Reflecting on Disclosure Day, the “Alien Hypothesis”, and why our unique place as Image-bearers is far from a cosmic accident.
Sitting in the darkened Odeon (other cinema chains are available) theatre as the credits rolled for Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, I felt a profound sense of what the critics have called an “unsteady” and “spine-tingling” existential sensation. There is no denying Spielberg’s mastery is there I mean he makes the “great unknown” feel both twenty tonnes heavy and light as a feather. Yet, as a Christian, I left the cinema feeling a deep, nagging dissonance and couldn’t help but feel it was a glib trope-fest of nearly three hours, leading up to one word: “Listen”.
While the film is definitely a “soul-searching experience,” it subtly nudges the viewer to rethink (if one is not careful) the biblical narrative, suggesting that humanity is merely one small part of a vast, populated cosmic “chessboard”. Of course for us as Christians we know our place but, it is easy to find yourself asking a mis-shaped “what if”.
Before we get started, and importantly in all this – it’s something I want you to keep in mind, we see in this movie a very stark contrast between the “aliens” and Jesus throughout the film – where the aliens have to use subtlety, coercion and even kidnapping and trauma to get the children to work with them, Jesus never does and so whilst we may look upon the aliens in this film and somehow benevolent and wanting to “help” mankind ultimately, they are a dark shadow space compared to the light of Jesus.
The film’s timing is impeccably clever, arriving just as our own headlines are filled with the U.S. Department of War’s declassification of what many of us rightly recognise as “nothingburger” UFO files. Spielberg takes this “nothingburger” – a series of grainy videos and bureaucratic dead ends – and serves it up as a gourmet feast of high-definition quirky spiritual uncertainty. At one point he effectively uses the character of the Mother Superior to pose the question that has shaken many: “Why would [God] make such a vast universe, yet save it only for us?”.
For the Christian however, the answer to that question is found not in the stars and galaxies, but in the Word of God. The vastness of the universe is not a crowded tenement block; it is a cathedral designed to display the infinite majesty of the Creator. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1, ESV). The “silence” of the universe isn’t a lack of life, but a shout of God’s glory for when we feel small, we should not look for “saviours” in silver discs, but look to the One who “determines the number of the stars” and yet “heals the broken-hearted” (Psalm 147:3-4, ESV).
The vastness of the universe is a testament to the closeness of God in Christ, the very emptiness of space is a sign of the fullness of life in Christ.
One of the more fascinating, if likely unintentional, layers of the film is its Exodus-style narrative. Spielberg (and probably most of the secular world) frames “Disclosure Day” as a “Red Sea” moment – a liberation from the “bondage” of withheld truth. While this parallel is a “nice touch,” we must be wary of what is being “disclosed”. In the film, Margaret and Daniel act as “prophets” for an alien power, performing “signs and wonders” that evoke the miracles of the New Testament, however as Christians, we must ask if this itself, this portrayal of what we are being denied in this case by WARDEX, is actually a “strong delusion” designed to move us away from the uniqueness and beauty, the threaded relationship of the Imago Dei.
The film I think ultimately seeks to devalue humanity and what it truly means to be human by suggesting that “empathy is our foremost evolutionary advantage” and the core of our existence. In this cinematic Spielbergian gospel, empathy is elevated as a virtue that exceeds all else. But for the believer, empathy – while kind – is not a manifestation of love and does not lead to salvation. The world craves “unity” and “understanding,” but these are hollow substitutes for the sacrificial love shown in sharing the Truth of the Gospel. Empathy might understand a person’s pain, but only the love of Christ, who “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8, ESV), can actually redeem it.
I personally suspect the “Alien Hypothesis” may be a long-running spiritual diversion, perhaps even demonically inspired, to lead us into a “spiritual battle” where we become vessels for the wrong forces. We are warned that “even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14, ESV). If “Supreme Beings” from other worlds were to appear, they would still be creatures, not the Creator, even if they claimed (against the word of God) a Promethean hand in our beginnings
For any brother or sister whose faith feels “shaken” or even “questioned” by these cinematic “revelations,” I urge you to return to the Word to be re-grounded. Read Psalm 8, and marvel that the God who made the moon and stars is “mindful” of man and has “crowned him with glory and honour” (Psalm 8:3-5, ESV). Turn to Colossians 1, which reminds us that in Christ “all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… all things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16, ESV).
The ultimate “Disclosure Day” has already happened. It happened in a stable in Bethlehem and on a hill in Golgotha. We do not need to wait for a “Sinai moment” from the stars. God has spoken definitively: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2, ESV). Don’t let a “nothingburger” of a film devalue your place in God’s story.
You are not a “passenger” on a cosmic chessboard; you are a child of the Living God.
In the words of the film “Listen” to Him.
