How Star Trek Helped Me Understand God
By Neil Earle
The death of Leonard Nimoy brought it all back: "Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise ... to boldly go where no-one has gone before."
These lines from the original Star Trek television series whose 79 episodes went off the air in 1969 are a pop culture staple of course. Resurrected in UHF reruns in the 1970s, Star Trek now lives on in almost perpetual re-syndication. The 1979 Star Trek: The Motion Picture spawned nine movie sequels and well-known televised adaptations.
Never a died-in-the-wool “trekkie” I was intrigued by Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989). Though the interactions of Spock, Kirk and McCoy had been playing lightly with our spiritual sensibilities for decades, this episode directly introduced the subject of God. A renegade Vulcan (a humanoid who prizes logic over emotion) took over the space ship Enterprise and set out on the ultimate quest for the answers beyond "the Great Barrier." The goal? To find God. This bold opening was consonant with the fundamental wrinkle at the end of the film when, McCoy, the ship's doctor asked Captain Kirk: "Do you think he (God) is really out there somewhere?"
Beyond Deep Space
Of course, in terms of God, Star Trek could only take us so far even with Dr. Spock’s IQ to lend help. But here’s where I come in. It is a common assumption (it was mine once) that by travelling far far into deep space – at warp speed, perhaps – an enterprising seeker might find God. The theological problem with all this is the false assumption that God is part of the physical creation, that he is part of this time-bound universe of space and matter. That is an easy mistake to make. So the next question for trekkies and non-trekkies alike is: What does the Bible tell us about God as he really is, God in his essential nature?
First, Scripture clearly shows the God of the Bible is not like us. We are clay vessels enfleshed in physical matter and trapped in time and space. Genesis 1 introduces One entirely outside the physical realm and our time-bound dimensions. "By the word of Yahweh the heavens were made, their whole array by the breath of his mouth ...He spoke, and it was created; he commanded, and there it stood" (Psalm 33:6-9, The Jerusalem Bible).
Ancient Israel was “contacted” by a God who claimed responsibility for the material universe we see around us but outside it all. "Who has understood the mind of the Lord, or instructed him…the nations are like a drop in a bucket…He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in” (Isaiah 40:13, 15, 22).
The fact is that the truth about the Great God is much more out of this world than even the writers of Star Trek could fathom. The one the Hebrews called Yahweh Elohim (Lord God) is not a physical entity. Bible writers tell us he is utterly unlike anything our minds can conceive. John 4:24 tells us that "God is Spirit.” This means He is in many ways beyond our puny grasp. "The being of God is character by a depth, a fullness, a variety, and a glory far beyond our comprehension," Louis Berkof wrote in Systematic Theology, "and the Bible represents it as a glorious harmonious whole, without any inherent contradictions."
A First Essential
Still, we can’t be too hard on Star Trek V for presenting a human-centered concept of God. Even the Old and New Testaments have trouble explaining who he is. The great preacher C.H. Spurgeon wrote: “It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep that our pride is drowned in its infinity…Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of Deity.”
The real Search for God – the theological effort to set forth the Almighty in his essential being – is an exciting quest. It has been going on for centuries. It has occupied some of the most brilliant minds who have ever lived. Aristotle, Plotinus, Origen, Athanasius, Augustine, Luther, Newton, Einstein, Hawking – they’ve all taken shots at it. This is thus a much more significant venture than the sci- fi scenarios of the popular culture.
The most basic thinking about the God of the Bible reminds us how worthy the Almighty One is of our worship, our adoration and our praise. Which keeps Christians centered – keeps what should be at the center, at the center. A first prerequisite, then, seems to be humility.
Human-Centered Language
The Old Testament (and much of the New) writes of Yahweh in human-centered terms. It is important to grasp this point else we could be thrown off the scent. While the Biblical style of writing is often beautifully evocative (“The Lord is my Shepherd,” etc.) it can also be misleading. Note these elegant but more descriptive than analytical phrases:
"Yahweh smelt the appeasing fragrance and said to himself, 'Never again will I curse the earth because of man, because his heart contrives evil from his infancy. Never again will I strike down every living thing as I have done" (Genesis 8:21, The Jerusalem Bible);
"... How often have I longed to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings..." (Matthew 23:37, The Jerusalem Bible).
This style of writing has a technical name. It is called the "anthropomorphic style" (from the words anthropos, "man," and morphe, "form" or "shape"). This human-centered approach is vitally necessary. It is an introduction to the understanding of God’s basic character and intentions. Through human-centered language God has generously accommodated himself to our limited ability to understand him. Scriptures reflects God’s desire to be understood by his creation.
Scripture is normally in popular language, not the language of philosophers. The New Testament is written in what has been called “marketplace Greek,” the language of the average person in the Roman world of the first century. Reading the Scriptures with this kind of awareness is an important means of getting below the text, digging deeper in the attempt to see God as he really is. “He is not just an enlarged man…Nevertheless, He may still be presented in human categories and in terms of human attributes" (International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, Volume 1).
Let’s ponder that statement.
The Hebrew writers of the Old Testament waxed poetic when they thought of God. Yahweh was their Rock, their Shepherd, their Fortress, their High Tower (Psalm 18:2; 23:1). But the true God is obviously greater than a tower or a rock. To New Testament Christians in the Greek cities of Asia Minor the apostle Paul presented a more exalted picture of "one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:6).” “I in you and you in me” becomes one of Jesus’ ways to describe life inside the Godhead. This is exalted language, philosophical and theological language and going more boldly than most of the Old Testament had gone. A Rock or a Tower does not have the capacity to be everywhere, know everything, feel love and compassion. That is why Jesus gave us the key revelation that God is Spirit.
The Invisible Things
Some of the Old Testament Prophets and most of the New Testament writers take us deeper into God’s essence, how he exists in his inner nature.
God is self-existent. He had no beginning. He has been described as the necessary first cause, "the unmoved Prime Mover." He exists by the dictates of his own sovereign will. God has no origin or derivation. He didn’t need any. He goes on forever and always has. We, on the other hand, are finite, perishable creatures who exist only by his grace. John 5:26 reveals that the Deity has life in himself, life inherent.
God is infinite. As the Creator of time, all measurements of chronology are but nothing to him. He asked Job centuries ago: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” If the earth has been around 13 billion years, as the theme to the “Big Bang Theory” TV show intimates, that question is even more stunning now than it was back then.
Our wise theologians add that God fills every particle of time and is neither bound by it or dependent on it. Just as space seems infinite so time seems almost infinite. A look at the Geologic Time Scale can be very very humbling. But of God it is said: "You remain the same, and your years will never end" (Hebrews 1:12). Yahweh lives in an eternal present described in Hebrews 13:8, "Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever."God is immutable. A being absolute in perfection and knowing all that there ever is or ever will be has no need to change or alter or learn or grow in his basic nature. This does not mean He is immobile or static or that there is no movement as he interacts with us across history. It means that the changes he is involved with in the angelic and human realms flow in accord with his perfect will (Acts 4:27-28). Thus, Yahweh "knows the end from the beginning," said the prophet (Isaiah 46:10). Though this may boggle our human minds it is meant to comfort us – the God who knows all and sees all cannot be surprised by the scrapes we get into as humans and as a human race (Acts 15:17-18). And he gets us out of them.
God is One. And yet many Scriptures point to a three-ness within the one God. The baptism formula of Matthew 28:19-20 reads “in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." This is meant to show us differentiation, the three distinctions within the one God. Some fifty other triadic threefold formulas across the New Testament amplify this point: "[T]he grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all" (2 Corinthians 13:14) And 1 Peter 1:2 speaks of those "chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ." Other texts underscore this threefold working of God with human beings (Romans 15:30; Galatians 4:6).
The revelation of a tri-personal existence inside the Great God alerts us to a fullness, a plenitude, a dynamism and interactivity of the divine life that neither Islam or Judaism teaches (John 1:4). The apostle Paul explained that Christians had this very fullness to draw upon for help. The divine presence is residing in them already (Ephesians 3:19). This is Gospel hope. “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).
The Wonder of His Presence
Ultimately, the splendid attributes of God we read about in Scripture are meant to fill us with awe and thanksgiving, meant to lead us to trust in his sustaining power. The promise of Yahweh's abiding presence with us throughout this human life with all its shocks and alarms – and afterwards – is the believer’s source of strength and hope. For the God who transcends time and space, the Mighty One who spoke the galaxies into existence by the power of his will – this resplendent, eternally existing being desires to share life with us !
"If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him" (John 14:23).
What a promise! What a hope! What an offer! A God of parts, of physical form and shape, an “energy field” of the kind finally encountered in Star Trek V could never do this. ”Why does God need a Starship?” Kirk asks near the end of the movie. And He doesn’t. He doesn’t need anything. But the God of the Bible, the Mighty One who dwells within believers through the power of the Holy Spirit, he takes up residence inside us (Romans 5:5).
All over this world people have boldly gone forward on this divinely-led quest to boldly go where few have gone before, to have God Himself live inside them, to help them in their struggles, to bring them to ultimate glory.
Are you one of them?