By: Akos Balogh
Before becoming a Christian in late high school, I was drawn to the occult.
I would spend hours in the ‘New Age’ section of bookstores, searching for deeper meaning and truth than our empty secular culture could provide. I explored all things paranormal, including UFOs. I was fascinated by the thought of alien spacecraft visiting our planet and the claim that the US government had recovered crashed alien spacecraft. Life felt much more meaningful and exciting if we weren’t alone in the Universe.
If the entertainment industry is anything to go by, I wasn’t the only one feeling this way. Movies like Spielberg’s ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, and TV shows like The X-files were wildly popular.
And for decades, that’s where aliens and UFOs remained: in popular fiction and fringe corners of bookstores and the internet. Alleged UFO witnesses were often written off as cranks and crackpots, and sightings as hoaxes or mistaken identity. No one in the real world took UFOs seriously.
But this changed in 2017 when UFOs leapt from fiction to the serious world.
(Buckle up, because from here, things get a little…unusual).
2017: The Year Everything Changed
In December 2017, the venerable New York Times played its part in this sudden shift by releasing an article entitled ‘Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious UFO Program‘. Its reporters provided evidence of a shadowy US government program dedicated to investigating UFOs, as well as video from a US Navy Fighter aircraft showing what was claimed to be a UFO:
This NYT article and the Navy videos sent the internet and mainstream media into meltdown.
Where once serious journalists wouldn’t touch the topic of UFOs, it was now fair game for reporters. Former Pentagon officials wrote books about their involvement with government UFO programs that became instant bestsellers. And on a 2021 appearance on ‘The Late Late Show’, former President Obama admitted to ‘footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don’t know exactly what they are. We can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory.’
But it didn’t stop there.
The US Congress held several public (and private) hearings on UAPs – Unidentified Aerial/Anomoulous Phenomena (i.e. UFOs). Watching some of these hearings made my mind spin, especially this 2023 exchange between US Air Force Intelligence Officer David Grusch, and Congresswoman Representative Nancy Mace:
Nancy Mace: ‘If you believe we have crashed [space]craft as you stated earlier, do you believe we have the bodies who piloted this craft?’
David Grusch: ‘As I’ve stated publicly…biologics came with some of these recoveries’.
Nancy Mace: ‘Were they human or non-human biologics?’
David Grusch: ‘Non-human, and that was the assessment of people in the Program I talked to, who are currently still on the program.’[1]
Public Opinion is Rapidly Shifting
A Federal US lawmaker publicly asking questions about crashed UFOs and aliens? The X-files would have been hard-pressed to devise a better episode.
And around the same time last year, US Senate under Chuck Schumer put together an amendment to a bill called ‘The UAP [UFO] Disclosure Act’ demanding more Congressional oversight of government UAP programs, and wrote these words into the legislation:
‘…reverse engineering of technologies of unknown origin or the examination of biological evidence of living or deceased non-human intelligence.’
What was considered fringe conspiracy territory less than a decade ago – allegations of reverse engineering UFOs and non-human intelligence – is now baked into US law.
Popular influencers like Joe Rogan jumped on the bandwagon by interviewing people ready to talk about their experience with UAPs, such as Intelligence Officer David Grusch, former military pilot Ryan Graves and former Pentagon Official Luis Elizondo. If the comments on the videos are anything to go by, Rogan’s audience is lapping it up.
Unsurprisingly, Pew Research Center’s 2021 survey found that 65% of Americans now believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life, with younger adults more inclined to this belief.
It seems secular culture has shifted dramatically over the last decade, with people increasingly fascinated by UFOs.
What are Christians to make of all this?
1) Evidence is growing that UFOs are not merely figments of overactive imaginations but real phenomena.
A large part of why there’s growing interest in UFOs is because of the mounting evidence for their existence. Think eye-witness testimony from reliable witnesses such as military and civilian pilots, radar footage, a former US President, not to mention a 2021 US Intelligence report that said many instances of UAPs can’t be explained away:
‘[Many witnesses] reported unusual UAP movement patterns or flight characteristics. Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, manoeuvre abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion.’
At the very least, we now have publicly available evidence that demands a verdict.
2) Does the existence of aliens fit with the Bible?
There are several views on whether the Bible is open to biological extraterrestrial life.
Some Christians argue that aliens and UFOs are spiritual in nature and demonic. C.S. Lewis was more open to the existence of biological aliens, penning the Space Trilogy that explored this issue. Others, like Southern Baptist theologian Albert Mohler, are more circumspect: ‘I have no evidence one way or the other [as to whether aliens exist or not].’
While the Bible doesn’t answer the question of alien life, it is human-centred, with Jesus rising and reigning for eternity as a resurrected man (Heb 7:24). Where would this leave biological extraterrestrial life?
3) Christians don’t need to fear the truth about UFOs, whatever that might be.
In the 2024 documentary ‘The Program’, which builds on the 2017 New York Times article about the UAP program, one journalist claims that the US Air Force (USAF) could do more to investigate the existence of UAPs, but vocal Evangelical Christians within the USAF are suppressing any such investigation, presumably out of the fear of what this might mean to the Christian faith.
But such suppression (assuming it exists) is unnecessary and misguided.
Christians worship the God of all truth, who isn’t threatened by the existence (or lack thereof) of extraterrestrials. Christians should feel free to push their governments to be more open about what they know of UAPs. If there is no such evidence, then well and good. But if there is evidence of biological extraterrestrial life, then we can be sure that it’s part of God’s created order, made by Him for His glory.
After all, the truth of Christianity doesn’t hinge on whether ET exists. It hinges on the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Cor 15), and for that, there is incontrovertible evidence unaffected by ETs.
The Deeper Cultural Shift
But there seems to be a more profound cultural shift taking place.
Increasing numbers of people see the reality of UAPs not merely as a fascinating scientific curiosity but as a potential bringer of deeper meaning into their lives, which is what I felt in my pre-Christian days.
And they’re partly right.
ETs would be the most significant scientific discovery in human history. Such aliens could radically transform our technology if they are friendly and helpful. As a former aerospace engineer, I would love to see technology transfers that give us UAP propulsion technology that opens our doors to the stars (as well as a 5-second Sydney—LA flight).
But ETs couldn’t solve our biggest problems—namely death, sin, and the judgement to follow.
Despite advances in wealth, healthcare, and technology that our great-grandparents would consider alien, modern humanity isn’t doing so well. We have a crisis of meaning, growing deaths of despair, and a mental health epidemic among young people. It’s hard to see how friendly ETs and their technology could solve such human problems. What’s more, all this assumes that ETs would be friendly toward us. [2]
4) While it would be fascinating to meet friendly aliens from the stars, it’s infinitely more life-changing to know the One who made the stars.
As fascinating as it would be to discover and contact friendly alien civilisation(s), this pales in comparison to knowing the One who has already come to Earth not just to contact us but to be with us and to save us.
As mind-blowing as it would be to know aliens exist, this is nothing compared to communing with the infinite, Almighty, Holy God, united with Him through His Holy Spirit living in us. And this God is for us – He loves us in a way no biological alien ever could:
‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life’. (John 3:16)
Yes, friendly alien technology (if it exists) could improve life on Earth, but this is nothing compared to the new heavens and Earth that await those who bend the knee not to men from the stars, but to the God-Man from Heaven. As we read in Revelation 21:1-4:
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first Earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Now that’s a better future than any alien could ever give us.
[1] (Grusch claims to have worked on various Pentagon UAP taskforces, which brought him into contact with the US government and Defence contractors in contact with crashed UAPs).
[2] Some alleged evidence points toward UFOs being hostile. James T. Lacatski worked for the secretive US government Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP) to investigate unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP, i.e. UFOs). It produced extensive reports documenting global UFO sightings, some of which are summarised in his book Skinwalkers at the Pentagon: An Insiders Account of the Secret US Government Program. It documents several alleged instances of disturbing events happening to UAP witnesses and raises the question of whether they are benign, let alone friendly.
Article supplied with thanks to Akos Balogh.
About the Author: Akos is the Executive Director of the Gospel Coalition Australia. He has a Masters in Theology and is a trained Combat and Aerospace Engineer.
Feature image: Photo by Albert Antony on Unsplash