To the Moon or Mars, Bring this One Thing
What humanity carries matters more than where it goes
In December 2024, I wrote a piece called Bring the Cross to Mars.
At the time, it felt speculative—a meditation on Ray Bradbury and the interior life we would carry with us into space. Now there is a race to the moon and Mars no longer feels distant.
Since then, I’ve written more of New Earth and continued developing The Marrying Man. And I’ve realized something: that post wasn’t just commentary. It was foundational.
Humanity has the privilege of being aware of this glorious universe. As Bradbury said, we are the audience for God’s creation. We have been granted the intellect to explore its wonders—not to become gods, nor to worship what we build, but to see His glory reflected through it.
Before we build cities on the Mars or the Moon, before AI governs even more of our lives and relationships, before technology reshapes civilization—we must not let it reshape us. We must always carry our cross.
And that remains the most important payload of all.
If you missed this post, or if you read it when it first went out, with all that has happened in the past year, I think it reads differently now. Enjoy it below.
Peace.
P.S. A new entry for New Earth is coming next week. You can find the previous entries of New Earth here. Paying subscribers can read the full arc here.
Bring the Cross to Mars
From the Archives: Originally Published 12/29/2024
We were taken to Mars in January 1980. I don’t blame you for missing it. I did. It was harder to get information back then. There was no public internet and only about eight TV channels. I didn’t read much of anything other than the TV Guide (that’s how we knew what was coming on TV back then). Yet, somehow, the nine year old me missed the three night airing of The Martian Chronicles.
It was based on Ray Bradbury’s book of the same name, published in May 1950. My wife gave it to me as a gift because I was consuming lots of science fiction to help with my writing. I was pulled into its rhythm as chapter after chapter, mankind sent ships to Mars that, turned out, had breathable air and habitable temperatures. We simply would construct homes, stores and societies as we had done on Earth.
In the near future, we will soon be able to send manned missions to Mars. SpaceX has focused on this very thing for almost two decades. The below video shows their amazing plans.
The spacecraft’s payload is up to 150 metric tons (“payload” is just the term for how much it can carry). That’s about 332 thousand pounds which is roughly 100 cars or two Boeing 737s. As you see in the video, the plan is to allow for multiple rockets to land to bring the equipment needed to create Martian cities not unlike Ray Bradbury’s vision 75 years ago.
But what is the payload of a person? What do we carry around with us on Earth, let alone inside us when we get to Mars?
Bishop Barron wrote about making Christ the center of your life using the “Wheel of Fortune.” Like the game show, the edges of the wheel has what is about to happen to you (promotions, illnesses, friendships, deaths, money, marriages, etc.). If you focus on the edges of the wheel, life is seemingly unpredictable and uncontrollable, as you go from highs to lows. You do what you can to move to a better result but often fail. Instead of this struggle, Bishop Baron suggests, we should place ourselves in the center of the wheel with Christ. It is here we should remain to help keep all the joy and pain in the proper perspective and let Christ flow throughout all parts of our life.
Whatever we bring to Mars includes what we bring inside us. And Jesus should be at our center.
In Ray Bradbury’s book, humans brought a lot with them to Mars. It was forty-nine years in the future, precisely January 1999, and people wanted to leave Earth in droves because of the horrible circumstances. Threat of atomic war and governmental censorship and control spread into all parts of life. The purpose of the Mars missions was to reap and use the unknown benefits of Mars to dominate Earth. Homes, cities and roads were built across the planet. The native Martians eventually disappeared.
Each chapter is titled with the month and year of the story’s time line with the final one titled October 2026. If you don’t want to know the ending, skip the rest of this paragraph. For the rest of you, humans on Mars are stranded, hoping for Earth rockets to come and rescue them. One evening their hope evaporates as they see Earth explode in the sky. It seems humans blew it up. Mankind begins anew not as Earthlings, but rather, the new Martians.
Our fate will be set by what we carry inside us, wherever our imagination takes us.
Jesus carried a cross to his crucifixion and we are asked to deny ourselves and take up our own cross (and I take that as denying what we want and persevering during hardships) as well. Do this by staying in the middle of the wheel, like the persecuted Christian Syrians in Damascus, and carry the cross within us and raise it high. Even on Mars. I think there is enough room for a cross or two in the spacecraft.
Peace.
P.S. The Martian Chronicles movie can be watched here on YouTube.