The Earth Incident

The question faced by God was the enigma of how to provide humans with an irrefutable message about Himself, while at the same time preserving their individuality and freedom of choice. Whatever was given had to be obvious in its meaning, yet not overpowering in its intensity.  It had to be delivered with enough emotional forcefulness to turn around solidly entrenched religious beliefs, but it must never overwhelm the believer.  The kind of radical change envisioned by God had to come from deep commitment, not from terrified compliance, and the declaration had to support a response of faith yet maintain that loving detachment required for uncoerced choice.  This was truly a conundrum of godly proportions.

The Chosen People had correctly described God as, among other things, the holy one of spotless purity, possessing complete knowledge, and with incomprehensible power, etc.  What they had failed to realize, however, was that those impressive attributes all combined to bring God just that much closer to them.  Their accurate appraisal of divinity ought to have implied a great sigh of relief because of God’s complete comprehension and thus total acceptance of them as His finest creation.

Unfortunately, that subtle connection was not made.  The incredible magnitude of God’s enthusiasm for this world and all of its life forms had thus far eluded human thought …largely because of deeply felt shame that permitted no inkling of a God who could love His creation with such abandon.  Yet without that crucial awareness of God’s very nature, humans everywhere on the planet would continue to anxiously range increasingly more distant from God.  They needed the accurate truth about God.

Paradoxically, a vast majority of the other world citizens of that time, even while working to put ever greater distance between themselves and raw godly power, still yearned for closeness with that One whose love sustains all of life including their own humanity.  But the special Hebrew people – those who had been selected by God to communicate the basic truth to the planet about God’s Love – had ultimately organized themselves in such a way as to obscure that essential truth about The One whom they wanted to proclaim.

God’s Personal Visit

What God decided to do about the dilemma was unprecedented, at least on this blue marble of a planet. God selected Himself to be the messenger.  At just the right time and at a centralized global location God determined to personally enter the realm of time so He could tell humans about their God, face-to-face.