God Was Bored

Dear Zachary:

As I write this, you are nine years old. As we drove into town on a recent Saturday for your weekly German School session, we had another of our very interesting conversations. I am always asking “why?” about everything in the world around me. Ever since I was a young lad myself, I always pondered the state of our universe and our place in it. Naturally, I posed that most important of all questions to you: “What is the meaning of life?”

Your answers and thought processes astound me. I don’t know why I am often surprised, but some of the insights you have are very interesting.

When you answer weighty questions posed by your Daddy, you generally ask a question or two of your own first. This occasion was no different.

“God is all powerful, right Dad?” you asked.

“Yes, son,” I answered, “if you believe that there is a God, he is generally believed to be all powerful.” I went on to explain to you the terms Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent while you listened and absorbed. I do carry on a bit sometimes, when trying to explain something in sufficient detail to understand completely, but you listened patiently until I finished.

“God was bored.” you said.

“You mean that God created us and the Earth and everything that exists in the universe because he was bored?” I asked.

“Yes,” you replied, “for Him we are like wide-screen television, because he can see everything in the universe all at once. With us and the animals and everything else in the universe, God has something to watch to keep from getting bored.”

Well. That made me think. I was raised in a very religious Pentecostal family and I thought I had heard everything. Preachers of every description had expounded, sometimes at great length, about why we are here, how we got here, and what is expected of us while we grace the earth. Additionally, I have read extensively and intensively works by various philosophers in search of some existential explanations which made sense to me. Let’s leave aside for the moment the issue of whether there is, in fact, a God who created us and rules us and accept your implicit belief that He exists. We’ll save further discussion on that topic for another time. But if there really is a God, did he create us simply because He was lonely for some interaction with his creations?

Out of the mouths of babes and children...

Daddy