5th Sunday of Easter (Year C)
Acts 14:21-27 | Psalm 144:8-13 | Apocalypse 21:1-5 | John 13:31-35
As a decades-long Catholic software developer, a part of me has long suspected that we’re in a very sophisticated simulation. Something along the lines of a universe-sized The Sims, running on an unfathomably powerful server farm, designed by an extra-universal entity we call God, populated by quintillions of other code fragments called flora and fauna, and 7 billion instances of Homo sapiens programs that have attained self-awareness and the power of metaphysical reasoning.
Do I look like this to you?
No, I do not speak of a Matrix-like “brains in vats” existence. I think our brains, our very minds, are part of the simulation. This “world” in which we “exist” would be running on a small handful of programmed rules which, combined in various ways, give us all of Nature with its physics, chemistry and biology. In Matrix terms, there is no “red pill” in this scenario that yanks us out of fabricated reality, since we only exist inside this reality.
However, God can also decide to inject specific and individual exceptions to those rules. We tend to call these miracles.
Omniscience and omnipotence? When you’re in control of the simulation platform, there really isn’t anything you can’t find out, project into the future…or tweak.
Jesus could be an in-simulation projection of God Himself, a sort of “avatar” in role-playing parlance, with full access to simulation internals to effect miracles at will. Truly, “the Father and I are one” (John 10:30) and “whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
The “flame within” that is the Holy Spirit? Special subroutines that interact with our core code.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. (Apocalypse 21:1)
A new heaven and a new earth? Reinstallation and character re-creation, wiping out the detritus of sin and death.
✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞
The other part of me reacts with the knee-jerk “BLASPHEMY!“, and I’m sure more than a few people would decry my remarks, on the basis that any attempted explanation of how God could make all creation come into being somehow lessens His majesty.
That could not be further from the truth. Instead, even as an experienced computer programmer, my mind boggles at the intricate completeness of this simulation that makes you consistently real to me, and me to you, and everyone to everyone else. We’re just scratching the surface of ineffable complexity here, brothers and sisters, and I couldn’t even begin to write the code that self-evolves over 14 billion local years into an actual human mind, much less what we would call a soul.
So to me, God is still my Creator, He is still worthy of all praise, and my faith has suffered not one whit at the thought that I might be just a collection of machine instructions in a divine computer. From this perspective, the Suscipe prayer of St. Ignatius of Loyola takes on a whole new dimension:
Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.
Amen.