Ask the Pastors S6 E12: “Can Christians believe in aliens?”

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Welcome to Ask the Pastors a segment of the West Hills Podcast where you have the opportunity to ask your questions and receive biblically grounded, pastorally sensitive answers from our pastoral staff. My name is Brian. I'm your host and one of the pastors on staff. I'm joined by Pastor Will. Hey, pastor Thad. Hello Pastor Austin. What is that sound? What could that be? I'm so excited for when you're going to play that. So we have a bunch of questions about aliens and

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I'm most excited, this is the most exciting question we have ever received.

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I told you it's a good one. Told It's the most exciting I've been since marijuana.

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The question on marijuana since you discovered it or the question on

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Marijuana.

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I'll

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Just for another. It's another day. Another day. Another day. So quick question. What is the worst alien movie out there that you all have seen? Anything come right to mind? Austin, did you have one?

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That's got to be Star Wars. Wow. That's a good way to, I love Star Wars. Tell the problem with

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Star Wars. It's a good way to make enemies

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Is they have an entire universe. An entire universe they get to create and every single time they sit down in the marketing and writing room and say, Hey, where should we put, where should we put our story? Where should it be? And some jerk in the back of the room. Always shout, how about tattooing

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A place with sand? I love it.

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It's funny. That's it. Star Wars the worst one. Love it. We're going to have, I don't a lot of

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Alien

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Movies think I've seen Alien. I dunno. There's an aliens I've seen et It was very good though. Classic

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Et trash movie. You said Signs is your favorite.

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I think signs is one of my favorite never seen signs. Really? Al Mel Gibson.

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I've heard of them. I like it. But I don't know that I heard of. I mean I think I've heard of, but somehow I missed. Super Eight you were mentioning is a good one. Yeah, never heard of that. Now I'm curious to watch it.

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Movies where kids curse. Sorry, I know this is at the Pastors, but I do always get a good laugh.

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Goonies. Yeah. What was the one? Nope, recently the Jordan Peele. It was not that good. I didn't

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Think

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It was bad. Yeah, it was bad.

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There's been a bunch of aliens knowing with Nicholas Cage. Oh, I haven't seen that. Yeah, was good. That's a great one. I mean he's perhaps the greatest actor of all

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Time Cage movie. I've missed

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Nick Cage. He's the best

• Read more

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  Perhaps

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  Is the perhaps

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  Operative word of as.

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  So one of the questions of the four parts of this question, the first one just kind of go part by part from

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  Cali.

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  From Cali.

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  You could encompass this is all things about aliens in regards to the

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  Bible. The title should be, let's just try and do, yeah, as much about aliens as we can. I feel like there's one question she throws in at the very end that I won't ruin. Now that could be its own whole own podcast maybe, but I don't know. We'll see.

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  Does scripture allow for belief in life on other planets? Feel free to clarify in your answer how you're defining life.

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  Okay, lemme just quickly say, I don't see why there'd be any problem at all in very quickly saying yes that scripture, there's nothing about the Bible that would preclude the possibility that there is life on other planets. If we discovered bacteria growing on Mars, I don't think any of us would. Because another way of rephrasing this question is if we discovered life somewhere else, would we all have to just renounce our Christian faith? And I mean if we discovered bacteria on Mars tomorrow, I'm not submitting my resignation. So I think I'm saying that a little tongue in cheek, but I think that what she's obviously getting more at is intelligent life.

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  And then you can drill down to, like she said, feel free to clarify your definition of intelligent life or sentient life or something of that regard. So anyway, that's probably not answering the question like I said she wanted, but there is a difference between life and intelligent life. So how intelligent would the life have to be for it to be a problem for us theologically or would it be a problem? I mean I think that's really your question is, is there anything that you see in the Bible that would cause you to lose sleep over even the possibility of this conversation? We're having

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  Thoughts. I'll add one thought that's maybe not as helpful as answering this question. Then I'll let Austin, because he's the seminarian currently in Scott

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  And we have a space class, have a whole, don't you have a whole section on Alien? I'm fly to work for the space force after this theologian residency.

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  He a chaplain too. I do think there's one unique thing when it comes to Christianity and aliens is that we adhere to miracles occurring all the time and that we believe that God can do anything. And yet perhaps our first response to something like this is always like, that's not possible. It's like, okay, well maybe not. That's all I'm going to say. Now I have some more thoughts on other questions, but Austin theologically, is there an issue of a certain form of life

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  Theologically? No, I don't think so. The entire creation is distinct from the creator. He can put anything in it that he wants to, and it can be life that is more intelligent than ours, which is an interesting thing to consider. But there is one distinction that is very clear in the Bible. Let's just say that there is little green dudes out there and they're far more technological.

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  Why do they have to be green?

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  I don't care. But just for sake, because there always are we come on, come we've been stamped with the image of God, therefore we know what the green, which is The point is that is the theological thrust of the argument is that even if there are carbon-based bipeds out there with two eyeballs and perio vision, whatever, they're still not stamped with the image of God.

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  Yeah, well, so we can probably go beyond that, can't we? And Cali's going to in her, sorry, we can go beyond that and Cali's going to drill down even farther than that. To me that's the starting point is that the creation story tells us biblically, that we are uniquely humanity. Humankind is uniquely made in the image of God. But then there are all sorts of other related questions about the fall and Christ redemption and who that could potentially be applicable for. I mean to me, the Bible, to answer her first question, does scripture allow for the belief of intelligent life on other planets? I mean scripture certainly to Austin's point, makes it sound like we humans are special. Not only because we're made in God's image, but because pretty much the entire story of scripture is the story of God's relationship with us humanity. I mean the animals and the trees, everything else is a minor character. Let's be clear. And everything beyond that, beyond this earth is barely mentioned. I mean you get some language of God holds the whole universe together by the word of his power and he created the whole universe, those kinds of things. But just the even mentions of anything beyond our planet is very minor. So we come across as being very special. This planet comes across as being very special.

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  Adam's sin is talked about in regard to mankind or humankind depending on which woke translation of the Bible you read. But humankind, mankind, it's not like being kind or something like that. Christ took on human flesh. I mean these are all things that put us humanity pretty squarely at the center of things, biblically speaking. And yet it is interesting, and maybe to come at it from the other angle for just a second like you did that is that I think it's very interesting that despite that, that we know now just scientifically modern astronomy tells us that just in terms of the geography of our actual universe, and of course ancient Israelites and even Christians wouldn't have known about this, but that in the most scientific literal sense, we are not as central in even our own universe as we certainly as the Bible would maybe lead us to believe.

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  Copernicus did his whole thing and kind of was the first chin in the armor that fell on that. And we're not at the center, the sun's at the center even of our own solar system, much less Milky Way. Galaxy is kind of a small to medium sized galaxy somewhere off to the side of the universe. We're not, which to me, and we're not even a dot on the radar of the universe in terms of, and then humanity. I mean we're just one species on this planet. So I guess I say that to say on the one hand we're very central and God's story made in his image.

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  God has this special connection and relationship and with us. And yet in terms of our place in the universe, I think that the point there obviously is that God knew that because we're special to him, there would be a tendency toward, well exactly what we see today with secular humanism like pride and thinking that everything revolves around us and that we humanity are the answer to all of the world's problems that actually we have created. And so God just reminding us even by virtue of our position in the universe that you're very tiny and actually the universe doesn't revolve around you. It revolves around me. I'm the creator. You're just the creature and kind of like you said, Austin,

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  And often we unfortunately narrow our view to creation to the earth, number one, and then only natural things number two.

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  So

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  We only think that that which is creation is that is on the blue and green sphere that God has no mediators for, meaning things like photosynthesis and gravitational constants and electromagnetics and so forth. We forget that he uses human beings as mediators in his creation. So things like society and culture and technology and journalism and engineering and art and literature and whatever, all that is creation, those are creation things. So they get brought into God's new creation. Put another way, would we do space travel if the fall had never happened? And I believe the answer is yes, because we would've developed those faculties a lot, probably a lot sooner because we wouldn't have been inhibited by the effects of the fall. Well, we do those things in the new heavens of the earth, right? Likely, unless we just find that, I don't know, whatever he is doing on earth in his new creation is better than planet such and such and we just like, nah, we'll just stay here. I don't know. We're all going to find out.

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  Going back to also if there is intelligent life on other planets, I think the reason I don't have a theological problem with it, even if they have int intelligence that is on par or exceeding that of human beings, is that the human being is not primarily constituted by its intellect. And I think that is a mistake that people make is they're afraid of the idea with their faith that they find out there's an alien out there and the aliens smart enough to have UFOs that fly around and so on and so forth because they think that the human being is primarily a mind. They think that it's primarily a brain on the stick when in reality we are social, physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual beings embodied in a soul and embodi soul.

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  Right?

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  Exactly. So we can't reduce this all the way down to one of those things. We are all of them as a composition and we are stand with the image of God.

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  And I think the soul is connected to the image of God. I mean, dolphins have brains. Pigs have brains. And what makes us special and made in the image of God isn't that our brain is bigger or more powerful like you said. It's that we don't just have souls. We are souls and our souls who we are, our personhood, the seed of our personhood, our soul is made in the image of God. So to your point, yeah, an alien with a bigger brain or more physically capable, better body, any those other mental, emotional, physical characteristics. Yeah. I'm going to say something.

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  One brief theological component related to the idea of life on other planets that I find very fascinating. Again, not that we have confirmed life on other planets,

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  This just did getting on a call. We could have to re-record this in the future years.

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  What is interesting, and I read others who have made this argument, CS Lewis being one who he wrote whole books on what it'd be like to go to other planets with out sin. And I'll get to that in some of our other questions. But most often aliens are portrayed as violent, overtaking, murderous people things. And I think that speaks a lot to, because we don't have interactions with aliens, at least us in this room, that I think it speaks to the theological component of mankind's natural disposition towards depravity and that we just assume they'd be like us. They would be just like us if we could. That's not a really good image.

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  If we were the smarter ones and we developed the technology to get to other planets and discover people there, we would rape the village and conquer.

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  We'd take over. And that's just a low anthropology. So that's my last comment on that. Yeah, interesting thought,

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  Kelly. Second thought, move on to the second one here. If there's life on other planets, would Christ's substitutionary atonement apply to them? Jesus's full humanity being necessary in that equation makes me think not. But then could God the son take on the flesh of insert name of hypothetical alien here and die a substitutionary death on every planet In that scenario?

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  I will say that, not that it's good or bad, but Cali's question kind of surprised me because she's kind of positing a hypothetical possibility here that I hadn't even really considered that Christ might somehow take on multiple different fleshes on multiple different planets and in order to die multiple different deaths on every relevant planet that had, I guess again that intelligent life that had figured out how to sin and reject God the way that she's envisioning and asking that question makes me theologically uncomfortable personally. It would again seem to undermine now not only the uniqueness of our being made in God's image, but the uniqueness of Christ incarnation, not to mention their, for me would have to be practical questions. We would have to work out since we believe that Jesus now currently in heaven is wearing his earthly flesh suit his body, he's already embodied for the rest of eternity.

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  Like when he came back resurrected and let the disciples feel his nail holes and spear holes and all that, and now he's in that body, he ascended to heaven and that we too are going to be embodied in the new heavens and new earth. And so there would be even practical questions with that. If Jesus did that, which of his body suits? Then you'd have to, are there multiple jesuses and multiple different bodies? I don't know. It gets weird, I think. So I don't love, I guess the way she's put out there, the possibility of if there's life onto the planets. But the way that she, before her parenthetical her envisioning of what this possibility could maybe look like, just the first question she asked there on its face, if there is life on other planets, would Christ substitutionary atonement apply to them on that question?

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  I would have to say yes. That if there is intelligent life on other planets that like us figured out how to reject God and live as if they are their own gods and as if they are the creators and sovereigns and instead of deferring through and worshiping and living in obedience to the creator who presumably would've revealed himself to those species as well, that I guess the way I would want to answer this is rather than Jesus going to those planets to also become embodied in their form and their own cross and this and that, I think if there is a scenario in which any of that is even possible and we're able to maintain our Christian faith, for me, what it would have to mean is that Christ work on our planet, on our behalf. Taking on human flesh was not only powerful enough and redemptive enough to rescue and save us and humans who would trust in him, but is powerful.

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  Well, and we know, I mean you get specific language in the rest of the New Testament about Christ's work redeeming all of creation like Romans eight talks about the fall affecting not just humanity, but like you said, the fall affected all of creation, all of creation, groans and longing and slavery and bondage because of Adam's sin and all of creation will one day be redeemed. And you think of Revelation 21 5 and the one who sits on the throne that says, behold I come to make all things new. We talking about new heavens and new earth. But then he says, I make all things new. So I guess I say that to say if there even was a way that we could, I'm not saying there is, I'm not saying we should, I'm just saying if there's a Christian out there that's just, I don't know, loves conspiracy theories or whatever and wants to believe in aliens for some reason and can for their own get theologically around the idea that yeah, of course there could be life on the planets. I think what you'd have to say about it is that Christ's work on our planet was sufficient not just for our planet, but for all of creation and to redeem all of creation and all of created beings that are fallen. So I think otherwise you undermine the all sufficiency of Christ redemptive work if you say that he's got to go and take on multiple bodies and do this kind of thing. So I don't know. That's my thought on

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  It. I think my short answer, my short response is we need to be real careful here when we talk about what it means by apply. And so his substitutionary atonement, I would say if we assume that substitutionary atonement, when we look at the rubric of atonement, it has a lot of different parts to it. But I think what she's talking about is the whole penal substitutionary atonement, namely the blocking of the wrath of God, in which case the ones that need that blocking of the wrath of God are those who have sinned. So the question somewhat assumes that these other beings are capable of sinning. Well, gorillas and lions and my dog are not capable of sinning because they don't bear the image of God.

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  So the only way that they would apply to them in that sense is if they were human beings as well. But what you're also talking about is not just the penal substitutionary atonement, it's the scope of God's redemption. And one of our beliefs about the doctrine of sin is that it's in relationship to our doctrine creation. And bobbing said that the distinction with the quint tree and the creator and the creature is the starting point for all true religion, namely that God is completely separate from his creation. It's either God or not God. Sin enters into the picture and sin touches everything, which is to say there's nothing in his creation that sin does not touch. Sin is not a thing. It is uncreation or de creation is a twisting of what's already present in there. And if his redemptive work, if your point on will on his redemptive work is going to be comprehensive, it has to untwist everything. So the redemptive work of God does redeem all of his creation in a sense. It doesn't do substitution, substitutionary atonement for all things because not everything needs substitutionary atonement because not all things have sinned, but physical decay gets undone. However exactly that looks like that kudzu, that won't stop growing all over the place gets undone in whatever sense because whatever the paralytic effects of the fall are

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  Undo dark matter.

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  Yeah. So in whatever sense, if there were other beings that their existence or the reality had been twisted because of the entrance of sin into creation, not just into earth, but into creation, why do you think it's so hard to go to space? Why do you think we tend to not live very well out there? It's hostile to us is because in some sense we've ruined that creation gets redeemed in his work. I don't know that I would use the language of substitutionary atonement. At the same time we affirm the hypostatic union, namely that in the one person is the joining of the two natures, but they're not divisible and they're not confused. So in the sense that could he then take on the flesh of a different being? I don't think so because then you would divorce, you would rupture the hypostatic union. You can't rupture the hypostatic union unless Christ comes back down, gets back into the tomb, goes back onto the cross and undoes the entire process. And that's incapable of happening. So no, I don't think he could in any sense, presently take on the flesh of, let's just say it's on our earth, take on the flesh of Labrador retrievers and redeem Labrador retrievers. Right.

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  Nor would he need to. So, and you make a good point about that. So what if Cali had asked it this way? Because again, we're envisioning a hypothetical scenario where there are other beings, even intelligent beings, maybe even more like you said, intelligent. But I think some of the problem that we're having with the hypothetical is, well, you did a good job pointing out unless they've got a soul, they can't sin. And the only way to get a soul is you made in God's image or to be a soul, is to be made in God's image. And so what if she asked it this way? Is it even theoretically possible that there could be human beings on other planets?

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  Because now we open up the possibility that there are not just other intelligent life forms, but that there are, I mean, somehow figure out the backstory. There are others like us on other planets that are also made in God's image. And maybe that's, is that kind of her third? Well, it's related to her third question here. Anyway, I didn't mean to transition us too soon, but go for it. I mean, that's another interesting question to, it's another form of the question. If we found life on other planets, I'm still a Christian. If we found intelligent life on other planets, I'm still a Christian until, but if we found human life on other planets, what does that do for your theology of all of this?

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  I don't personally. That's the one where I started to draw the line and think that I can't find a way for it to work in part because of the way that Adam is set up as the king priest originally in the Garden of Eden to subdue and multiply and all the charge that is there. And it seems like his task of being the king priest in the temple to execute that office actually really the office of prophet priest king in one, in another sense, he would've been incapable of doing in its entirety because there would've been other human beings all throughout the universe that he could not king priest, prophet among. And so it seems like he would be immediately set up for failure in that sense.

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  Any thoughts

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  You got on that? Yep. Makes me uncomfortable. Maybe to bring in more Foley Kelly's question she talks of, I'll just read it real quick. More broadly, would we expect that the overarching story of God's redemption would be identically repeated in life on other planets, or might it work completely different? And she goes on, and I think I with Austin struggle with this idea of it being repeated on other planets and thinking of God doing the same thing elsewhere, giving them essentially their own Adam and Eve their own garden. Otherwise it doesn't work

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  In that sense. And as I adjusted in the beginning, we can be so quick to look for the most rational thing if we were talking about UFOs and be like, well, it's probably just garbage in the sky or something, versus thinking it could be something else, angel, demon falling, whatever. But I really struggle with, and you brought up the just uncomfortableness of thinking of atonement being applied to something other than mankind here on earth via Jesus, his incarnation, his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, that I just really would have to draw a line CS Lewis when he spent some time writing about this. And like I said, he's written whole books thinking about this. He wrote an article, religion and a rocketry where he plays this out a little bit, but he goes to it from those sold creatures. He doesn't identify them as humans, but sold creatures on other planets.

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  S-O-U-L-E-D. Like with, yes. Okay, got it.

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  Sorry, with souls. It took me a second. I'm done. I'm making things up as I go.

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  Who bought them? Yeah, sorry, go

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  Ahead. Yeah, sorry. Bought by the blood that he makes the argument of what would they be as unfall creatures? They've not fallen, they've not sinned. What would their regard be in God's grand kingdom of the universe, not just the kingdom of earth and how he rations about it. And he goes back and forth and in the end he summarizes with it. Well, I'm just very thankful. We're far away from travel to other worlds, so we don't have to think about it.

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  We're a little less far now, a little less far. But to your point, we're still struggling with Mars. It's like one day maybe we'll look back and I don't know, laugh. But maybe not because like you said, maybe God purposely made it really hard.

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  That's my theory.

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  Yeah,

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  I think so. I think it's part of the creation. I think he flicks us out of the sky and makes it extremely difficult. I mean, think about how frustrating. That's the whole point of the curse of the fall is that our work is frustrating how hard it is to do You ever tried to change a toilet paper roll? That thing slips out of your hand and it bounces all over the bathroom. Now we're talking about trying to leave the planet. Things are made frustrated by the

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  Default. Does that make someone like Elon Musk like the height of just narcissism? And anyway, that's another podcast. That's another podcast. The people who, if

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  We're talking about him too, he has said he has seen nothing that gives evidence of life

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  Beyond that. I know he was just on Joe Rogan

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  A

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  Week or two ago, and of all people who Joe is trying to get him on this conspiracy theory thing about the aliens and he's just kind of laughing at him,

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  What would it be good to read three in its entirety or we give a,

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  Well, I do think it because read the second half of her question

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  IE, would sin necessarily enter into every world? Would it do so by the same means? Or did Adam's sin introduce sin to the whole universe? God's perfect omniscience and sovereignty make it seem reasonable to conclude the way he has worked out redemption here is the best way. So I don't know why he'd do it any other way elsewhere, hypothetically.

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  And I love that she said that in the second half because I agree with her Callie completely on that, that God's plan of redemption is perfect and it's not just perfect here for us. I mean it would really be, again, massively theologically problematic to me to envision their somehow. I mean, it's like the story. I mean every good story, every good movie, every good book you've ever watched read is just a less good version of the story of the gospel story of the Bible story. So it's unthinkable to me and to massively theologically problematic, to think that the story could have played out in some different way where it wasn't sin, but it was this and it wasn't Christ, but it was this, and it wasn't the resurrection, but it was. It's like, no, I think that again, you're messing with the uniqueness, the all sufficiency, the perfection of God's design of redemption.

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  So when she says, will we expect that the overarching story of God's redemption would be identically repeated in life on other planets or would it work out differently? I would say neither, because again, the only way that I'm even, maybe I'm more open or just whatever, but the only way that I could see it working at all is if Christ work on this planet was somehow sufficient, not just for us on this planet, but for all of brokenness of all creatures and sold creatures and image of God creatures on other planets. And again, I mean I certainly have the same hesitations that Austin does about even the idea of discovering human beings on other planets. But I don't know, maybe I just don't want to give up my, again, I'm going back and I'm rephrasing all of these through the lens of at what point would I have to renounce my Christian faith if we discovered a human being on another planet? Would I have to stop being a Christian? And I guess I just want to hold onto it too bad. I don't know. I don't think I'm going to ever have to worry about that. I don't think that we ever, but theologically, could my faith make room for that if somehow a human being was on another planet? So we ready for four or was there anything else on three?

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  The only one I want to just mention on three is does Adam or did Adam sin introduce us into the whole universe?

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  The answer is yes. We said yes, yes.

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  And I think that some people don't quite connect that spatially. Adam's sin distorts all of creation to varying degrees. It's not just an earth problem

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  And Christ redemption will apply to all of things, creation, new heaven's, new earth, all things

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  New, which is crazy to think about that is that changes when we think about the scoping that large, it's not my own personal soul, which is really great, but the entirety of his cosmic plan of redemption, it is huge. It does make you think more about the soulmate of what is man that you are mindful of. It's crazy.

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  And what is, yeah, like you said, thinking about the brokenness of the universe that we don't even understand or realize or see or observe. I mean the little,

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  And we'll never see or

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  It'll never, I mean, you think about the developments just in the last 10, 20, 50 years in astronomy, whatever, and what we can observe and just things that concepts like dark matter that didn't exist, however, 20 probably 50 years ago. And thinking about what other forms of and is that brokenness, I don't know, that we just don't understand. And if we don't even understand that what we're living in now and theoretically could have maybe the chance of one day observing how much less we could even speculate or observe, like you said, Austin, what his redemption is going to look like of the what is a redeemed, I don't even know any other planet's names outside our solar system, the end drama galaxy or whatever. What is it going to look for that to be redeemed? What is it going to look like for the rest of our solar system and can, what is it going to anyway,

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  Redeem

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  Star

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  Wars. Let's move

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  On. Yeah, just running out time. So number four, would you apply all your answers to the questions above to the idea of a multiverse as well?

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  Googling What is a multiverse over here?

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  Yeah,

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  This is the one. Just watch.

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  This is

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  Ridiculous. But yes,

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  I think it was a good movie. End of the spider verse. Yes. Ridiculous. But yes, that's exactly what I was going to say. I think you'd have to say it just takes it out. Another level. Multiverse would just be the same thing as life on other planets or solar systems or galaxies or universes. It is all just one level out. That is one though that, I don't know, maybe it's not worth if somebody asked it, we could decide whether we wanted to answer or not.

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  Kelly born next tweet

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  About, oh my gosh, actually the multiverse. Does Christianity allow for the multiverse? I don't know if I'm smart enough to sit down and even if I read all the speculation about the multiverse,

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  My head,

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  I don't know. That i's my head to think about even and discuss it in anything close to an intelligent way. But here's what I know about it. From everything I've heard from people smarter than me that can

  (36:43):

  From into the spider

  (36:44):

  Verse, put it in a layman's, a layman's dumb terms is that it's kind of silly. It's kind of a silly idea. The multiverse. I think it's just people. It's just, again, humans. I think a charitable understanding would be humans getting bored. A less charitable or maybe more honest assessment would be, once again, it's humans trying to resort to anything other than a creator to make sense of the universe. It's like, okay, maybe this will get us off the hook and get us from having to believe in a creator God is if there's a multiverse. And anyway, it's just silly. You wanted to add one more?

  (37:28):

  I was going to say one more quick thing and it'll be quick. It's a one word answer for us. Okay, good. Do you believe in UFOs or as they are now called UAPs, unidentified anomalous phenomenons, yes or no?

  (37:44):

  Oh, absolutely. Do you actually I do. They're still flying around if you don't dunno what they are not seeing their flying around around, I dunno what that is. Yeah, sure. My brother-in-law was in the sandbox for a while doing secret whatever, and they're like, yeah, no one knows what it was. We have looked six ways of Sunday with all of our fancy spy gear and we couldn't figure it out.

  (38:04):

  Yeah. You hear about more and more of this

  (38:07):

  2002, the,

  (38:08):

  Again, I'll listen to too much to Joe Rogan,

  (38:10):

  Department of Defense put out a whole report about it essentially saying, yes they are. We don't believe they're extraterrestrials.

  (38:16):

  So

  (38:16):

  Then where are they from? Here's eight things we think they could be.

  (38:18):

  This is going to have to be another episode now scaries, because y'all both believe in it, and

  (38:21):

  I don't know. Scariest thing is that it's another country's technology that we do not have yet. And I think that is

  (38:28):

  Frightening. It is terrifying. But UFOs, how could they be that technologically advanced in that and needed to be stealing our refrigerator technology? You're telling me China can fly from 30,000 feet to three feet in less than a second, but they have to pilot our steal, our DVD technology. They can't build their own cars. They can't figure that out. I don't know. It does raise a lot of questions though, so,

  (38:58):

  Yeah. So you don't believe

  (39:00):

  In them. I don't know. Hopefully this episode doesn't air in China. We could get into some trouble, I guess, but our future overlords,

  (39:08):

  I had one last question.

  (39:09):

  Yeah. Do aliens, do aliens exist? Okay, one word answer on that then. Do aliens exist?

  (39:22):

  Yes. Depending on how you defines

  (39:24):

  No, I'm not talking about illegal immigrants. We did that last week. I'm talking about a few weeks ago. I'm talking about

  (39:30):

  Sold.

  (39:31):

  Do you think life on other planets exists? Oh yeah. Intelligent wise bacteria? No. No.

  (39:37):

  Okay. I just think nitrogen carbon, but I'm good with UFOs, carbon oxygen, like the most basic elements to produce life.

  (39:44):

  So all three of you, I'm good with it. Believe in these U-F-O-U-A-P. Thanks.

  (39:50):

  I've given it about 12 seconds of thought. I want to give space for that. Well, you have. No, I really do. I want to live hypothetically, I believe in any. Anyway,

  (39:57):

  We'll see. Maybe that could be another episode. We'll see if somebody ask that.

  (40:05):

  Well, that's it for this week's episode of Ask the Pastors. Remember that you can submit your questions by visiting the info bar at West Hills or by asking them online through our website at www.westhillstl.org. And join us next week as we address a question around the idea of how we can easily fall into thinking that God, the Father, reluctantly or begrudgingly loves us because he has to. In Christ, we know that the Trinity is united in will, so this simply cannot be true. In light of that, can you talk about the ongoing intercessory work of Christ? So join us next week for that episode, and if you join this week's episode, hit that like button, subscribe and share it with a friend. Thanks so much for listening, and we will catch you next week.