On anthropocentrism and cosmic imperialism

Ad gloriam eius.

I have this day come to unravel my misapprehension of the concept of the Imago Dei, recognizing it as an identity defined primarily by its function, far exceeding any mere status to boast about. There is a certain sense in which reading the Genesis account of mankind’s creation can feed our ego and elevate our sense of importance in the grand scheme of things. Surely, if God had to speak to the divine council to create mankind, it communicates the magnitude of our importance, forming beings explicitly designed to share in His dominion. This view, however, remains incomplete if we fail to account for the role we have been given. Our identity is inextricably linked to our function; indeed, it is a functional identity. It is an active mandate to pursue justice, cultivate order, and reflect His character into the world, bearing the weight of true responsibility.

This realization was aided squarely by Carl Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar. If we scale the 13.8-billion-year history of the universe into one calendar year, where the Big Bang happens exactly at midnight on January 1st, humans only show up eight minutes to midnight on the last day of the year. This is absolutely bewildering and puts us in our rightful place within the creation account of the cosmos. On one hand, it is easy to slip into thinking we do not matter, given that we appear as a one-second footnote at the very end of the calendar. However, this mindset is completely upended when we hold a theocentric view of the universe. Consider that God spent 364 days and 23 hours creating this wild, expanding, beautifully complex cosmos and, in the final moment, placed humans in it, handing us the keys to be His image-bearers and caretakers.

In receiving these keys, however, we must be careful. We must remember that creation centers on God, overcoming our deeply ingrained assumption that the universe revolves around us. Absolutely everything was made for His glory - Ad gloriam eius - including what is commonly viewed as the wasteful expenditure of time He undertook to reach our human age; even the ancient, dead stars and the long-extinct dinosaurs existed entirely for His purpose.

This brings me to my closing thoughts on space exploration. The ecological and societal scars we have left on our own planet serve as a sobering reminder of our capacity for greed. Therefore, a great worry lies ahead in our attempts to explore His cosmos. We run the risk of exporting our broken human egos to His heavens. If we approach space exploration as a race to mine asteroid warehouses for profit, we inadvertently project our earthly failures onto the divine canvas. Our approach must instead be rooted in humility and awe, resisting the urge to prove ourselves masters of the universe. Such ambition is prideful and highly presumptuous, especially considering the profound physical and biological limitations we face in trying to leave our planet.

It is indeed humbling, and I am left like David in the Psalms with one unresolved question.