Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End" portrays humanity's final generation. Children develop psychic powers, merge into a collective consciousness, and transcend human existence entirely—becoming something utterly other. Their parents watch helplessly as their children become incomprehensible aliens, achieving evolutionary transcendence at the cost of everything human.
It's meant to be hopeful—humanity's "childhood" ending as we mature into something greater. But I found it deeply horrifying. The children achieve transcendence by ceasing to be human. What they gain, they gain by losing themselves.
And it raises uncomfortable questions about Christian eschatology. The resurrection promises transformation—we'll become something more than we are. But how much transformation can we undergo before we cease to be ourselves?
The Overlords' Sorrow
Clarke's alien Overlords shepherd humanity toward transcendence, but they can't transcend themselves. They watch humanity's children evolve beyond them, achieving what they never can.
Their sorrow is profound. They helped create something greater than themselves, but they're excluded from it. They're midwives to transcendence they can't share.
This resonates with me as an autistic person. I often feel like I'm shepherding conversations I can't fully participate in, facilitating social connections I don't entirely share. I help others reach understandings that remain slightly outside my grasp.
The Overlords' tragedy isn't that transcendence is bad—it's that they're excluded from it. Better to never know it's possible than to make it possible for others while remaining unable to achieve it yourself.
The Cost of Transcendence
In Clarke's vision, transcendence requires losing individuality. The children merge into a collective consciousness, becoming parts of a unified Overmind. Their individual personalities dissolve.
Is this elevation or annihilation? They become part of something greater, but they cease to be themselves. The parents haven't just lost their children to distance or death—they've lost them to transformation so complete that nothing recognizably human remains.
Christian resurrection promises transformation without annihilation. We'll be changed (1 Corinthians 15:51-52), but we'll remain ourselves. The resurrection body is the same person, transformed but continuous.
But how much transformation can occur before continuity breaks? If I'm perfected—all sin removed, all limitations overcome, all neurological differences corrected—am I still me?
The Autistic Identity Question
This question is especially acute for autistic people. If heaven means my autism is "cured," do I still exist? My autism isn't just a condition I have—it's how my brain works, how I think, who I am.
Some Christians assure me heaven will "fix" my autism. They mean it kindly—heaven will remove all suffering and limitation. But it feels like saying heaven will make me cease to exist and replace me with someone neurotypical.
Clarke's children achieve transcendence by ceasing to be human. I don't want transcendence that requires ceasing to be me.
Continuity in Transformation
The Christian answer, I think, is that resurrection involves continuity in transformation. The same person, perfected but not replaced. Adam Matthew Steinberger, but Adam Matthew Steinberger fully functioning as God intended.
What that means for autism is complex. Maybe autism is part of creation's diversity—different configurations of human nature, all reflecting God's image differently. Maybe it persists in glorified form.
Or maybe what seems essential to me now is actually limitation—not defining trait but restricting condition. Maybe God can remove it without removing me, the way healing blindness doesn't annihilate the blind person.
I don't know. But I trust resurrection preserves personal continuity—whatever changes, it's still me being changed, not me being replaced.
The Last Generation
Clarke's most haunting element is the last generation—the parents who watch their children transcend. They can't follow. They can only witness the end of humanity as a biological species.
These parents live knowing they're the last. No future for humanity beyond their children's transcendence. No grandchildren, no continuation, just slow decline until the last human dies and Earth is empty.
This is existentially terrifying—being the last, watching something you value disappear forever, unable to prevent or participate in what replaces it.
Christian eschatology avoids this. We all participate in resurrection. Not one generation left behind while another transcends. Not parents watching children become incomprehensible aliens. We're transformed together, community preserved through change.
The Hive Mind Problem
Collective consciousness terrifies me. My autistic need for clear boundaries, distinct identity, personal space—all violated by merging into a hive mind.
I don't want to share thoughts transparently. I don't want my consciousness blended with others until individual boundaries dissolve. I don't want to become part of an Overmind that thinks thoughts no individual member thinks.
Christian eschatology promises perfect community without loss of individuality. We'll know even as we're known (1 Corinthians 13:12), but we remain distinct persons. The Trinity models this—perfect unity without merged identity.
God is one being, three persons. Distinct individuals in perfect communion. That's the pattern for glorified humanity—united without dissolved, communal without merged.
Evolution's Direction
Clarke's transcendence is evolutionary—humanity evolving beyond biological existence into pure consciousness. This is the atheist hope: we're not the end point, just a stage toward something greater.
But evolution has no direction. Natural selection optimizes for reproductive success, not transcendence. There's no cosmic trajectory toward higher consciousness—just adaptation to local environments.
Christianity offers something better: transformation that's not accidental evolution but intended redemption. We're not randomly developing toward an uncertain future—we're being conformed to Christ's image by God's intentional work.
The American Optimism Contrast
American culture tends toward optimistic transcendence narratives—we'll become something better, overcome our limitations, achieve greater forms of existence.
Clarke's vision fits this—humanity outgrowing childish biological existence to achieve cosmic maturity. Even the tragedy (the last generation) serves ultimate good.
But there's also American pragmatism that resists losing the concrete for the abstract. We value individuals, personal identity, particular relationships. Transcendence that requires losing these feels like betrayal.
Christian eschatology balances both: we're transformed (optimistic transcendence) while remaining ourselves (valuing particularity). Better without replacement, elevated without erasure.
What We Lose
Every transformation loses something. The caterpillar becomes butterfly but ceases to be caterpillar. Gaining flight means losing its previous form entirely.
What do we lose in resurrection? Sin, obviously—good riddance. Death, suffering, limitation—we won't miss them. But what else?
Do we lose our stories—the narrative arcs that made us who we are? Do we lose our scars—the experiences that shaped us? Do we lose our differences—the neurological diversity that creates varied perspectives?
I don't think so. Resurrection redeems rather than erases. The risen Christ still bore crucifixion scars (John 20:27). Our stories aren't erased—they're completed, redeemed, made meaningful.
The Terror and the Hope
Clarke's transcendence terrifies because it's annihilative. The children gain cosmic consciousness by losing human existence. Achievement requires obliteration.
Christian transcendence is hopeful because it's restorative. We become what we were meant to be—not replacing what we are but fulfilling it. The acorn becomes the oak, the seed becomes the plant, the child becomes the adult—transformation that's continuity rather than replacement.
Practical Implications
How does this affect how I live now?
- Value particularity: Individual persons matter, not just humanity in general
- Resist reductive transcendence: Better doesn't mean replacing what is
- Trust continuity: Transformation preserves personal identity
- Embrace diversity: Different neurologies reflect creation's richness
- Hope for completion: We'll become what we were meant to be
- Maintain relationships: Community persists through transformation
- Remember the pattern: Christ's resurrection shows the way
Conclusion
"Childhood's End" portrays transcendence as tragedy—achievement at the cost of everything human. It's evolution's logical endpoint: forms giving way to new forms, species transcended by their successors.
Christian resurrection offers something different: transformation that redeems rather than replaces, elevation that preserves rather than erases, transcendence that fulfills rather than annihilates.
I will be changed. Significantly, dramatically, unimaginably. But I will still be me—Adam Matthew Steinberger, autistic Christian apologist, with all my particular history and identity, perfected but not replaced.
My autism might persist in glorified form or might be transcended in ways that don't erase who I am. I don't know. But I trust that whatever changes, continuity persists. The resurrection isn't my annihilation and replacement—it's my transformation and completion.
Clarke's children transcend humanity by ceasing to be human. Christians transcend fallenness by becoming fully human—humanity as God intended, unfallen and glorified.
That's terrifying in its magnitude but hopeful in its promise. Not the terror of annihilation but the terror of becoming more yourself than you ever imagined possible.
One day, childhood will end—not because we evolve beyond humanity but because we finally mature into humanity's fullness. Not losing ourselves in collective consciousness but finding ourselves in perfect communion.
Until then, I live as myself, trusting that transformation will complete rather than erase, redeem rather than replace, glorify rather than annihilate.
The caterpillar fears the chrysalis. But it emerges as butterfly—transformed but somehow still itself, achieving flight not by ceasing to exist but by becoming what it always was meant to be.
That's the hope. Not childhood's end through evolutionary transcendence, but childhood's completion through resurrection redemption.