John Bunyan’s famous work “The Pilgrim’s Progress” pictures a man raking filth while an angel tries to crown him with eternal glory. The angel repeatedly calls him to “Look up,” but the man is so intent on muck that he doesn’t see the angel or the crown. Bunyan’s originally intended to impress upon his readers the hope of their salvation rather than the cares of this world, but the image has been reused many times since then, often referring to writers who work in the journalistic mud. Looking at it from a different angle, what if we are galactic muckrakers with our focus on this earth?
Let me explain. Carl Sagan was once well-known for saying we are star stuff, meaning the complex chemicals that make up our anatomy were forged in the intense heat of stars. More recently it has been believed that pre-biotic material, the precursors of life’s amino acids, were formed in the gas clouds left over from exploded stars. Now evidence has found pre-biotic material scattered amongst interstellar ice crystals. If this is correct, then chemicals manufactured in interstellar space seeded the earth long ago, forming amino acids, and then giving rise to life as we know it. Such a hypothesis would almost guarantee aliens on other worlds.
And if life does exist on other worlds, unless we can figure out some kind of Star Trek warp drive, we’ll never know about it. The distances to even the nearest stars are far too great. We’re destined to be galactic muckrakers, forever turned inward on our own tiny world from which we can never escape. But the idea that our origins are spread amongst the galaxies says we’ve come from something much greater than ourselves. Maybe this hints at how we’re made in the image of God. Perhaps it speaks of our future. At least it reminds us to “Look up.”
