Alien Fascination

When I was in grade four or five I snagged my first Ripley’s Believe It Or Not book through a scholastic book order program in my school.

I remember my blood first running cold, then hot, then cold as I read a particularly intriguing Ripley section on the nefarious “men in black” legend. Unmarked black sedans, black suits, green wires running up people’s calves into… what? Flying saucers, government cover ups, little green men, alien abductions… I think from that chapter onward, I’ve been fascinated with UFOs, aliens, and the possibility of intelligent life on other planets.

E.T. The Extraterrestrial sure helped me dial in to my alien fascination. So did Alien, Aliens, The X-Files, the Men in Black movie franchise, and C.S. Lewis’ seminal works Out of The Silent Planet, and Perelandra.

Over the years I’ve searched the night skies for something, anything moving. A few times, I’ve spotted anomalies—like what I took to be a swift high flying plane or satellite in orbit that abruptly started moving the opposite direction it had been travelling without using a turning radius of any kind.

Cue ominous music. Crescendo, and…. fade.

Life on other planets?

Are there aliens out there? I honestly don’t know. The Bible doesn’t really say.

Have they visited earth? I have no idea.

But let’s do some poking around this week. Let’s talk, and see where we end up. Because here’s my nervous confession: I’m with X-Files’ agent Mulder. I want to believe.

Most of the Christians I know don’t believe. In alien life, that is, or alien visitors, or E.T.s, or xenomorphs or anything like them. I’ve read some pretty wild-eyed conservative reactionism to alien-ology. Some Christians claim it’s all just one big green and googly-eyed demonic deception.

I have to apologize for “some Christians” because they tend to have black and white answers for everything in the universe, as though they themselves were God and know everything there is to know. As if to disagree with them is to renounce all that’s true and good and holy in the service of all that’s demonic, dark, and Democrat.

But that’s just silly.

What about you? Have you ever seen a “UFO?” What do you think about all this?

Be sure to subscribe to this blog—and to like, tweet, and pin this post.