What does God need with a Star Ship?

What does God need with a Star Ship? June 26, 2016

God will use your star ship . . . if allowed.
God will use your star ship . . . if allowed.

God has “needs” . . . which seems odd.

In the worst of the original series Star Trek movies (still better than any of the Next Generation films), the aging crew goes looking for Eden and God. Since this feels like the plot of half the original series television programs, I need not explain further except to say that when Captain Kirk confronts “God,” he discovers that “God” wishes to borrow his star ship. This proves the lack of omniscience in the being because Kirk might turn over his latest girlfriend, but there is no way in Kobayashi Maru that he would turn over his star ship. Instead, he asks: “What does God need with a star ship?”

This is not a very good question, but the “God” cannot answer it without losing his cool, so the crew knows the being is not “God.”Lest somebody find profundity in a William Shatner directed film, let me step in for the being and  answer the question: “What does God need with a star ship?”

In Which I Answer for the Being

First, I do not “need” your ship. Like Satan in the garden, you have changed the wording to try to test me.

Nice try. I asked to come with you on your ship. There is a big difference.

I love you . . . which is fortunate for you . . . and so wish you to do better than “needing your pain.” This staple solution in your life, James T. Kirk, would work in a television show, but this is not a television show. This is real. You may need your pain, but the people around you do not. You left your son without a father due to your selfishness. You left a woman so hurt and embittered that it destroyed her career.

You have been a user and if “using” that pain helped you, it did not help those you hurt to get this fuel. Try something healthier: morality combined with love.

I would like to journey with you on your ship because I wish to show you this better way. That would help you and give you the pleasure of my company. That would be an egotistical thing to say in any being not me (say Trelane), but I will give joy without end. It is not bragging to say you are God if you are God.

I am.

In Which I Respond as Kirk

Maybe. Or maybe no.

That is what a (better written) putative God would say, but I have faced a great many such impostors . . . and even one real deity in Apollo.  How do I know?

 

We are boldly going . . . we have grown up. We don’t want a risk free world . . . we wish challenge. Perhaps if you are God, I would consider having you along on my ship . . . but, how do I know you are not just a super being . . . a being more powerful than we are does not make you worthy of our worship.

In Which I Answer for the Being

Look.

Experience.

And now think: am I God? Do you doubt it? If so, then let us continue to reason. I could force you to believe by showing you even more of Myself: the beauty would overwhelm you, but I will not. Stay here as long as you need and reason with me.

Taste and see that I am good and then let us go together and boldly go . . . Pain you will have, adventures, and growth. I love adventure and will not “solve” your problems for you if by problems you mean adventure and challenge. I only wish to heal the pain of falling short of who you could be, James Tiberius Kirk.

I want to make you even more than a hero: a good man.

In Which I Make a Suggestion

There are more questions for our Kirk to ask the Being. If the Being is God, then sometimes the Unchanging will seem wrathful to the changing Kirk and at times the same unchanging divine emotion will be experienced as love. Of course, all of God is love, but we wiggle about like a child in Sunday School and so His love can appear harsh to us, but God is in no hurry. We can take all the time we need.

He doesn’t need our star ship as much as know we need Him on our ship . . . so we can boldly go without selfishness, ugliness, and with enduring love. This love, after all, moves the heavens and the furthest stars!


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