When I was younger, I loved playing “simulation” games. You could pretend to build an empire, a city, or an entire civilization. A Saturday could vanish before my screen as I raised my civilization “New Byzantium” to prominence. If you wished to build a new entertainment center for your amusement starved citizens, you simply used a tool function to get rid of slums that had started to surround the houses.
Sometimes I wonder if those enamored with socialism or unfettered big business played too many such games. The economic and social consequences in any of these simulations are very simple and the individual is of no importance. This is called “god mode,” but it actually has nothing to do with being a god.
If one is a god, in the Greek or Roman sense, one has the power to destroy and some power to bless, but never gets too involved with a city or civilization. Athens may be dedicated to Athena, but her care is limited as is her power. Make Zeus or Poseidon mad and Athena may or may not be interested or able to protect the city.
Probably the name refers to the God of Judaism, Plato, and Christianity. This God is “all powerful” and compassionate. He has nothing in common in terms of being with Zeus or the super-hero-like gods of mythology. They could exist and God exist. They could all cease to exist without impacting God. If they ever did exist, then God created them and their combined powers could not “defeat” God.
And yet a Sim game does not have a “God mode” because God’s powers are limited by at least two factors that do not limit a player in the game: God’s goodness and God’s Will. The individual does not matter to a Sim player. He is a tool to the “player-god,” but the God of the Bible loves His children. God may allow bad things to happen to us, but this is for many reasons. These include pain that comes for our good, hard times that are the free will of other creatures God loves, and the overarching good plan for the redemption of the cosmos. Other than “winning” or having fun, the player-god has no such constraints. As an omniscient Being, God faces the complexities of all the free interactions of the all the free beings in the cosmos along with the interactions of those free beings with the laws that govern matter and energy.
Next to the interconnectedness of one human act, a pebble thrown into the cosmic pond with eternal repercussions, even the most complex Sim game is nothing. God does not just act for the “greater good” as a Sim player-god might . . . God acts for the greater good of all humanity, all the animal kingdom, all of His good creation, and the greatest good of each individual person in that cosmos. He maximizes the good of the many and the single person. God cares for the sparrow that falls as well as the President of the United States. Next to the care that God takes before He intervenes, the most careful action of a player-god is cavalier.
Partly this is true because God is not playing games. The cosmos is real and the consequences of actions hurt. When I destroy their houses, my peasants would simply vanish after saying disgruntled, but amusing things. Nothing can disappear in God’s universe, because once it has existed, then it always will exist if only in the past He perfectly experiences in His timeless state.
It is for this reason I radically distrust gurus who try to manipulate life on either the right or the left. Particularly to be distrusted are those who would make particular decisions for their community with no accountability . . . using god-mode. Distrust a pastor who intervenes all the time, the leader who claims to value freedom but whose employees are micromanaged, or a politician who has a detailed plan or response to every event. We can scarcely account for the implications of the smallest things we do and so to be cavalier about the big things is foolish.
We must distrust business grown too big, government grown too big, leaders grown too big. The implications of each decision are too great to be safe. As bad for individuals is the community (secular or religious) so ingrown and out of touch with the rest of the world that the Big Man in that community can operate in god mode with the community.
Such systems are ripe for destruction and I would advocate their immediate destruction if I did not know that such revolutions are so large that they rarely do more good than harm! I am a conservative out of caution. When I am told: “What harm is there in this social change?” I often think: “How would any of us know in an interconnected world what this action will cause?” When I am told: “We have done this for a decade and no harm has come.” I wonder: “How will I know what harms this is causing now and in one hundred years?” People are so sure of “good change” and so forgetful when the harm follows.
If we could show the entertainment of today to people in the our immediate past, would they be as sanguine about the little changes they allowed or would they be horrified? Are we not horrified? Have we become better people or more decadent?
I know this for certain: we can ask these questions because we are free women and men and not Sims. We can choose. If there was a very powerful god and He was evil, I could choose to defy Him. God is good and loving and so He allows me to choose to reject Him.
Don’t go to a school, patronize a business, or attend a church with a leader who functions in god mode. For the love of the Holy, never vote for a man or woman who views you as a pawn in his or her game. You are free and real, not the sim of the Player. You are eternal and our present structures are finite and will be destroyed. There are rules to God’s good cosmos and we should live by them, not because our goal is to “win,” but because our goal is happiness . . . flourishing as individuals in a jolly community in the eternal City of God.
I am a free man and not a sim.
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