As a high-tech professor, I find that many of my colleagues in both academia and industry consider the concept of an omnipresent invisible God an intellectual stretch. Some consider it a wishful fabrication.
Combating Intellectual Pride
They commonly question how teachings from low-tech prophets and apostles in dusty sandals from centuries ago could be either true or relevant in the high-tech 21st century.
Sadly, many well-educated and intelligent people feel God is for the weak, foolish and non-intellectual. Adolph Hitler fell into that deceptive line of thinking. As a young man, he aspired to be a priest. But his intellectual arrogance led him to reject Christianity as something for the weak and he chose a devastating path instead.
Isn’t it ironic that Jesus was the epitome of humility — never what we commonly call a “God-complex” — yet so many of the intelligent and influential people in the fields of academia, medicine, law and technology do develop that particular complex?
Admittedly, trying to comprehend an abstract and invisible God is a challenge. We educators often use analogies or metaphors to explain complicated or hard-to-understand material. In this way we can use something that our students are familiar with to help them comprehend something that is unfamiliar.
Jesus, Who even atheists generally regard as a great moral teacher, often used this technique, teaching by means of parables and metaphors. For example, Jesus used the wind as a metaphor to help explain the Holy Spirit (cf. John 3:8). We can’t see the wind, but we know it is there.
A Simple Illustration for Complicated Minds
Within my field of expertise I found an excellent 21st-century metaphor that has proven useful to help understand our relationship to God — the Internet. Specifically, I refer to the wireless use of the Net.
The concept of God as an invisible spirit that can be everywhere and available to anyone via prayer was always mind-boggling for me — even more so when realizing that this concept of something invisible was written about thousands of years ago.
Conceptually similar are the radio, television, wireless telephone and Internet waves surrounding you wherever you are reading this article. Though invisible, you know they are there. All you have to do is turn on a radio, television, cell phone or wireless Internet device to access them.
The wireless Internet device or computer provides the best metaphor. A computer has powerful stand-alone capabilities, but by connecting to the Internet, the previously stand-alone computer exponentially increases in functionality. The Internet offers global access to amazing knowledge/processing capacity and is concurrently available to any computer capable of going online. There is no visible evidence of being connected — no wires — but there is functional evidence in that the computer can now do things it could not do previously.
Source Code for Life
Similarly, we humans have amazing capabilities as stand-alone entities. However, when we go online with God through prayer — a wireless connection also — we can access guidance, wisdom and comfort not available when we are offline. I can tell when I am online with God as I get guidance from a source higher that my own wishes or will. God’s direction is always superior, though often more difficult to comply with, than my own guidance. It often becomes a battle of my will versus His will. I find I have to log off from my online to God if I choose my will — sin — over His. When I yield to His will, He reveals more of Himself to me and it is easier to stay online.
An important step is required to go online with a computer regardless of where you are in the world: You must decide to do so. Once you have a computer, going online requires you to exercise the option to do so. Similarly, for us to access God (invisible as He is) we have to make a conscious and prayerful decision to go online with Him in order to access His guidance and wisdom.
God tells us throughout the Bible that if we earnestly seek, we will find Him (cf. Jeremiah 29:13; 1 Chronicles 28:9; Psalms 119:2; Proverbs 8:17; Matthew 7:7; Luke 12:31; Romans 2:7 and Hebrews 11:16). He is there and His promise is our key to making an online wireless connection.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
James Wetherbe, Ph.D. is a Stevenson-chaired Professor of Information Technology at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. He has spent more than 30 years in academia, serving on the faculty at the University of Houston, University of Minnesota and the University of Memphis, and he lectures worldwide on management and information technology. Wetherbe has authored 20 books, including his most recent, god.online: Seeking God in the 21st Century.
