God and Space Exploration

Having read Jay Barbree's book about Neil Armstrong and his role in space exploration, I was overjoyed at seeing there was a documentary on Netflix on the Apollo programme, "In the shadow of the Moon". While it made some omissions of details in the book, I was really moved by it, as though in me there was a little boy with an urge to fly to the stars. I couldn't help wondering about whether this was not the next "giant leap" for mankind, to fulfil Armstrong's vision of further exploration.

I was briefly brought up short by the Christian beliefs that have always been present in the back of my mind: what if we are meant to wait for God to take us into His heaven after the death of our planet and of our mortal bodies? But then I also remembered all the assumptions that I had made about Christianity that had been proven false or, at best, improbable, such as the sovereignty of the traditional church and doctrines that have sprung up to ensure this sovereignty over that of Jesus Christ and our relationship with him and our fellow humans.

What if space travel, the urge to leave this planet behind, can be a unifying force for all of humanity? God prevented the ancients from building the Tower of Babel, but He did not prevent us from building gigantic metropolises with towers that seem to reach the heavens. This, I suspect, He allowed because humanity has, with all of its bumpy ride through history, still remembered its humanity - we were still able to produce masterpieces of art and music that reminded us of a spiritual realm that transcends the material; we still had the capacity for awe and wonder.

At the end of the documentary all the astronauts testify to how they were spiritually moved by seeing our planet from space, how small our squabbles on Earth look when we gain a bit of perspective on our place in the Universe. I believe that the human race cannot hope to enter that realm of deep space again before we have learned to humble ourselves before a greater vision. We cannot hope to achieve great heights when our eyes are on the things below and when we try to rationalise our selfish beliefs and our greed through science and technology designed to keep us earthbound and focused on the empty trappings of our consumerism.

This is why I wrote the song "Maskanda", a song about my first encounter with the magical guitar, presented to me by a strolling Zulu minstrel on the Natal rural roads. To me, this musician presents the human being in all his vulnerability and capacity for wonder. It is because we are losing touch with our humanity that we are becoming arrogant in our thinking only in materialistic terms, glorifying those idols held up to us in the media who dictate our whims and desires.

We can never hope to reach those heights that Armstrong achieved under these circumstances. He was the humble son of a farmer and happened to be a brilliant pilot, which is why he was chosen as commander for this, the most important pioneering venture of the 20th Century. Yet he never sought glory for himself, always turning personal praise into praise for the whole team - not just Apollo 11 but also those missions that went before him. While fellow astronauts like Aldrin were dining out on their celebrity status, he shunned the spotlight and became a media recluse. Instead he laboured tirelessly and passionately for NASA to further and refine its space programme, becoming frustrated at administrative shortsightedness that mothballed the space shuttle programme among other projects.

When the astronauts were paraded before and lionised by the world, they always heard people say, "We did it! We got to the moon!" - never, "You did it". I cannot help but feel that this mission, the urge to walk among the stars, belongs to the whole of humanity, not just the 24 astronauts or the country that put them there. But we cannot do this while we have our heads full of technology without any room for wonder about the Creator who made this Universe and gave us the ability to overcome all of the humanity's problems if only we would humble ourselves before Him. We cannot hope to achieve this great step for mankind when the children of men are squabbling over which piece of dirt on this tiny, exquisite planet belongs to them.

Maybe I'm wrong; maybe God intends only for us to wait for His return and give up our exploration of space in the process. But while we wait, I'd love to see what this creature, the human being, can achieve with this splendid thing called "the mind" in combination with the full awareness of his tiny, humble yet important place in the Universe.