Why Some Christians Can’t Handle Sci-Fi (And Why That’s a Theological Problem)

If you hang around Christian bookstores, homeschooling circles, or even just the church youth group long enough, you’ll notice something weird: fantasy is basically considered the safe speculative genre. Everyone loves Narnia, Lord of the Rings, or anything that smells vaguely medieval and magical. But sci-fi? That gets a bit more side-eye.

As someone currently writing a sci-fi series set in a 24^th century United States, I find this fascinating and depressing. And I’m pretty sure it’s not just about the genre’s tropes or its secular-seeming worldview. There’s something deeper going on.

See, at first glance, fantasy just feels right. It’s full of good-versus-evil stories, kings and queens, prophecies and miracles—all the stuff that meshes with biblical storytelling. Sci-fi, on the other hand, understandably feels like humanity without God, or worse, like it’s focused on replacing God with technology and human progress. It’s a little too humanist, too post-religious for a lot of Christians. And I’m sympathetic to that.

But here’s the thing: I suspect a lot more of this discomfort comes from how Christians imagine the future itself—how they think the end times should look, and when Christ will come back. To put it bluntly, if you’re convinced that Jesus is going to return any day now, or at least long before the United States runs off and colonizes Mars then creates a spacefaring Coast Guard to deal with the messes they created, you’re going to have a hard time embracing a future that doesn’t include His return.

So maybe the real question isn’t just why do Christians prefer fantasy? It’s why do so many Christians have a really short timeline for the end of history, and what does that mean for how they read sci-fi?

A brief Explanation of Eschatology

To understand why some Christians bristle at sci-fi set centuries in the future, you need to understand how different Christian traditions imagine the end of the world.

There’s a wide range of eschatological views, but one particularly influential—and very popular—version is dispensational premillennialism. This theology teaches that Christ will return soon, preceded by a rapture of believers, followed by a literal seven-year tribulation, and then a thousand-year reign of Christ on earth. For many who hold this view, the future looks very short—there’s just not a lot of room for centuries of human history before the end. This mindset shapes how some Christians respond to sci-fi: if you’re convinced Jesus is coming back any day now, imagining a 24th-century world can feel not just unlikely but theologically problematic.

By contrast, the mainline Protestant denominations, along with Roman Catholicism, take a more open-ended approach. They emphasize that while Christ’s return is certain, the timing is a mystery. So, while dispensationalism offers one timeline, it’s not the only way Christians have historically imagine the future. And this difference matters when it comes to how Christians engage with sci-fi that imagines long, complicated futures where humanity has yet to see the Second Coming.

Why 24th-century Christianity Isn’t a Heresy (aka where I out myself as amillennial)

But here’s a truth that often gets lost in the rush to predict and prepare for the end: nowhere in Scripture does it say Jesus must return before humans figure out warp drive, colonize other planets, or develop AI. In fact, God’s patience is actually one of the most profound expressions of His mercy. As 2 Peter 3:9 (NRSVA) reminds us, The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. This seems to suggest that the delay of Christ’s return isn’t a cosmic mistake—it’s a deliberate gift of time for more people to turn to Him.

And in this case, imagining a Christian living and worshiping faithfully in the year 2317 isn’t heresy or denial of hope. The Kingdom of God is both already present in the hearts and lives of believers through the work of the Holy Spirit (Luke 17:20-21, Romans 14:17)—though of course it will not be fully realized until Christ’s return (Revelation 21:1-4, 1 Corinthians 15:24-26).

The Brightest Void in particular is an acknowledgment that the story God is telling includes a long, unfinished future—a future full of opportunity to love, serve, and witness. Far from betraying the gospel, Josiah’s practice of Roman Catholicism in the 24th century is a powerful witness to the enduring relevance of faith. It says that no matter how far humanity travels, no matter what new challenges we face, Christ remains our center, the hope, and the reason for living. The effort it takes him to celebrate the Eucharist in Vortex only deepens its sacramental significance, showing how faith endures and adapts in even the most unlikely places. And embracing a long view opens the door to stories that are richer, more complex, and deeply hopeful because of examples like this.

A Theology That Builds

Here’s where it gets really interesting—not just theologically, but in how we live with hope. Ours isn’t a faith built on countdowns or panic over the future. Instead, it’s a tradition that embraces the long haul, investing in the slow work of building God’s kingdom over centuries.

And the Church, historically, has never been afraid of centuries. It’s stood against time with stone and mortar, with stained glass and iconography. Think of cathedrals that took generations to complete. Monasteries. Libraries. Universities. Liturgies shaped over lifetimes. This is a theology that doesn’t rely on a looming end to give life meaning. It builds communities. It trains disciples who may never see the fruit of their faith but plant seeds anyway.

And a sci-fi world where Christians are still loving their neighbors, baptizing, breaking bread, reading Scripture, and partaking in the Eucharist even a few wormholes away from Earth? That’s not a betrayal of biblical hope. It’s an extension of what the Church has always done: show up, bear witness, and keep building until the kingdom is complete.

So What Do We Do With This?

If Christians treat the future like a closed door, they’ll never open it far enough to imagine what faithfulness might look like in a hundred years. That’s not just bad eschatology. It’s bad theology. Because we are living in here and now. And that here and now might last . . . a really long time.

And eschatology—of whatever flavor you subscribe—isn’t supposed to shut down the imagination. It’s meant to orient it toward hope. It reminds us that Christ will return, yes—but until then, we live. We build cathedrals. We celebrate the Eucharist. We feed the poor and visit the lonely. Not in fear, but in faith.

The idea that Christ must return before we reach the stars isn’t written in Scripture. It’s written in a kind of cultural impatience—a fear that time will erode the Church. But the gospel isn’t time-limited. And in The Brightest Void, I’m not pretending to predict the future. I’m writing characters who live in uncertainty the same way we do now, with faith, struggle, grace.

If your end-times belief can’t quite fit faithful Christians living hundreds of years from now, then maybe it’s not really about the timeline. It’s about how we picture God’s story unfolding. Sci-fi gives us a space to explore that kind of slow, patient hope (I will point you back to 2 Peter 3:9 here!), when maybe things don’t happen as quickly as we’d prefer. And perhaps that’s exactly what the Church needs—a chance to remember that the Kingdom is already here, even as it is still coming.