Notes From Jon

 Note: I’ve tried to get back to my semi-regular column in the local paper, the K-V Dispatch.  This is the first I’ve done in a while – it appeared in the February 28, 2008 edition.

These past couple of weeks, the news channels have followed a kind of story they don’t focus on very often:  the U.S. Space Program.  Occasional updates have followed the attachment of a new module to the International Space Station, and tests of the shuttle’s heat shield to make sure there won’t be another accident on reentry.  These stories about space are a rarity these days.  It seems like there are so many things to worry about here on the ground that we left behind the idea of space exploration a long time ago.  Occasional stories have caught our attention – the losses of the astronauts of Challenger and Columbia for instance.  But for the most part, save a tragedy, the eyes of the nation toward space discovery are either indifferent, unknowing, or outright hostile.

The hostility is understandable.  In a society that values things and money so highly, and where people and items are usually judged by the amount of their output, it’s easy to understand why people would see spaceflight as a waste of the government’s money.  And in a time of war, the crunch is even tighter.  And so manned spaceflight is rapidly becoming a private venture – taken on either by a few cloistered government workers, or by billionaires enamored of a new hobby.

What does the space program contribute to our world?  Lots, if you’re willing to look into it.  All kinds of inventions – plastics, medicines, new technologies – would not have been possible were it not for the work of scientists in the zero-gravity atmosphere of space.  And we don’t have to look hard to see that we’re going to need help on this planet before too long; New energy sources, modes of transportation, and places to live are all problems that space scientists around the world are working on.

Truth be told, our indifference and hostility toward space are a lack of imagination.  Much like the many naysayers who ridiculed or ignored Columbus’ crazy venture around to this side of the world, we simply can’t imagine (realistically) a world outside our own.  And yet, men and women around the world continue to put their lives on the line, year after year, to continue the slow crawl of progress in spaceflight.  Decades from now, when we’re celebrating our first colony on Mars, when the world has come together to push past Mars because Earth has become crowded and used-up… it’s likely in those days that we won’t pause long to remember the folks who, like Columbus, could imagine what those days would look like and were courageous enough to keep acting on it.

So what does all this have to do with God?  This column is called Speaking of Faith, after all.

Like the men and women involved in space exploration today – wrapped up in the “useless” waste of time and money – we are called on a similarly “foolish” mission.  Here we are, placed in a world that’s not really our home… but one in which it’s sadly too easy to feel comfortable.  And when we start looking at things from a “normal” point of view, we might see our mission as foolish.  Talk about good news in a world filled with all this mess?  Help out the poor when there are too many to count?  Work for justice for people who don’t speak our language?  Live as if God were real and made a difference in our lives?  That just sounds crazy!  And it’s close to impossible!

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,” writes Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:18.  And not just to them – sometimes it’s foolish to us, too.  But fortunately, “the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom” (v. 25), and this foolishness is the very power that saves us… and that will one day make our world brand new.

Why stick with this foolish Gospel?  Why keep risking our lives in space?  Why sail around the other side of the world?  Let’s live with holy imagination, like explorers who can see things that others can’t see.  We might just turn out to be right after all.