By Alex Murashko

Evangelist and Harvest lead pastor Greg Laurie took the opportunity recently to take a well-known figure, as he often does, and intertwine a story from that person’s life into the Gospel message. In this case, a Tucker Carlson interview with Elon Musk prompted Laurie to talk about the Tesla and SpaceX founder’s thoughts on religion, creation, and the “woke mind virus.”

After an introduction by Laurie, the video clip (below) shared on his social media begins with Musk talking about a void or vacuum. 

“As the saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum,” Musk tells Carlson. “When you have, essentially, a decline in religion, an increase in the secular nature of society, [what happens] for most people is they need something to fill that void and so they adopt a religion. [In this case] It’s not called a religion, but it’s effectively like woke – the woke mind virus. It takes the place of religion.”

Commenting on that segment of the interview, Laurie said, “That is a really good insight on the part of Elon Musk because it’s true, nature abhors a vacuum. I believe that idea came from Aristotle.”

We all have a void in our life that can be described as “a God-shaped hole” in which people try to fill with a lot of different things, Laurie explained. 

“Elon Musk talks about the ‘woke mind virus’ and there’s other things that people will try to fill that void with as well,” he said. “It could be material things, it could be good works, it could be academic pursuit, it could be drugs, it could be alcohol, [and] the list goes on.”

When asked by Carlson about his thoughts on a possible creator of the universe, Musk answered, “We must come from somewhere. So, I guess there must be some creator or creative force or something that caused our existence to come into being.” 

Carlson also asked Musk about the nature of that creator and whether he is open to the possibility of one.

He said he thinks the creator’s nature is unknown, but he is “very open” to learn more. “I’m driven by curiosity. I try to understand more about the nature of the universe.”

Laurie shared, “I love Elon’s answer to that question. There has to be a creator because all around is the evidence of His creation. And Elon being an engineer knows all about that. … I like the part where he talks about the nature of God. That is what he does not understand, but there is an answer to that and that answer is in the user’s manual of life, also known as the Bible. The Bible tells us what God is like. In one of the most beautiful stories in the New Testament, Jesus illustrates what God is like. We call it the parable of the prodigal son.” 

After sharing the story of the prodigal son, Laure said, “According to Jesus, God is like a loving father that longs for relationship with us and when we are away from Him, He misses us. What a beautiful picture of God.” 

Laurie responded to Musk’s openness and said, “I pray that he will find that relationship with Jesus Christ.”

Alex Murashko is a journalist and writing team leader for Think Eternity, a site for powerful faith content to help you live the fulfilled life in Jesus. Murashko is also founder of Media on Mission.

Connect on X (formerly Twitter): @AlexMurashko.