A tale of April 1 that was typical and out of this world.
Celebrating the creation's success at the expense of the Creator is
The lead-up to April 1 was already strange.
It started days earlier with the Japanese-American X/Twitter Crossover event in which, thanks to X’s automatic translation feature, posts from around the world are translated into the user’s language. Japanese X posts were particularly refreshing and delightful to X users, like myself, who had grown tired of doomer blackpill political-bots-from-India nonsense. Japanese users shared their love of American BBQ, refreshing takes on simple life, beautiful art, and, in general, there was an interesting several-day cultural exchange.
The morning of April 1 marked the start of winter’s re-emergence, spitting snow as I headed to my regular dentist appointment. Such appointments, for those of us who pay medical visits out of pocket, always feel like a controlled mugging. Clean teeth, smaller bank account.
Once at home, I called my parents. It is a tradition since college for me to call Dad on April 1 and tell an elaborate story that ultimately ends with me sadly saying I have totaled my car.1 Since I’ve been driving the same vehicle most of this time, it feels right to do this every April Fools Day.
There was no answer, so I left a voicemail.
My friend Naomi once told me years ago that my voicemails were “interesting.” I have never adapted well to leaving a voice imprint floating out in the ether, and so they have tended to be—despite my best efforts at times to stay on task and be concise in communications—a series of non-sequiturs, rambling, pretending to be a literate and pretentious drunkard, and in some cases, hokey questions about Prince Albert being in a can, assuming a serious voice and trying to place orders at the poop factory, or, when my mind blanks, basic farting sounds.
Given my voicemail skills (and my total lack of interest in parliamentary procedure), I could never run for office. After a few moments of the usual voicemail struggles, I ended my voicemail with a scold. “You two are in your mid-80s and are never home and have way more of a life than I do, and I’m not okay with that.”
About 40 minutes later, Dad returned my call.
“Sorry I missed your call,” he explained. “I was out in the yard with the tow truck guy. They’re towing the Explorer. I accidentally backed into it with the Scout.”
I had to pause. Wait. We don’t have the Scout anymore.
After a shocked pause, I finally spoke. “I cannot believe you just stole my April Fools joke from me.”
He started laughing. “I knew why you were calling.”
Our conversation devolved from there into a variety of hilarious but also infantile joking.
After hanging up with Dad, I then called the IRS, because if you’ve been in an infantile conversation, that’s a good segue. If you’re going to do it right on April Fools’ Day, do it right and call the IRS. After 55 minutes and being passed around to various folks at the IRS, experiencing the agony we upper Great Plains folks feel when we get the mush-mouthed lack of enunciation so common on help lines that forces us to uncomfortably ask them to repeat what they just said, I finally hung up the phone, reminding myself about the sayings involving death and taxes, and contemplating the overlap of the two.
Apparently, my super-delayed tax refund would continue to be so, because the IRS found it suspicious that I paid my quarterly taxes so much extra, even though they were a) paid on schedule, and b) paid according to what my accountant had told me to pay. Even after explaining that I used my tax refund to pay the next round of quarterlies and that, in fact, what we had here was just a revolving pass-off of the same money going to the IRS, then coming to me, then going to the IRS, there was still no joy.
After a visit to the dentist and a call to the IRS, both surprisingly similar, I noted that the April Foolery continued as the weather marched towards winter, with more snow forecast for Good Friday. Still aching after the IRS stomped on my tiny financial heart while I moved money to cover the dentist visit, I began doing client work and also testing my family’s patience. This was going to be a day of high achievement.
April 1 was, after all, Artemis II day.
Our family has a private messaging group, and while it’s typically used to share birthday greetings, family updates, plan get-togethers, and that sort of thing, they have to be patient with me because I am fond of abusing the group by forcing my interests on them.
“Family, for those interested…we’re going to the moon again starting today (hopefully)!” I wrote.
I then drowned them in various Artemis II links and told them the time they should tune in for the launch. As they updated the rest of the family on weather-related travel issues, birthdays, and Easter festivities, I bombarded them with moon stuff. I called my brother to get him to help Dad watch it on the NASA Roku channel at the parents’ house.
“Artemis II?” he asked. He didn’t know anything about it.
“We’re going back to the moon!” I said, hopeful I could light a fire under my family. A sister called me as she left work, wondering if she’d missed it.
“No, you have time, but drive carefully!” I said, excited that she was excited.
I plopped down on my chair with chips and guac, cat on my lap, a true American, waiting for Artemis II to go. “Eight minutes to launch!” I messaged at 5:27 p.m. “Who’s watching?”
My sisters chimed in that they were.
“I’m so excited!” I wrote. “Let’s not talk about O rings and tiles!”
And then it was time. As stupid as it sounds, I recorded the TV screen, holding my breath as old Challenger scars resurfaced. I started to cry, which surprised me. I’m sure the video picked up my whispered prayers.
My niece posted a photo of her living room, her young boys watching with two of their school friends. “These four boys aren’t too impressed,” she joked.
“Show them the Apollo 18 movie,” I said, a little bummed, remembering the school-age excitement of the shuttle program of my youth. I then quickly clarified, just in case. “No, do not.”
The Apollo 18 movie is a sci-fi horror movie, and probably the only thing flat-earth and moon-landing hoaxers would believe.
I cannot help but wonder at the genius (or foolishness) of NASA rebooting our moon space program on April Fools’ Day, or sending a vocal Christian (Victor Glover) around the moon at Easter when Reddit atheists exist.2
But after blackpilled doomers on social media griped about the launch costing about $12 per taxpayer and that the money should be used for practical things, and considering my earlier conversation with the IRS that very day, I felt like things were falling into place nicely. I would happily pay $100 to see this mission succeed and welcome all the fallout from the aforementioned pessimistic grifting ankle-biters if we, the normal general population, could stop fighting for just a bit and, on the flip side, give God some acknowledgment instead of laying all success and glory at the feet of human ingenuity.
Because, at the end of the day, after Japanese-American X and Artemis II, it felt like a Biblical moment.
The Tower of Babel, reversed.
Languages made the same.
Reaching for the heavens.
“We’ve got this. We’re so back! We’re so great! Nothing can stop us! Next, we’re totally going to Mars!” we say, forgetting we don’t know if we have tomorrow (James 4:14, Proverbs 27:1, Matthew 6:34). It’s our nature to view human unity and human achievement as a cue to not need God. He only gets our attention when he pulls back his hand, and horrible things fill the vacuum.
It is better to acknowledge God. It is not false humility. It’s a kind of spiritual order of operations. Get PEMDAS wrong, and it’s a mess.
The Apollo missions were marked by moments of Christian practice, even though NASA downplayed them. Apollo 8 astronauts read from Genesis during the first lunar orbit, which caused atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair to sue NASA.3 Buzz Aldrin celebrated Communion on the lunar surface during Apollo 11 and read from the Gospel of John while Neil Armstrong watched, though it was kept quiet to avoid controversy.4 Microform Bibles were carried on Apollo 12, 13, and 14, and Edgar Mitchell left 100 tiny 1-inch-square copies on the lunar surface. Apollo 15 astronaut James Irwin quoted from Psalm 121:1 from the moon. He also prayed for God’s help when he struggled in setting up the scientific equipment on the moon, later describing feeling a “profound sense of God’s presence.” Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke became a Christian many years after his mission.
In general, the astronauts often noted and expressed their faith, even if we only found out later about their private expressions.5 John Glenn and Jim Lovell were very open about it. Aldrin talked about how his experience was so meaningful that it was like a Christian sacrament for all mankind.
It would be easy to say that those were just the 1960s and that we are more evolved here in the 2020s, with our fixation on diversity and a modern understanding of how things are, and that we have moved past such simple beliefs as those held by the wielders of slide rules with flat tops. I would not agree that we are evolved; I suspect a better word is devolved.6 The lack of belief, or the desire to express no acknowledgment of God, is de-evolution.
Only the fool chooses not to understand his beginning.
Unrestrained human pride, where we neglect to mention God or, worse, purposefully negate Him entirely, leads to our destruction. We become our sole source of everything, thinking the same person who cannot control urges and addictions, who can’t understand another human being enough to keep their marriage together, is in control of their destiny. It is to God’s credit—His grace and mercy—that we think we have control of our existence when the opposite is true. All things are held together by Him, and when He loosens his grip and lets common grace slip, we get a reminder that, despite all the accomplishments we achieve thanks to God imparting those abilities in us as He created us in His image, we are always just inches from complete failure and destruction.
Gemini 9. Apollo 1. Soyuz 1. Soyuz 2. Challenger. Columbia. The IRS.
What we could learn from Genesis 11:4-8 and from John 1:1-3 and from Colossians 1:17 is humility. We didn’t make the stuff, though we were made to steward it. When we forget this and think we control the stuff, the breaking begins.
As it is, I have the live feed from NASA running on my computer and my living room television, nonstop. I’m excited for the Artemis missions. I’m praying for Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy, not only for safety and success, but to confront God’s vastness personally. I want a successful, safe mission in which the awe of the endless space God created is rightly celebrated, rather than turning humanity into little gods.
It would be a terrible, eternal April Fools’ joke to snub God, celebrate and elevate his creation without him, and still, whether we are aware of it or not, maintain the space in our hearts to blame and become angry at him when things go badly in life.
No room for praise, plenty of room for blame.
Save that for the IRS.
Godspeed, Artemis II.
My car was totaled about ten years ago when a drunk driver in Fargo hit me. Fixed, still driving it, but the insurance company totaled it. To be fair, it’s almost 30 years old. When I called my parents about that incident, my dad commented that he had to first check his calendar to see what day it was. Boy who cried wolf, etc.
Some atheists on X and Reddit were discussing the “Victor” problem and what he might be allowed to say on Easter Sunday. During the live press conference on April 3, 2026, at 3:09 p.m., a reporter asked what we might expect to be said on Easter Sunday, in light of Apollo 8’s Christmas mission. Amid nervous smiles, all NASA reps said was that the crew is inspirational and they’d be talking about what they would be saying.
Apollo 8 reading from Genesis on Christmas Eve (December 24, 1968): Bill Anders read Genesis 1:1-4, Jim Lovell read Genesis 1:5-8, and Frank Borman read Genesis 1:9-10 and then closed, wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and God bless.
Aldrin self-administered communion in the Eagle lunar module just after they landed in the Sea of Tranquility, before the first moonwalk. Armstrong, who considered himself a deist but not a Christian, respectfully watched. On the return flight, Aldrin read Psalm 8:3-4 over the radio.
One of the reasons I’m very insulted by those who call themselves Christians and think the moon landings were a hoax is that they are calling these Christian men liars.
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and basic observation don’t suggest the evolution of human society, genetics, or thought. Our pride tells us otherwise, of course. This is chronological snobbery, where the people and ideas of the past are assumed to be primitive, less intelligent, and inferior because we assume linear and progressive evolution. (See also: temporal chauvinism and presentism.)