Richard Littledale's
Views on the News: May 2007

Earth Mark II

Hurry, hurry, hurry, ships are boarding now for the million year journey to Gliese 581c, the new earth-like planet found in the Libra constellation (see BBC website news story). This 'super earth' has many of the elements needed to sustain life - such as water, a reasonable temperature, and tolerable gravity.

Over at the spaceport, however, the excitement seems to have been swallowed up in the squabbling. At first the geographers and politicians said that they should be allowed on the first flight, so that they could map the planet's surface and divide it up accordingly. The pacifists, however, said that maps and borders caused many wars and therefore should be left until later, if at all. The arms dealers, meanwhile, forced their way to the front of the queue, saying that any colonisers of a new world should be properly armed, and therefore their representatives should be on the first flight. Close behind them were the oil magnates, waving their sheaves of statistics about the earth's dwindling resources and saying that this time they wanted to exploit it wisely and gently.

Meanwhile, in another part of the spaceport a particularly colourful crowd is gathering. Here there are gaily -coloured flags and banners fluttering in the air and every kind of instrument from tambourine to trumpet tuning up. This is the religious queue, with people of every faith determined to save this new planet from itself. Of course, they all have different ideas about how to do it, and each group claims to have heard from a higher authority that they simply have to be on the first flight to Gliese 581c. As scuffles break out, the pacifists break away from the other crowd, leaving the politicians and arms dealers to slug it out between them.

Excitement about the discovery of a new earth-like planet is hardly surprising, and will go on until the day when technology allows us to take a detailed look at its surface. Indeed it may even go further, and our great great great great great great grandchildren may one day set foot on this other brave new world. However, so long as we export not only our germs with us but also our attitudes, we have little reason to believe that Earth Mark II will fare any better than Earth Mark I. If we are not careful we will end up like people who constantly move house because they do not get on with their neighbours, only to miss the point that they are the neighbours who cause the problem.

Jesus, himself involved in the creation of Earth Mark I, said that our problems lie in the inner landscape of the heart, not the outer landscape on which we place our feet. 'The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him' (Matthew 12 v. 35). By all means think about what you could offer to a new planet, but bear in mind that we need the creator of the earth to re-create our hearts if we are to build a better tomorrow - either here or at the edges of the universe.