The government dropped over 160 declassified UFO files on Friday, May 8, 2026. By Saturday, the internet was already on fire.
Predictably, the usual machinery cranked into gear fast. Conspiracy theories. Breathless headlines. People absolutely certain this either proves aliens are real or proves the government is hiding something even bigger. Social media doing what social media does, which is turn anything remotely mysterious into full-scale panic before the facts have had a chance to put their shoes on.
As a science fiction author and a Christian, I want to offer a different take. One that might surprise you coming from someone with my history.
I Am Not Worried. At All.
Not because I am dismissing the significance of these files. Some of what has been released is genuinely unexplained, and I think that matters. Credible military personnel, astronauts, and pilots have been reporting encounters with objects they cannot identify for decades. That deserves honest attention.
But does it threaten my faith? Does it rattle my understanding of God or Scripture?
Not even a little.
The Genesis Account Was Never a Cosmological Catalog
One of the laziest intellectual leaps I see repeated in these conversations is this: proof of alien life automatically disproves God, or at minimum, discredits the biblical narrative of creation.
That is simply not true, and it does not hold up to even casual scrutiny.
The Genesis account was never intended to address every molecule in the universe. Consider how vast the universe actually is. If you demand that the Genesis account address all of it exhaustively, you are demanding something simply unrealistic. If intended to be exhaustive, it would still be being written, and we would still not have finished reading it. The account is illustrative. It communicates more about the WHY of creation than it does the HOW. Christians have long and honestly disagreed about whether Genesis is meant to be read as literal, figurative, allegorical, or symbolic. That is a legitimate theological conversation. But it is not a core defining belief of Christianity, and it never has been.
Proof of life elsewhere in the universe does not erase the core tenets of the Christian faith. It does not change who Jesus claimed to be. It does not unwrite the moral framework of Scripture. The two things are simply not in conflict the way many people want them to be.
Two Equally Staggering Possibilities
Here is where I actually land, and I find both options genuinely breathtaking.
Possibility one: God created only human life on Earth. That means He built this entire vast universe, most of which we will never see, simply for his own pleasure and to demonstrate his immense power. If we are the only intelligent life constrained by four dimensions in this cosmos, we will spend literally forever discovering new things about creation that are utterly stunning. To me, that picture makes me very impressed by God. Which is, in its essence, worship.
Possibility two: There is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, perhaps in a multitude of locations. If God created sapient beings throughout the cosmos on a scale we cannot begin to map, then His power is demonstrated at a level almost too large for the human mind to hold. That impressiveness, again, makes me worship.
Either way, I end up in the same place of awe and wonder.
Awe Is Worship
Here is the thing about awe. Whether it is directed at matter and material things, or at the creator of those things, awe is essentially worship. The question is not whether you are capable of it. You are. Every human being is. And every human being does it. The question is what you are pointing it at.
So, to me, the greater consideration than whether alien life is real is this: what is it that you are in awe of? What are you essentially worshiping?
That person you love or are attracted to?
The beauty of nature?
Someone’s amazing talent?
Your own talent, insight or intelligence?
Something else?
And what are the implications of your answer?
When you sit with those questions honestly, they become the questions that either give you peace or give you restlessness in your soul. Whether someone is an atheist, an agnostic, or a theist, the pursuit of peaceful and better lives should be something we all strive for, and something we appreciate in one another rather than using as ammunition to antagonize and demonize one another.
The government just released 80 years worth of unexplained phenomena. More files are coming. The universe, it turns out, is full of things we do not understand.
That has always been true.
And if you are paying attention, it has always been worth being in awe about.
The best is yet to come!
Alan D.
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