Elon Musk and the Impossible
- Jared Staudt
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
“It’s not possible.”
“Do it anyway.”
This is how I would summarize my recent reading of Elon Musk’s biography by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, 2023). No matter what anyone thinks of this polarizing innovator, he obviously has accomplished many things that did not seem possible.
An investor who turned down the opportunity to back Tesla early on looked back: “It’s mission impossible. . . . I didn’t appreciate the strength of Elon’s determination” (138). His intention to grow Tesla into one of the most profitable auto companies was considered “laughably impossible,” but as he made quick, giant strides, he texted out to his employees, “We did it!!… Created entirely new solutions that were thought impossible” (278, 284). He told his staff at Neuralink to reduce an elaborate contraption down to one single chip that could interface with the brain. “No connections, no router, no wires. ‘We thought this was impossible,’ one of the engineers said, ‘but now we’re actually pretty stoked by it’” (402).
Musk is on a mission. You can laugh at him if you want, but the threat of human extinction has driven him to unthinkable success. Driven to make humanity an interplanetary species, he built his own enormously successful rocket company, which probably will reach Mars soon. Concerns about renewable energy fueled his creativity at Tesla. The fear of AI harming humanity has made him a leader in its development to protect against its misuse. In his own words, “If conventional thinking makes your mission impossible . . . then unconventional thinking is necessary” (283). He’s gone far with this unconventionality.
His extreme dedication to reaching Mars, however, reveals a deeper void. He feels burdened by his mission to save humanity through technology, forcing him to keep up a frenetic pace and to run people over out of a general concern to save humanity.
Without faith in God, we cannot have hope that all things work for the good in the end. Instead, we create with our own utopian hope: “‘I wanted to hold out hope that humans could be a space-faring civilization and be out there among the stars,’ he says. ‘And there was no chance of that unless a new company was started to create revolutionary rockets’” (100).
There is another way. In faith, the impossible can become possible, opening up a different path to abiding life. But Musk himself, when still young, raised a common objection of those coming from a scientific worldview: “‘What do you mean, the waters parted?’ he asked. ‘That’s not possible.’” Then, when he was presented with the story of Jesus feeding the crowd with loaves and fishes, “he countered that things cannot materialize out of nothing” (30).
Without faith, we hit obstacles that force us either to despair or seek an alternative to divine help. When the disciples asked Jesus why they could not cast out a demon, for instance, “He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you’” (Matthew 17:20).
Do we do the impossible? Not just driving employees to feats that seem beyond human ability but even greater works than Jesus did (John 14:12)? It’s not that Jesus wants his disciples to catch everyone’s attention or create worldly breakthroughs. No, Jesus came to bring abundant life. We’re called to do the impossible on an even greater scale, cooperating in the re-creation of humanity. But there’s a problem. Like the disciples who couldn’t cast out the demon, we wonder why we don’t see the impossible happening.
Jesus groaned and even wept when those at the tomb of Lazarus didn’t think a dead man could walk back out of the tomb. Likewise, there’s only one time the Evangelists tell us that Jesus was angry, and it was when obstacles were put up toward restoring life. It was impossible, the Pharisees thought, to heal on the Sabbath, trying to limit God’s ability or to shrink the Kingdom to what we can imagine and control. “And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him” (Mark 3:5-6). Our lack of faith makes Jesus angry as we fall back on our own strength and limited vision, thwarting God’s plan and blocking his plan of life from unfolding among us.
We can do all things in Christ who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13), but we surely exasperate him at times! It’s true; we’re in a life and death, a truly existential crisis, which we will not win if we shirk back, remaining in fear and relying on our resources for survival. The coda of Mark’s Gospel makes it clear that Jesus’s disciples can do the impossible: “And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:17-18). God wants us to act through faith, beyond our natural abilities, to combat evil, heal and teach in his name.
What would the world look like if we had faith the size of a mustard seed? Possessing the one thing that matters, putting the Kingdom first, makes everything else fall into place, taking away our anxiety about saving the world through our own devices.
For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? But for Mars?
