The Eternal Angst of the Pagan Heart

By Elizabeth Prata

Elon Musk tweeted something that made me stop and think. And also made me sad.

Elon Musk, the wealthiest person on planet Earth, is a business magnate and investor, says Wikipedia. He is the founder, CEO, and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CTO of Twitter (now named ‘X’) founder of the Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; and president of the philanthropic Musk Foundation. He has been married and divorced 3 times (twice to the same woman) and also has/had a long-time partner. He has 10 children.

All this to say that Elon Musk is brilliant, accomplished, noteworthy, desirable, famous, feted; truly a person who has been through almost all of King Solomon’s Ecclesiastes levels. Except one: Musk has not realized it’s all in vain.

He seems to be searching, to be open, to be close. But we know that ‘close’ won’t deliver a person from the wrath of God. It won’t solve the eternal questions all pagans know but suppress in their unrighteousness. (Romans 1:18).

What he tweeted was this:

The Fermi Paradox, named for Italian-American Enrico Fermi, notes the “discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence.” You can learn more about the Fermi Paradox, here.

I was saddened to see that tweet, because within it is the eternal hopelessness of a pagan heart. In it contains all the curiosity about the universe with no satisfying answer. Conceiving of a vast universe with humankind as the only meager flickering candle against all that inky darkness is a mind-numbing thought. Craving an answer to it all but having none is a grief to a wondering mind.

Christians know the heart-warning thought- that the All-Powerful Yahweh created man uniquely, lovingly, and specifically in order to commune with Him. Knowing the reason for our existence, chiefly to glorify God for who He is and enjoy Him forever settles the eternal hopelessness and angst we all feel, but for the unsaved soul, is too immeasurable to ponder for long. The boundless well of the abyss is terrifying to contemplate.

Though, for some, like Musk, whose business IS the stars, the unformed thought behind his thought is equally terrifying. What if there IS another race of beings out there? How did THEY come to be? What are THEIR intentions? Does knowing another race is out there salve the loneliness felt in the limitless black? Do THEY have souls? And it doesn’t solve the basic question: did an Intelligence create them? And if so, why?

Our sins keep us from knowing these answers. Sin is the abyss that wedges between our soul and all the solutions to these seemingly thorny problems. The Great Chasm is not the vast universe, but the place between sin and repentance. If we repent of our sins (sin is anything we think, say, or do that is against God, and we are ALL sinners) and believe in Jesus Christ, we will be saved.

The unfathomable question is not ‘are there others out there?’ but “Why would God solve our sin problem by sending His infinite Son to incarnate into finite flesh, live perfectly, die an excruciating death on the cross, be buried, and rise to life again, ascending to the pleased Father, on behalf of man? For the ones He intends to save? Why?

The question ‘are there aliens out there?” is not the eternal question. (And the answer is yes, there are aliens, they are called holy and unholy angels, extra terrestrials of vast power and intelligence who visit earth to interfere with God’s works or to execute God’s works). The eternal question is, “How may I be saved?”

How Can I Be Saved? Ligonier.org: short article or short 1:29 video
or this,
What Must I do to be Saved? Ligonier.org short article or short video

Jesus Came To Save Sinners: tract at Exposit the Word-