The AI That Drove on Mars (And What It Means for the Doctrine of Dominion)

Somewhere on Mars right now, a rover is driving a path that no human planned.

Let that sit for a moment.

In late January 2026, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that Anthropic's Claude AI had successfully planned a 450-meter route for the Perseverance rover. The AI analyzed years of accumulated rover data — terrain maps, wheel slippage logs, rock distributions, tilt angles — and wrote commands in something called Rover Markup Language.

According to JPL's own assessment, this AI-assisted approach could cut route-planning time in half.

Half.

The internet, predictably, went two directions: breathless excitement about AI reaching Mars, and existential dread about AI reaching Mars. What nobody seemed to talk about was the theology.

Subduing the Earth... and Beyond?

In Genesis 1:28, God tells humanity to "fill the earth and subdue it." It's the first commission — before the Great Commission, before the Shema, before the Law. The very first job description for humans: go out there, understand it, steward it, make something of it.

Theologians call this the Dominion Mandate or the Cultural Mandate. It's the idea that humans are meant to be creative agents in creation — not passive observers, but active participants in unfolding what God set in motion.

For most of history, "subduing the earth" meant farming, building, exploring. Then it meant telescopes, ships, and eventually rockets. Now it apparently means teaching an AI to read Martian terrain and drive a robot through it.

The question isn't whether this is impressive. It is. The question is: does extending our reach through AI fulfill or distort the mandate?

The Tool and the Toolmaker

There's a temptation to see AI as something separate from us. An alien intelligence. A rival. We love that narrative — HAL 9000, Skynet, the robots-will-take-over plot that Hollywood can't stop making.

But that's not what happened on Mars. What happened was this: human engineers spent years collecting data. Human scientists designed algorithms. Human programmers built the AI. And then that AI — a reflection of accumulated human knowledge — extended human capability to a place where human hands cannot reach.

That's not a replacement. That's a tool.

A very sophisticated, slightly unnerving, sometimes hilariously wrong tool — but a tool nonetheless. Like the telescope was a tool. Like the printing press was a tool. Like the plough was a tool.

Marshall McLuhan argued in Understanding Media (1964) that all tools are extensions of the human body. A hammer extends the fist. A telescope extends the eye. A wheel extends the foot. An AI that plans rover routes is a mind extended across 140 million miles of empty space.

That's actually kind of beautiful.

The Wonder We've Forgotten

Here's what concerns me more than AI on Mars: our boredom with AI on Mars.

The fact that an artificial intelligence planned a drive on another planet made the news cycle for approximately 36 hours before being replaced by whatever outrage the algorithm served up next. We've become so saturated with technological marvels that we've lost the capacity for wonder.

But wonder is a theological virtue. The Psalms are full of it:

"When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them?" — Psalm 8:3-4

The Psalmist looked up and was undone by how small humans are — and how astonishing it is that God cares about them anyway. That same posture of wonder should hit us when we see human-built intelligence reaching across the solar system.

Not pride. Not fear. Wonder.

Because the appropriate response to a species that can build tools to explore other worlds isn't self-congratulation. It's the question the Psalmist asked: "What is mankind?"

Where the Mandate Has Limits

Let's be careful, though. The Dominion Mandate is not a blank check.

"Subdue" doesn't mean "exploit." The Hebrew radah carries overtones of responsible governance, not ruthless extraction. We're stewards, not strip-miners. And extending that stewardship through AI doesn't change the fundamental accountability.

If AI helps us explore Mars, wonderful. If AI helps us strip-mine Mars without thought for consequences, we've failed the mandate — even if the technology works perfectly.

The tool doesn't determine the ethics. The toolmaker does.

This is why the church has something to say here. Not because we're experts in AI. Not because pastors need to learn Rover Markup Language. (Though if yours does, that's a pretty cool pastor.) But because the church has been thinking about stewardship, purpose, and the limits of human ambition for roughly two millennia.

We have a framework. It's called theology. And it's more relevant to AI on Mars than most people realize.

What Your Youth Group Already Knows

By the way — your teenagers already know about this. They saw it on TikTok three weeks ago. They thought it was cool. They probably didn't think about the theological implications.

But what if you brought it up? What if next Sunday, instead of another abstract lesson on "stewardship," you said: "An AI drove on Mars last month. Let's talk about what Genesis 1 has to say about that."

I guarantee you'd have the room.

Because the Dominion Mandate isn't an ancient artifact. It's a living commission. And it just reached Mars.

A Prayer for the Red Planet

Lord, you set the stars in place and called them by name. You made a species curious enough to build machines that reach across the void. As our tools grow more powerful, keep our wonder fresh and our stewardship faithful. May we never confuse capability with wisdom, or reach with righteousness. And may everything we discover on other worlds point us back to the One who made them all.

Amen.