Thanks Ethan for a great start to The I Game.
Upon reading your entry, I thought of a quote I once read in the 3rd book from the Ender's Game Series, Xenocide.
This quote makes me rejoice in the wonderful, complex God we celebrate together
by creating and being all that we are in Him:
"Let me tell you about gods," said Wiggin. "No matter how smart or strong you are, there's always somebody smarter or stronger, and when you run into somebody who's stronger and smarter than anybody, you think, This is a god. This is perfection. But I can promise you that there's somebody else somewhere else who'll make your god look like a maggot by comparison. And somebody smarter or stronger or better in some way. So let me tell you what I think about gods. I think a real god is not going to be so scared or angry that he tries to keep other people down-- [People like that] want to stay in control. A real god doesn't care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them."
I love this quote. But at the same time, it is not complete in its metaphor: in the Garden of Eden God didn't want Adam and Eve to have the knowledge of good and evil like He did. But he wanted them to work and be creative and make other people like He did.
I also love how this quote addresses the fact that God is not controlling. He is not oppressive. He does not "operate" us like machinery.
Let me know your thoughts.
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1 comment:
I'd forgotten that quote from the Ender's Game series! So good, so rich. And wanted to add that, to me, even when God didn't want Adam and Eve to have the "knowledge of good and evil" this was not out of some "control need." It was embedded in his desire for their happiness and well-being. He did not want them to know (in the Biblical sense of having intimate knowledge of) evil. He did not, presumably, want them to "know" goodness either -- He wanted something ever so much better, for them to BE good.
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