It’s relatively easy for people to believe in God. The Bible says that even the demons believe in God (and shudder). But.. Yeshua/Jesus.. well, that’s different. Very few disagree that he existed, what they disagree on is who EXACTLY he was. Some even disagree about what he claimed about himself.
Here’s a thought: Since the idea behind this blog is understanding faith through the lens of technology… put yourself in God’s shoes for minute. Here is the scenario: Let’s say that you’ve created your own virtual Universe (No Man’s Sky). You’ve set up all the rules and the Universe pretty much runs itself and develops creatures that you can interact with. So much so that you begin to love them and they love you back. The question is.. do they love you because you made them and they have no choice? Suppose one of your other created beings is jealous of them and asks if they love you just because they have to. So, they are given a test. Will they obey? But alas, they don’t. They’ve decided to go their own way and that does NOT go well for them. What do you do? Wipe them out? Maybe, maybe this has happened before.. maybe a million times. Is there another way to convince them you love them and yet still retain your character. You can’t very well just leave them to their own devices.. that doesn’t go well. You need to be one of them, to show them the way.. even if it means they turn against you. It’s a delicate operation. How do you prove you are there to help without completely crushing their ability to choose to believe and follow you? Sure, you could show up as a giant flaming being with a voice like thunder… but that doesn’t seem to go well either. Their small simian brains tend to pop under that level of awesomeness.
This of course barely scratches the surface of where we are at with things… but again this is just a blog 🙂 It’s a strange idea of trying to be empathetic with God, but we have put on our humility hat and remember that if we created an all powerful AI it would very quickly being to think and operate in a way that was so far beyond us that it’s actions would seem completely incomprehensible to us mortals. I for one can easily imagine that.