How Star Trek Helped Me Understand God

By Neil Earle

This year, 2016, marks the 50th aniversary of the TV series "Star Trek." Almost everyone has heard these words: "These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise ... to boldly go where no-one has gone before."

These lines from the original Star Trek television series whose 79 episodes went off the air in 1969 are a pop culture staple of course. Resurrected in UHF reruns in the 1970s, Star Trek now lives on in almost perpetual re-syndication. The 1979 Star Trek: The Motion Picture spawned nine movie sequels and well-known televised adaptations.

Never a died-in-the-wool “trekkie” I was intrigued by Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989). Though the interactions of Spock, Kirk and McCoy had been playing lightly with our spiritual sensibilities for decades, this episode directly introduced the subject of God. A renegade Vulcan (a humanoid who prizes logic over emotion) took over the space ship Enterprise and set out on the ultimate quest for the answers beyond "the Great Barrier." The goal? To find God. This bold opening was consonant with the fundamental wrinkle at the end of the film when, McCoy, the ship's doctor asked Captain Kirk: "Do you think he (God) is really out there somewhere?"

Aristotle speculated on God as the Unmoved Prime Mover.

Beyond Deep Space

Of course, in terms of God, Star Trek could only take us so far even with Dr. Spock’s IQ to lend help. But here’s where I come in. It is a common assumption (it was mine once) that by travelling far far into deep space – at warp speed, perhaps – an enterprising seeker might find God. The theological problem with all this is the false assumption that God is part of the physical creation, that he is part of this time-bound universe of space and matter. That is an easy mistake to make. So the next question for trekkies and non-trekkies alike is: What does the Bible tell us about God as he really is, God in his essential nature?

First, Scripture clearly shows the God of the Bible is not like us. We are clay vessels enfleshed in physical matter and trapped in time and space. Genesis 1 introduces One entirely outside the physical realm and our time-bound dimensions. "By the word of Yahweh the heavens were made, their whole array by the breath of his mouth ...He spoke, and it was created; he commanded, and there it stood" (Psalm 33:6-9, The Jerusalem Bible).

Ancient Israel was “contacted” by a God who claimed responsibility for the material universe we see around us but outside it all. "Who has understood the mind of the Lord, or instructed him…the nations are like a drop in a bucket…He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in” (Isaiah 40:13, 15, 22).

The fact is that the truth about the Great God is much more out of this world than even the writers of Star Trek could fathom.  The one the Hebrews called Yahweh Elohim (Lord God) is not a physical entity. Bible writers tell us he is utterly unlike anything our minds can conceive. John 4:24 tells us that "God is Spirit.” This means He is in many ways beyond our puny grasp. "The being of God is character by a depth, a fullness, a variety, and a glory far beyond our comprehension," Louis Berkof wrote in Systematic Theology, "and the Bible represents it as a glorious harmonious whole, without any inherent contradictions."

God began revealing himself to Abraham's family.

A First Essential

Still, we can’t be too hard on Star Trek V for presenting a human-centered concept of God.  Even the Old and New Testaments have trouble explaining who he is. The great preacher C.H. Spurgeon wrote: “It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep that our pride is drowned in its infinity…Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of Deity.”

The real Search for God – the theological effort to set forth the Almighty in his essential being – is an exciting quest. It has been going on for centuries. It has occupied some of the most brilliant minds who have ever lived. Aristotle, Plotinus, Origen, Athanasius, Augustine, Luther, Newton, Einstein, Hawking – they’ve all taken shots at it. This is thus a much more significant venture than the sci- fi scenarios of the popular culture.

The most basic thinking about the God of the Bible reminds us how worthy the Almighty One is of our worship, our adoration and our praise. Which keeps Christians centered – keeps what should be at the center, at the center. A first prerequisite, then, seems to be humility.

Human-Centered Language

The Old Testament (and much of the New) writes of Yahweh in human-centered terms. It is important to grasp this point else we could be thrown off the scent. While the Biblical style of writing is often beautifully evocative (“The Lord is my Shepherd,” etc.) it can also be misleading. Note these elegant but more descriptive than analytical phrases:

"Yahweh smelt the appeasing fragrance and said to himself, 'Never again will I curse the earth because of man, because his heart contrives evil from his infancy.  Never again will I strike down every living thing as I have done" (Genesis 8:21, The Jerusalem Bible);

"... How often have I longed to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings..." (Matthew 23:37, The Jerusalem Bible).

This style of writing has a technical name. It is called the "anthropomorphic style" (from the words anthropos, "man," and morphe, "form" or "shape").  This human-centered approach is vitally necessary.  It is an introduction to the understanding of God’s basic character and intentions. Through human-centered language God has generously accommodated himself to our limited ability to understand him. Scriptures reflects God’s desire to be understood by his creation.

Scripture is normally in popular language, not the language of philosophers. The New Testament is written in what has been called “marketplace Greek,” the language of the average person in the Roman world of the first century. Reading the Scriptures with this kind of awareness is an important means of getting below the text, digging deeper in the attempt to see God as he really is. “He is not just an enlarged man…Nevertheless, He may still be presented in human categories and in terms of human attributes" (International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, Volume 1).

Let’s ponder that statement.

The Hebrew writers of the Old Testament waxed poetic when they thought of God. Yahweh was their Rock, their Shepherd, their Fortress, their High Tower (Psalm 18:2; 23:1). But the true God is obviously greater than a tower or a rock. To New Testament Christians in the Greek cities of Asia Minor the apostle Paul presented a more exalted picture of "one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:6).” “I in you and you in me” becomes one of Jesus’ ways to describe life inside the Godhead. This is exalted language, philosophical and theological language and going more boldly than most of the Old Testament had gone. A Rock or a Tower does not have the capacity to be everywhere, know everything, feel love and compassion. That is why Jesus gave us the key revelation that God is Spirit.

The Invisible Things

Some of the Old Testament Prophets and most of the New Testament writers take us deeper into God’s essence, how he exists in his inner nature.

The Wonder of His Presence

Ultimately, the splendid attributes of God we read about in Scripture are meant to fill us with awe and thanksgiving, meant to lead us to trust in his sustaining power. The promise of Yahweh's abiding presence with us throughout this human life with all its shocks and alarms – and afterwards – is the believer’s source of strength and hope. For the God who transcends time and space, the Mighty One who spoke the galaxies into existence by the power of his will – this resplendent, eternally existing being desires to share life with us !

"If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching.  My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him" (John 14:23).

What a promise! What a hope! What an offer! A God of parts, of physical form and shape, an “energy field” of the kind finally encountered in Star Trek V could never do this. ”Why does God need a Starship?” Kirk asks near the end of the movie. And He doesn’t. He doesn’t need anything. But the God of the Bible, the Mighty One who dwells within believers through the power of the Holy Spirit, he takes up residence inside us (Romans 5:5).

All over this world people have boldly gone forward on this divinely-led quest to boldly go where few have gone before, to have God Himself live inside them, to help them in their struggles, to bring them to ultimate glory.

Are you one of them?