I have long had difficulty with the physics of Christianity, especially the bodily ascension of Jesus into heaven after his resurrection. According to the Act of the Apostles, Jesus is taken up bodily into heaven forty days after his resurrection. The apostles were witnesses, so I have no doubt that this is true. (Would the Apostles lie?) But that doesn’t help me with the physics.
Given the fact that physical bodies cannot travel faster than the speed of light, Jesus, even after 2000 years of travelling in space, would still be well within the universe and nowhere near heaven (which, I assume, is beyond the universe.)
I once asked a Catholic priest to explain this to me, and he said that God can do whatever God wants. While always a good way to explain away things we can’t explain, it doesn’t satisfy me. Christianity makes a point that the resurrection is bodily, but what is the point of doing so if you are then going to deny the limits God placed on the body? So, with all due respect to the Church, I just can’t buy the idea that Jesus has made it to heaven just yet. And as it turns out, I’m right.
Not only is Jesus not in heaven, he is still in our solar system. In fact he has been spotted on Mars. NO, I’m not talking about Philip Jose Farmer’s 1979 science fiction novel, Jesus on Mars, I am talking about the real Jesus on the real Mars.
The NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took a picture of Jesus on Mars on August 3 of this year, and NASA published the photo in October. Look carefully and you will see the full body of a robed Jesus looking around the desolate Martian landscape saying, “Dad? Are we there yet?”
Actually I made up the “Are we there yet” thing, but there is no doubt that this is Jesus. So what is he doing on Mars? I asked a few true believers at the City Café the other morning and got the following responses:
“Its like the Shroud of Turin. Jesus stopped on Mars to leave this impression on the rock so that when we got to Mars we would know he had been there. This would bolster our faith.”
“He didn’t stop on Mars on his way to heaven, he is waiting on Mars before returning to earth.”
“This isn’t Jesus at all, but a trick by Barak Hussein Obama to mock our faith and promote Islamic socialism.”
I have a different view. I trust the Apostles and believe Jesus is in Heaven. I also believe in astrophysics. To reconcile the two I now believe the universe is flat and only a few miles thick. If this is true it would take only a few hours for Jesus to pass beyond the universe and enter Heaven.
Of course there are those skeptics who insist that the universe is wide, and who try to prove this by pointing to the fact that light coming to earth from distant galaxies is billions of years old, but that only shows how stupid some people can be. The billions of years old light astronomers see is coming from the length of the universe, not its depth. The universe is flat, thin, and LONG.
Why am I the only one who gets this?
4 comments:
I loved Farmer's Jesus on Mars.
This must be like a Rorschach test. Some see Jesus...I see a long legged, dreadlocked - mastodon. What does that say about all of us?
Delighted to find your blog. I follow you regularly in Spirituality and Health. The majority of Protestant clerics kinda avoid these subjects and realize how these stories developed. You gotta admit--they make good stories!
Hey I see a face now! Yes by all means I see Jesus' nose and mouth, I would recognize that any where. ;0)
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