Our Exploding Sun

Dang, I'm just going to roll with death here. Maybe I'll get it out of my system? The vision of Christianity, this end-times prophecy stuff, all assumes that the Kingdom of God that replaces the world happens, well, here, on Earth, with our familiar New England graveyard with Washington's bones and such. But the natural final destination of Earth is being consumed by the Sun as part of its death. So, how to be cosmic big-picture about the end of the world and the Christian vision of final salvation?

First the facts, as I understand them. All the matter we have experience with - the sun, planets, our planets, the calcium in our bones - is the result of a few generations of suns exploding and pulsing forth elements forged in their core. We are a second generation solar system, meaning there was the Big Bang (which may or may not have been 'the beginning') and then there was another star that exploded, and now there's us. And our sun will explode, too, eating up all our calcium and making new cool stuff out of it. The exploding sun planet thing is just how stars and planets and matter works. The only force strong enough to manufacture elements is an exploding star, and they just so happen to have lots of element-rich planets hanging out nearby when they explode.

This should really change our perspective of our relationship with our planet. We are minuscule passengers on a cosmic rock whose destiny we apparently cannot change. Environmentalism, husbandry, and general ecological stewardship is all for our survival, not the survival of the planet. When a Hippie says, "Earth is dying," he may mean the ecosystem, which is dying, but the planet is always dying, and living, and not terribly affected by us. Humans have not changed the gravitational pull of the sun, nor its effectiveness at blowing up.

Thinking cosmically like this should also raise questions about the place of other planets, with or without life, in the Christian vision of final, universal salvation. But another day.

What it does provide is a context for the values of faith and hope and love that is sensible today. We have faith that the Christ-event is, if not an unique, an important event in space and time. Christ says that the Earth is important, people are important, and our actions and prayers affect the history of salvation. You are my people and I will be your God, says the Shoah, the Jewish confession. We are the people of God, created in (one of) God's image(s). So feel important in the face of boggling scale.

And we have hope for a future that is not nihilistic but important, unique, and positive: The Kingdom of God. Even if the Final Horizon, the Omega Point, is beyond our solar system's history, that is, even if Salvation comes after the explosion of our Sun, we have hope that our world is not vain and nil, but important to an ongoing history.

Here I can see myself telling tales to preserve my sanity. But if religion is nothing else, if all our faith is in vain, is it not still worth it? This is the definition of denying mortality - denying the finality of a supernova. Is that good enough? When taken at this scale, has Christianity ever been anything else? Are we ready to call this necessary to humanity?

Love has a place in the scheme, something like the Noosphere of Teilhard. Another time.