Elon Musk, age 53, is touted to be the richest man in the world. His mother says he is a “genius,” and I, for one, believe that must be so. Elon displays deep savvy in a variety of subjects such as physics, math, engineering, science, science fiction, computer science, aerodynamics, finance, and world-changing, entrepreneurial ventures. Elon’s intelligence – though formidable, imaginative and clearly above average – is just like yours and mine insofar as it reveals God’s image.
All human intelligence is phenomenal. People have brainpower that far excels the abilities of any living creature in the animal kingdom. People are remarkably smart, but because most of us are afflicted with self-doubt, hardly any of us develop the far reaches of our potential. The well established norm is for people to stifle themselves and deliberately hold back from making steady efforts to contribute their utmost best.
Elon, by contrast, has a tendency to transcend that norm. Though someone might critique him for being selfishly ambitious and unattuned to God’s will, it is almost undebatable that Elon tries hard. God alone can judge his motivations, but anyone can see, by the authority of God’s Word, that none of Elon’s faults detract from the brute fact that Elon was created in God’s likeness. Theologically speaking, we can learn from Elon’s drive to labor tirelessly in hope against hope. I don’t have any exposure to the real Elon, but the Elon I see on screen is a man of extraordinary vision.
By virtue of his vision to perform seemingly unattainable, attainable feats, Elon pushes through setbacks, embarrassment, unexpected higher costs, pain, enormous pressure, gigantic obstacles, huge inconveniences, and colossal self-caused failures that he does not allow to define him. Elon does not kowtow to moments of defeat. He falls down, gets back up, works his rear end off, and toils toward to the end result that he sees in his mind. No doubt, his work-life-balance is chaotic and bereft of Sabbath rest. But despite Elon’s lack of spiritual development, I see God’s image in him.
The analogy is imperfect because no one is “like God” in the sense of Micah 7:18, “Oh, Who is a God like Thee?” or Isaiah 40:18, “To whom then will you liken God?” God alone is God. “Is there any other Rock? I know of none” (Isaiah 44:8). But the analogy is valid in the sense of Genesis 1:26, “Let Us make mankind . . . according to our likeness.” Every human being really is “like God” precisely because we bear God’s image.
What I’m saying is this: It inspires me that instead of sitting around and mindlessly luxuriating in his Pay Pal fortune of $250m, Elon invested over $100 million of that in trying to build a rocket that he could send into orbit. Within 30 seconds, that rocket, and countless hours of anguish and hard work, exploded instantaneously into smithereens. I don’t know what the truth is, but somewhere on the Internet, I found that Elon’s second rocket exploded mid-air in a mere matter of minutes, consuming an additional set of tens of thousands of hours of meticulous, analytical work and another $100 million out of Elon’s bank account. The same thing happened a third time. Yet Elon did not give up.
When God created male and female to multiply, fill the earth, rule it, and subdue it, I wonder if God did this in hope against hope. While in the Garden of Eden, as far as I know, Adam and Eve did not multiply, not fill the earth, and they did not rule it or subdue it. Instead, they caved and ate the forbidden fruit. As I explain in my book, Angry Like Jesus: Using His Example To Spark Your Moral Courage, Eve should have ruled the serpent. She should have taken charge and told him, “No!” Adam, just as much, should have subdued the serpent, but Adam capitulated and failed to obey God. Adam and Eve were a rocket that blasted off on time, but exploded almost immediately thereafter.
But God did not give up on the project of humanity. God relaunched Adam and Eve outside of the Garden of Eden. But tragically, by the time of Noah in Genesis 6, every thought of every person continually was evil – with the exception of the man, Noah, and seemingly seven more people: Noah’s wife, and their three sons and their sons’ wives. Things on earth got so bad that God flooded His handiwork. How expensive was that flood? Elon’s second rocket reminds me of that flood.
God’s third launch came after the floodwaters dried up. Noah’s family multiplied and filled the earth, but they did not rule it well or subdue it. Noah’s generations-later-son, Abram, was a friend of God, and Abram’s wife, Sarai, had enough faith to get pregnant at age 90. Their generations-later-son, David, was a righteous man of genuine contrition who the Bible says had “a heart after God.” But God’s chosen people, born of Abraham and Sarah and King David, never did rule and subdue the earth as they should have. By the end of the Old Testament, we see that God’s third rocket disastrously blew up. The whole nation of Israel, north and south, rose and fell. The temple of the Lord built by David’s son, Solomon, literally burned to ashes.
God’s fourth launch, however, was different. Like Elon’s fourth rocket that successfully went into orbit, so God’s relaunch, recorded in the New Testament, involved God Himself becoming Human. Jesus of Nazareth, born of a woman, perfectly fulfilled the ancient command to rule and subdue the earth. But shockingly, Jesus’ rule was other-worldly. Jesus’ way of ruling was to do what He saw His Father doing (John 5:19). Jesus ruled by resisting sin to the point of shedding blood (Luke 22:44). He ruled by bearing witness to the Truth (John 18:37). He ruled by speaking with authority. He ruled by loving others with the greatest love. Jesus laid down His life for His friends (John 15:13).
All glory belongs to God. I must pause to say that because no one compares to God.
I would also like to share, though, how God has used Elon to inspire me. I watched a portion of a documentary that reported that Elon Musk considers every single teammate who works in one of his companies to be a “vector.” A vector is “a quantity having direction as well as magnitude, especially for determining the position of one point in space relative to another.” A vector influences everything around it.
I believe Elon is right to say that each of us is a vector that wields a certain influence on everybody else. That is especially true within the Body of Christ. Each and every member of Christ’s Body impacts the whole Body. When the foot is hurt, the Body limps. That is why the weak members matter as much as the strong (I Corinthians 12). To put it another way, what Christians secretly do in private is not a mere matter of their own business. Whatever you and I do counts for us all.
If my analogy about Elon can be stretched a little further, the “rocket” that we are, as a Church, is wildly successful because Christ Jesus is Our Head. We were born to rule, not by taking over in any coercive sense. But rather, by imitating Jesus. Right ruling and subduing has everything to do with obeying God’s Word and living by the law of love, the Law of Christ (Galatians 6:2).
So far, I have no reason to think Elon loves God. But I have every reason to believe that God loves Elon. When I pause to consider just how hard Elon tried, at his own expense, to get Space X launched, I feel highly motivated to press through difficulties. Elon is “like God” in a Genesis 1:26 way. God went out all out to save us. Elon’s determination is a flicker of God’s light that lies in all of us. You and I were created, not to shrink back by being worldly conformists who make it our top priority to fit in with the crowd, but to exert our very best, at great expense, for God.
At Right On Mission, we have a process called Strategic Futuring that helps believers launch into their best life unto God. If you’ve never done it, I strongly encourage you to invest in it and sign up for our next cohort. You were made in the image of God. That’s a very big deal. An even bigger deal is that when you go broke for God (die to yourself) in order to be all-in, God conforms you into the image of Christ. Nothing is more breathtaking than that miracle.
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