By Jaime Nava –
Growing up playing games on a PC, you learn certain tricks. Some games have console commands you usually access by hitting the “~” key (called a tilde, if you didn’t know). If you’re savvy enough, you can use these console commands in single-player games to give yourself all kinds of goodies. You can add millions of gold to your stash. You can give yourself that item you needed to get past the hurdle in the game. One thing I recall doing in my younger days is playing in god mode. What does this mean? It means that you never get hurt and never run out of resources. You are invincible. You become godlike.
So why remove all the challenge from a game and play in god mode? Because you can. Usually, it’s in a game where bad guys are trying to kill you. God mode in Sim City doesn’t have the same oomph. You run or even fly around, destroying everything that stands in your way. You become a WMD crushing anything in your path.
Think about that for a second. In god mode, you destroy, kill, and do whatever it takes to “beat” the game. Granted, the games where this happens is usually bent on destruction and death anyways. However, there’s still something to be said about playing a game this way as a person who carries Adam’s curse. Imagine if a human being actually had godlike powers. What would they do with it? As judge, jury, and executioner, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine some kind of genocide at someone’s fingertips. If nothing else, this person could punish the wicked and protect the weak. Those are noble things, right? I’d rather a mother of five have these abilities than some angsty teenager. Hmm, maybe not.
As humans that are sinful from conception, we know two things well. First, we know the instant gratification of falling for temptation. It feels good to be bad, at least until it ruins your life. Second, we all know how the Law works. When you do good, the Law says you won’t be punished. When you do bad, the Law seeks to penalize. With this in mind, for a person like you, who has a judgement scale in hand and feels good by doing bad, to have phenomenal cosmic powers, nothing will end well for anyone. You end up making executive orders that go around Congress, or you create an entire culture of death that looks away when Jews or babies are killed because they’re not really people. You judge others harshly while looking for mercy for your dark secrets. It’s messed up, man. You’re messed up. God mode for we humans is not good.
This reveals the drastic insanity of the Gospel. God actually has real-time god mode. He knows the Law better than you do. He wrote it. He also knows the stuff you do. He knows your will that is bent on destruction. He knows how selfish you are. Even the good stuff you do is tainted. It’s like trying to clean a window with a rotten diaper. You deserve the entire full wrath of God in god mode. When Jesus showed up, he should have erased you like this blue guy did in Watchmen (which is apt to this article). With all the power in the universe, do you lay down your weapons? With the ability to judge wrongdoers with a mere thought, do you feed and heal your enemies? With all the angels at His call, the One who put the stars in place, the Word enfleshed does what you and I would never have done. He sets it all aside in order to be publicly murdered. His god mode was to die for people who hate His love and also to rise from the dead. His god mode is to forgive and promise life to the undeserving—to you. What kind of God does that?
