Email to Jesus

My sister-in-law HG babysat the kids today while my wife and I went to a play. When we returned, HG told us that JD (our older son) mentioned sending email to Jesus twice in his prayers and wanted to know whether we had taught him that. The answer is no. But the more interesting questions in my mind were (a) where did he pick that up and (b) since when does JD pray? On the first question, our collective theory was that JD made it up on his own. If you can send email to a friend or family member, why can't you also send email to Jesus? On the second question, HG says a little prayer before eating meals and I guess JD picked up on that. As an aside, I'm fine with JD praying. I've just never seen him do it myself.

Sending email to Jesus (more generally God) is an interesting concept to me. In many contexts, I much prefer email to other forms of communication. It's asynchronous so you can take time to craft your message exactly the way you want. But it can also be near real-time if the other person is online. It's obviously not appropriate in certain situations but, in general, I really like the medium. Right now, it's hard for me to pray verbally. In a prior post, I said that pride is a challenge for me. I think the thing that holds me back from praying is that I'm not ready to "submit" to God - that I'm not ready to be humble before God. But email could potentially be easier. Rather than having to submit to God, perhaps it would be more like sending him a message - simply sharing some thoughts (similar to this blog). There obviously wouldn't be a response (as is possible with prayer) but some communication is better than none.

All of this lead to a rather random idea. Extending JD's idea one step further, if you could send email to God, why not instant-message with God? There are AIM Bots out there like SmarterChild. Why not create an Eliza-like bot that would pretend to be God? One of the reasons that Joseph Weizenbaum decided to make Eliza a therapist is because the therapeutic situation is one of the few real human situations in which a human being can reply to a statement with a question that indicates very little specific knowledge of the topic under discussion. For example, the question "Who is your favorite composer?" can be answered acceptably with responses such as "What about your own favorite composer?" or "Does that question interest you?" Relating this to God and the Bible, in Opening the Bible, Merton tells us that "the Bible raises the question of identity in a way no other book does ... When you ask: 'What is this book?' you find that you are also implicitly being asked: 'Who is this that reads it?' ... If we ask it for information about the meaning of life, it answers by asking us when we intend to start living?" Sometimes God gives us answers but, much more often, He answers our questions with questions of his own.

I'm not going to write a GodBot. I don't have the time and most people would probably find it blasphemous. But it does make me wonder what it would be like to communicate with God using modern technology (email, AIM, etc). The movie Bruce Almighty comes to mind - the scene where Bruce (have been given almighty powers) opens his email inbox of prayers, is overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of them, and simply hits "grant all". At the end of the day, though, I suppose it's more important to communicate with God in a humble, sincere way than how specifically you choose to communicate with him.