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Creation Scenarios

When considering God, often questions arise as to why he created us in the way he did. By hypothesizing alternatives, one can begin to see that there were not a lot of other options. If God creates beings with eternal life, they will be with him forever. One can then ask what sort of people would you want to be with forever.

1. Robot scenario. God could have created people who never sinned and always did what they were supposed to. However, this would have made people little different from any other machinery.

Since giving people free will is essential, and since people will always choose to use free will against God, it can be interesting to speculate how else things could have been configured.

2. Spoiled children scenario. Many people complain that God created a world that is difficult, painful, and has suffering. If God created a world where everyone could have everything all the time, we would turn into the sort of monsters that unlimited selfish consumption can drive one to.

3. Persuasion scenario. If God used miracles, provided detailed explanations, and demonstrated his plans, people would set themselves up as judges of God. Human life (in contrast to angelic life) consists of learning as we are born ignorant and without skills. However, since a third of the angels (who have more full understanding and knowledge) still rebel against God, it would seem that no amount of education would be sufficient.

4. Achievement scenario. God could have made eternal life available to those whose efforts (intellectual, endurance, or compassion for example) met some threshold of acceptance. However, this would only fill heaven with the boastful.

5. The Purgatory scenario. God could have instituted a system of painful rehabilitation that would motivate people to somehow become more worthy of eternal life. However, many people do not reform regardless of the degree of pain experienced.

6. Universal scenario. If God were to give eternal life to everyone, heaven would be populated with the same selfish people we see today. He could change everyone into robots, but then what was the purpose in having us live our former lives.

7. The faith scenario. By having eternal life predicated on faith, God is able to have people willingly surrender their pride and selfishness (a by-product of trusting in Christ rather than trusting in self). This is made avaliable to all who value truth. Those who spread delusions, lies, deceptions, and false realities serve to filter out those who do not seek truth.

In order for the faith scenario to work, God had to send Jesus to pay for the sins of the world. Salvation could then be offered to anyone who trusted in Jesus by faith. Since Jesus had paid for all sins, he would be just to judge the works of those who were not interested in faith or even hostile to it.

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