For all our modern advances, even today the universe can seem like a scary place. One that even now seems more than capable of swallowing us whole at a moment's (or an asteroid's) notice.
And so of course, in an unruly - yet by no means uncontrollable - material world, hey, thank God for science, right? And for all the micro-burrowing, omni-excavating technologies that increasingly make the Progress of Science possible. If not inevitable. Thank God for those god-like atom-smashers, asteroid-deflectors, face-recognizers, fMRI scanners, etc, to whom all hearts (and guts) are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets of the universe are hid. I mean, even on the odd chance that we ourselves should wind up getting smashed, surely the risk incurred is one worth taking?
I'll admit, nowadays this expanding cosmos can often seem like that. Like some Ultimate Megahazard against which no insurance is ever too costly. Like a place not just overwhelming, but almost maliciously confusing in its infinitude, its elusive complexity, its wildness and callousness and treachery to whatever is human. Or whatever is "sentimentally" human, in any case. In short, a cosmic jungle, that not only offers no haven or even foothold for innocence and trust, for surprise and wonder (much less delight), but which only the most proudly, ruthlessly sophisticated human minds can ever hope to map and control, organize and productivize. And so, of course, "really" know. So that if, say for instance, modern America is fast becoming the sort of place that is "no country for old men," even so our wider cosmic habitat - the more we study and explore it - is more and more revealing itself to be no universe for little children. Not even children "in spirit." And just as our once seemingly limitless American wilderness may have demanded
"men for [commensurate with] my mountains,"
so now our one hope of intergalactic survival may be to become the sort of self-transhumanizing species that can indeed "equal" an expanding cosmos - but only to the extent that we control it. And - perhaps just as likely - only control it in the degree that we despise, and brutalize it? Remember, no sophistication without an ever-so-knowing, withering contempt. And surely most of us are familiar with those adult "real life" situations (most of real life, actually?) in which it all comes down to a choice of eat or be eaten, torture or be tortured, etc.
We "Biblical" theists, of course, continue to admit there may be room for a slightly different perspective. That is, we continue to confess to a more or less Biblical Creator. I.e, a deity who not only created every thing, but who persists in being on the most searchingly, yet respectfully, intimate terms with every thing He created, however glorious or "insignificant." To such an extent, indeed, that He alone is able, not only to "take the edge off" our creaturely propensities to answer terror with terror, torture with torture, etc, but actually to find an older, deeper place within each of us. A place where "deep calls unto deep" - even, say, between man and rodent? - precisely because each one of us creatures is no longer seeking merely its own territorial power, but somehow also the presence - and so maybe the peace - of its God?
In brief, we still confess to the sort of Maker who's no less mindful, and patient, and lovingly accepting of each being's vulnerabilities than of its strengths. And who knows that sometimes a creature is never more vulnerable than when it's trying to be most "in charge," and self-transcending. Or terrorizing. The point here being that there is nothing human (or even transhuman) that can exceed not just His grasp, but His wisdom, and empathy. And Final Judgment. So that if - just maybe - there's some vestige of wistful innocence in even the unpromising soul of a tiger, or a Titan, or a Donald Trump, surely He, if anyone, will be the One who can show us how to find it? Or at any rate, far more effectively than the most arrogant transhuman worldliness could ever beat or torture it into submission.
The question, I suspect, on the minds of today's more globally-minded technocrats (so far as they think of God at all) is whether He's still up to that job. That is, the job of being "on top of" the whole universe, not just from top to bottom, but from start to finish. Can even He keep up with its ever-unfolding, infinitely multiplying strangeness and perversity? Or even our own? Much less with our own ever-exploding human science and technology?
Or do we still, just maybe, have a Biblical God who remains what He always said He was? Who knew every conceivable crook and crevice of an expanding universe long before there was a human, or even a human science, to map and "conquer" it? A God who is every bit as "superior" to us at the end of our vast sojourn of progress as He was at its beginning? An author and a finisher so wholly incommensurate with every other "greatness," and yet so utterly childlike to the very core of His being (be He never so "adult," vast and wise), that our mere human pretensions to adulthood and maturity, to superiority and hierarchy, to greatness and progress and self-transcendence all boil down to one humongous joke from Hell?
Pray for the peace of Kyiv.
God heal America.
(Edited.)
