Out there.....

A week and a half ago as I was waiting for my overpriced and undersized pizza at the Student Association Center, I watched a History Channel special on alien abduction, covering most notably the Betty and Barney Hill case. Two people also came forward about foreign objects in their bodies, one of whom still had the object inside him. The episode chronicled a series of tests researchers conducted on the tiny, metallic object, revealing that it was magnetic, gave off several milligauss of electromagnetic radiation, and gave off two different radio frequencies. The EM and RF stopped when they surgically removed the "implant".

This got me to thinking. As a science fiction lover and writer, I can't even begin to discount the theory that aliens may live on other planets. I believe in UFOs. I believe that the evidence for alien abduction, particularly in the Hill Abduction, is definitely legitimate. But I also believe that not all aliens are bad.

Let's theorize for a moment that there are other worlds out there. If God is as loving and compassionate as we believe Him to be, with that same affinity for free choice, would He not have offered the same choice to them that He did us? And given that choice, let's say that the caretakers of any given planet chose to obey God. That would make them sinless and perfect, Edenic, as I label them in my science fiction stories. But let's say that the caretakers went the opposite way and, like humankind, chose to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This would put them under sin like us, and they, like us, would need a Messiah.

If this is the case and we are not the only sinful world, the scope of things is much bigger, much broader. When Jesus died, He would have borne the sins of not just humanity, but every other sinful race. An entire universe of sins would have been such a weight that not even the Son of God could keep from saying, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?"

This does create a small problem: if Jesus died with the sins of the universe on His shoulders--of the fallen angels, of mankind, and of any other sinful race--why did He choose our particular little, blue speck for His ministry. Either we are the only world that sinned, making us a pathetic failure of a species and Satan's only target, or Jesus transcended, as He usually does, our entire understanding. In my science fiction stories, every sinful planet had a Messiah, all of them appearing at the same time and dying at the same moment. This satisfies the need for Jesus as a teacher across the universe. It also serves to give those races the same hope that Christianity now has.

Now, I'm not saying that this is exactly what happened. It's just a theory, but it opens up a whole new can of worms. The thought that Jesus died not only for us, but for the fallen angels and Satan himself...it's almost too much for the human mind to fathom. I think we like to get locked into the feeling that we're special, that we're the ones Jesus gave His life to save. But that gets us locked into a selfish mindset that we're the only ones that need saving.

In conclusion, as a Christian, I can't possibly deny the existence of intelligent life on other planets. I also can't deny, based on so much evidence of UFO sightings and alien abductions, that all alien races are benevolent. But one thing is for sure: if any should choose to sin and fall under its poisonous fog, we have a Savior, no matter whether we are human, angel or hra'vakh, that loves us enough to without hesitation step in and give His life, to die as one who shouldn't have, so that the price for our missteps could be paid and so that we could one day spend eternity with our Creator.

Your Brother in Christ,
Michael