Mars Fever

Mars Fever

People pack the foyer of the Agnes Scott College observatory in Decatur, Ga.; they wait in line, past midnight. Young, old, one holding a baby. They all wait. Some stand while some prop their tired bodies against the wall. Over there, an old man with a cane stands alone. The people seem to be enjoying themselves. They're about to do what no one living has ever done. They laugh and talk together, even though, until tonight, they were strangers.

They have one thing in common: they have a fever. In fact, it's the fever that's brought them together. The fever has one symptom: it makes a person want to see Mars because it's the closest it's ever been or will be for a long, long time. For each, the Red Planet will never be closer.

Like us, they've seen pictures of Mars. But the fever says, "That's not good enough." They want to see it for themselves, look through a telescope and see it, not someone's photograph of it.

The fever has spread across the nation. Long lines organize those eager hordes crowding in observatories here and around the world. Mars Fever is an epidemic.

Why this Mars Fever? Associate Professor of Astronomy Chris DePree believes he knows why. In a day of televised trivia, he opines, we spend our evenings contemplating the minutiae of the lives of people we don't even know. He could be right.

We turn on Fox News and watch the police change a speeding car along an expressway. We know neither the driver nor the name of a single policeman, and if they tell us, we really don't care. We listen to people spend an hour conjecturing where Ben and J-Lo will get married. (Even though no one invited us, for some reason the location is important to us.)

The information overload drowns us in trivia and we invent a game to show we've been paying attention and call it Trivial Pursuit, a game thousands of questions where answers mean nothing.

Professor DePree believes we're lining up because we "have a deep desire to contemplate something, something outside of ourselves, a universe greater than we are." We "long to reassure ourselves that there are real realities that surpass the daily, mundane human reality."

He's hit on something: Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has ingrained eternity in humanity's heart. There's a drive in us to connect with something bigger than ourselves. It's a hunger that won't go away, but the human race keeps ambushing it with its mania for sports and entertainment (Romans 1). But like a swimmer trying to hold a beach ball under the water, it keeps bobbing up.

There's a feast available for his hunger; we find a banquet table spread by Jesus Christ. He's both the host and the feast itself. His person (John 1:1) and His work (His death on the cross brings the forgiveness of sin and eternal life to all who believe) are the highest realities. Millions of people for over 2000 years have found Him to be Who and what the Bible says, "For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible . . . all things were created by Him and for Him (Col. 1:16)

The gospel of John has given us food for contemplative thought for 2000 years and over the years millions have found Jesus to be worthy of both living and dying for.

But at the end of the day, DePree doesn't offer us much hope. He conjectures that, for those suffering from Mars Fever, "it may be a comfort to realize that there are whole planets that know nothing of humans . . . and perhaps we hope that somehow that Martian light will touch us and transform us, if only for a moment . . ."

The realization that there are planets with no life, offers us nothing. To hope that the Martian light will momentarily transform us is a leap of faith into the dark. How much more, how much better is the Light of the World (John 8). Martian light? It pales in the face of its Creator.

Mike Halsey, Pastor

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