lamented, we noticed skeins of Canada geese flying over the lake going north. A hummingbird kept busy at a feeder a few feet away. A bald eagle swooped by. I was reminded of a line from Brian McLaren: “Many humans are up to a world of mischief, I think, but the birds are still being awesome.”
I’ve given up on saving civilization. But I haven’t given up on the beauty of being alive.
(My thanks to Brian McLaren’s Life After Doom for helping spur my thinking.)
22 Responses
A few years ago, on this site (ahem), I asked the same hypothetical question about aliens that you just did.
I will now ask another hypothetical question:
What if it was revealed that the entire issue of Climate Change was revealed to be an overblown, manufactured, fake crisis that was used by various groups (government, corporations, academia) to increase their control and generate more income? What if, in actuality, the planet was in pretty good shape?
Would anyone here be relieved and joyful?
I think we’d all find such news to be a relief and many would be dancing in the streets. If you have trustworthy scientific support for this hypothesis, please show it here. But remember, there are some really smart people who are up-to-speed on this stuff and they will be testing your information. Not me, by the way! I leave the science stuff up to my grandchildren.
Marty – To answer your question directly, I would be enraged, followed by relieved. But I must say I reject the premise of your question. To say climate change is a hoax both ignores enormous amounts of data and assumes thousands of scientists are conspiring together. Every scientist I’ve ever met is a fiercely independent critical thinker. I cannot conceive of what you’re suggesting. However, I must add that the planet will be fine. Earth isn’t going to disappear. Our consumer-capitalist civilization powered by fossil fuel is what will disappear.
Why is it that some people find it easier to believe that an entire scientific discipline has been suborned to perjure itself by the lure of government grants, rather than the few dissenters whose work is openly funded by Big Carbon?
Jeff, I am so deeply thankful that you did not write the article you were thinking of writing (!)
This is so excellent and gut-level true.
Thank you. Couldn’t agree with you more. Makes me also think of Jesus saying that in this world we will indeed have trouble…but cheer up! He has overcome the world.
Jeff, thanks for this. As I read your alien-invasion thought experiment, I couldn’t help thinking of philosopher Martin Heidegger’s final interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel (an interview he gave on the condition that it would be published only after his death). When it was published, the quote the editors chose as the headline was: “Only a god can save us now.” I haven’t read the Brian McLaren piece you cite, so I don’t know if he draws explicitly on Heidegger.
Say what you will about how problematic Heidegger was (and he truly was), he saw as clearly as anyone that our modern addiction to framing everything in terms of technical/technological solutions is a path of disaster, not deliverance. And I still can’t decide whether the overall tone of the interview is despair or a curious, subdued kind of hope — subdued because it is a recognition that only a truly transcendent force can save. (I think this also rhymes with the sermon that one of your fellow retreatants preached yesterday, which included the contrast between optimism and Christian hope.)
Heidegger was only problematic to readers who weren’t / aren’t seriously familiar with Heidegger’s work. But academic careers have to be made, though “peer review” doesn’t need to be well-informed. Meanwhile, persons outside of academic philosophy want to presume that scholars must know what they’re talking about, otherwise they wouldn’t be academically employed.
Fascinating: My comment wasn’t approved. Editors have a problem with regarding Heidegger as un-troubling?
For your enjoyment, editors, I’ll add that Heidegger was being sarcastic when he said, as an aside, that “only a god can save us.” His pessimism at the height of the M.A.D. years was very credible.
Anyway, here’s my comment again. Best regards for your ministry.
Heidegger was only problematic to readers who weren’t / aren’t seriously familiar with Heidegger’s work. But academic careers have to be made, though “peer review” doesn’t need to be well-informed. Meanwhile, persons outside of academic philosophy want to presume that scholars must know what they’re talking about, otherwise they wouldn’t be academically employed.
Thanks, Jeff! Your “vision” of what is and what is to come reminded me of John’s Revelation. What saves us from despair is the final vision: a new heaven and new earth, the new Jerusalem, where God comes to dwell with his people and wipe all their tears, where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.
John’s prayer at the end is our prayer: “Come, Lord Jesus.”
Thank you for describing your new found freedom from the devil of despair. Sometimes, I think of the many nuclear weapons in the hands of so many flawed humans and wonder how it can possibly end well (without us blowing up the whole thing). But again, as you say, that is not my problem to fix, and much too big a problem for my small mind to comprehend. I find comfort in the Bible’s promise that God so loved the world, and that God is working toward fully restoring and reclaiming the world. And the vision described above from Revelation, indeed. Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly! While we wait, I plan to look for those glimpses of the beauty of being alive. Thank you for that thought. It connects me to the other post of RJ this morning of Travis West and his new book, The Sabbath Way. I intend to read it and ponder more on his question, “Is this the path of love?”
Jeff, I agree whole-heartedly, but there’s a typo in your essay, ruining it.
Jeff, you have verbalized the seriousness of the situations being faced by our nation and our world, and I applaud your willingness to be clear-eyed about it. I also resonate with your final comment: “But I haven’t given up on the beauty of being alive.”
Jeff,
Thank you! You remind me here of our mutual friend, Gerard Manley Hopkins: “And though the last lights off the black West went/ Oh morning over the brown brink eastward, springs–/ Because the Holy Ghost over the bent/ World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
Thank you for not writing that blog post. I would have been standing outside yelling at UFOs to please come and take over.
But I wonder if you underestimate human resilience. Progress toward climate catastrophe has been slowing a bit, and even prophets like Bill McKibben and David Wallace voiced a little optimism. Most civilized nations are making an effort of some sort to meet (far too weak) long term goals. And perhaps some day the US will be a civilized nation again
(Annie in her home office saying “yes…YES!” progressively louder.) You say things I need to hear from a person I trust.
Also you missed an opportunity to quote Billy Joel “we didn’t start the fire…” 🙂
Thank you friend.
While I am glad that you have found a way to “keep the devil down in the hole” through finding beauty and taking small actions — something I agree with — I was quite depressed by this piece. I am a history teacher, and one of my main goals is to keep students from despairing about the world and thinking that humans just make messes of life. I know it is hard to change the big problems like climate, wars, injustice, discrimination, human greed and selfishness and all the many big issues we have, but every now and then good stuff does happen. For example, we are not where we were in the 1950s in terms of segregation and discrimination in this country. Another example, women can vote. Another example, legislation was passed in the late 1960s and early 1970s to protect the environment. I know that things aren’t perfect and in some cases the pendulum swings back and progress is thwarted, but things can be better. It’s a never-ending battle to make them so. And we have to go on as people of faith and do what we can. It doesn’t help to say that things aren’t going to change, which is, I guess, the sad message I took away from your piece.
Having reached a point in life that I have to admit that I’m finally a “Senior Citizen” I know that I’m in the decade or two of my life. I’m too old to join the “kids” [you know those under 60] doing the protest marching. I am still doing a little writing and still doing historical research, but I don’t publish a daily Substack and if my book ever is finished it will probably have to be given away because printed books are dying.
As much as I love the RCA that I’m a member of and the CRCNA that I once was a member of I can only pray that they survive.
The longer I’m retired the more I take comfort in accepting the good that life can offer, pray that our economy will not totally collapse and that the world won’t decend into another World War.
But ultimately, I take comfort in Christ’s promise to all believers as expressed in Q/A 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism. Believing that makes all the bad things that are happening today just seem not to be all that important and not a reason for despair.
Thank you, Jeff. I’m sharing your article with so many friends. It is freeing to have this outlook. Humankind does not exactly have a good record, historically. What makes us think that will change now?! But all around us is beauty and goodness, if we will just open our eyes. Thank you!
” …but Jesus has never shown much inclination for saving us from destroying ourselves.” In fact, God most often adheres to the principle of natural consequences. In most cases we are punished by our sins and not for our sins. Thanks for this, Jeff.
The birds are still being awesome, indeed. What a great reminder that it’s not always about us.
I feel the despair too, Jeff.
I made my three phone calls to my representatives today about supporting public media (not believeing it will really help), but it did feel like my one little thing to try and keep the devil down in his hole.
Thanks for doing your part and sharing this with us.
Not changing the world, but believing in the power of loving acts to help each of us through this day.
Despair was one of the myriad nasties released from Pandora’s Box, but recall what was captured and kept—Hope.
Apparently that has kept us going, even since pre-christian times.