The clip that will change your life in about 6 minutes
The following chapter
from Albatross by C.W. Steinle is
copyrighted material for promotional use only. Copyright 2025 by Memorial Crown
Press, Phoenix.
Chapter
Eight: The Century Ahead
Envisioning a faith unafraid of the future.
The twenty-first century opens like a dawn over uncharted
seas. Rockets rise from launch pads like prayers of fire. Telescopes peer
beyond galaxies into the first faint light of creation. Artificial intelligence
translates languages, guides surgeons, composes music, and writes poetry.
Medicine vanquishes diseases once thought immortal. Engineers dream of cities
on Mars, green energy across deserts, and water drawn from barren air.
And yet, amid such wonder, humanity carries questions of
meaning, morality, and mortality as old as Eden. For what good are rockets if
men carry war into the stars? What use are colonies on Mars if injustice and
hatred follow us there? What value is intelligence—artificial or human—if it
lacks wisdom, humility, and hope?
This century will demand more than technology. It will
demand vision. And if Christianity lifts the weight of imminence and learns to
bless the future rather than fearing it, it could help craft a civilization that
is worthy of its discoveries.
A Future
for Science and Faith Together
Imagine a world where universities no longer pit science
against faith but see them as partners in seeking truth. Theology classrooms
teach the wonder of quantum physics alongside the mystery of divine
transcendence. Physics labs host lectures on ethics shaped by centuries of
Christian moral thought.
Churches sponsor observatories, science fairs, and space
scholarships, seeing telescopes as tools of worship rather than threats to
belief. Scientists and theologians meet not to debate boundaries but to explore
meaning—together pondering the vastness of a universe still expanding at the
speed of light.
Such a future would surprise those who assume faith must
always oppose progress. It would show that Christianity freed from apocalyptic
suspicion could bless the scientific imagination rather than discouraging it.
Spacefaring
Stewardship
Picture the first permanent settlement on Mars, not merely
as a human achievement but as a spiritual milestone. Chapels rise beside
laboratories. Hymns mingle with the hum of oxygen generators. Ethical debates
about terraforming, AI governance, and planetary mining unfold with voices
shaped by Christian visions of stewardship and justice.
Colonists read Genesis not as an excuse to exploit worlds
but as a call to care for them: Fill the earth and subdue it becomes tend
and keep, a charge to cultivate rather than conquer.
The same faith once accused of retreating from progress now
provides the moral compass for humanity’s first steps beyond Earth.
The Arts
of a Cosmic Imagination
In this envisioned century, art blossoms beside science.
Composers write symphonies inspired by images from the James Webb Space
Telescope. Filmmakers create epics about faith and courage amid alien
landscapes. Painters fill cathedrals with cosmic vistas, showing Christ not
only as the Lord of history, but also as the Lord of galaxies and gravitational
waves.
Such art lifts the human spirit beyond materialism,
reminding explorers and scientists alike that life requires beauty as much as
oxygen, meaning as much as mathematics.
Ethics
for an Age of Power
Technology will tempt humanity toward hubris: genetic
engineering, artificial intelligence, planetary control. But Christianity at
its best has always spoken of humility, justice, and the limits of power.
In this future, Christian ethicists help guide laws on AI
rights, genetic editing, and planetary colonization. Pastors preach sermons on
humility before creation. Theologians write books on the image of God amid
machine learning and alien ecosystems.
Faith shapes technology with wisdom.
Worship beneath
Alien Skies
One day, perhaps centuries from now, a congregation will
gather on another world. Dust storms may swirl outside domes of steel and
glass. Yet inside, voices will rise in hymns not of fear but of wonder—thanking
God for the stars, for the Christ who reigns over galaxies, for a Gospel wide
enough to embrace a universe billions of light-years across.
Such worship will carry no hint of the albatross, no fear
that exploration delays Christ’s return, no suspicion that discovery threatens
divine sovereignty. Faith will stand confident, joyful, unafraid—its hope as
vast as the heavens themselves.
The End without
the Ending
Christ may return tomorrow, or in ten thousand years. Faith
need not know the timing to live faithfully. A Christianity free from
apocalyptic anxiety will embrace this mystery, working for justice, beauty,
knowledge, and hope as though history may last a thousand millennia—while
living with the readiness that it may end tonight.
This paradox—urgency without panic, hope without fear—will
define the faith of the future.
Walking
Forward Beneath Two Skies
The man beneath the two skies will finally straighten his
shoulders. The prophecy-sky above him will no longer thunder with doom, but
shine with promise. The science-sky will no longer compete with faith, but
expand it.
No longer racing against time, humanity will walk forward
into history’s next chapters with courage, humility, and hope—its faith no
longer a chain dragging behind but a wind filling its sails.
And perhaps the true marvel of the century ahead will not be
colonies on Mars or artificial intelligence or telescopes glimpsing the
universe’s edge. Perhaps it will be this: that faith and discovery learned at
last to walk together beneath the stars.
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