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Questions for Jesus
I am perfectly willing to open my door to Jesus. In fact, I wish He would drop by some time. This coming Saturday afternoon should be fine. And I have a couple of questions prepared to ask Him.
Why is my soul worth less than Thomas’?
One of my questions will be why He hasn’t (yet) done for me what He did for Doubting Thomas. For those of you who aren’t up on your Bible, the particular story comes from John 20:24-31.
Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”
Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (English Standard Version)
Thomas said that he needed some physical evidence to believe. Thomas even listed what kind of evidence would have persuaded him. Jesus was kind enough to provide the evidence to Thomas and the other disciples. My question, if Jesus will not do me the same courtesy, is why is Thomas’ soul worth more than mine?
Faith, not reason and evidence
One possible answer might be buried in the line, “have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” That is everyone except the disciples is supposed to believe without evidence. This would certainly be a theologically sound answer, but any believer who takes this point of view must then acknowledge that we are expected to believe without evidence. Faith, then, is irrational. It certainly takes the wind out of the sails of anyone who tries to persuade me based on evidence. Evidence doesn’t come into it. It is an admission that faith is not based on evidence.
This view certainly merits further discussion. After all, if God is just, would He insist that my salvation depends on believing something so momentous without evidence? It would seem that such a god hates rational people. But this is a discussion for another time.
“You are immune to evidence”
When presenting this argument, I have often been told that I have my heart so set against Jesus that no evidence would persuade me. It is certainly true that I’ve watched enough magicians so that I wouldn’t be persuaded by parlor tricks like turning water into wine.
So what would convince me? For a long time my answer to that question is that I don’t know what kind of evidence would convince me that someone speaking to me had powers that no human or group of humans had. I simply responded with, “well, I don’t know off hand what would convince me, but I’m sure that an omnipotent deity could figure out what kind of evidence would persuade someone like me.”
Although I considered my answer sincere and sufficient, it still didn’t really address the charge that my heart and mind were so closed that nothing could persuade me. Fortunately I have found some questions which Jesus could answer that would persuade me that he had super-human powers.
Evidence criteria
There are a number of things that a good “test” of Jesus should have. (Remember, if you think that I can’t test Jesus, then you are saying that I, unlike Thomas, must believe without good evidence. That is, irrational faith is required of me to be saved. See earlier section for a bit more on this.)
No human or collection of human, even with the resources of the Internet and a good research library and human technology could achieve.
So this rules out just asking tough questions out of an encyclopedia. For example, I had considered forming my questions to Jesus in an extremely obscure language, but if it is something that I could figure out so could some other mortal.
This also rules out the kinds of things that magicians can do. I don’t know how magicians do their tricks, but we know that some people can perform through non-supernatural means things that appear supernatural.
This also rules out any task that I can perform. This makes me safe from somehow being tricked or coerced into performing the for Jesus. So this rules out things like “what are the serial numbers of all the bills in my wallet” or “what is my password to Facebook”.
The successful performance of the task must be verifiable by me.
This rules out questions like “what is the meaning of life?” Maybe no human can answer that (or maybe they can), but if given an answer like “42” I can’t actually verify that that is the correct answer.
The successful performance of the task can’t be denied by me.
This rules out things like,”I’m thinking of a number between one and a billion”. After all, if Jesus gives me the correct answer, I could lie and say that He got it wrong. So we need to make sure that any claim that I make about whether Jesus performed the task is verifiable by others.
I cannot write off my witnessing of the successful performance of the task as a hallucination.
This means that I can verify at any time afterwards that the task was completed successfully. I don’t have to rely on my memory of the event.
A question
I have come up with a number of questions that meet all four criteria. Some I will keep private for the time being. But here is one:
What are the prime factors of the number that follows?
27219047959652654722414170131901754810882037173366387499643752583360 53674248472885748311121894086236015825177742540974215589410617055811 41056251871687611322203645648061852827702887407867981735879821807359 50224524930259181407685867849596786096790404160010876158425560398851 41008831976697149422479797818743514039235769485328395195614137252841 88464854991690851521459279495154864183891934329195018204208468538473 68871936474843479723548096187507192106674753171257734855506742032089 84432415517977675338784314535588802117418628093418022096614839091351 52559954997038551099013710643874352212670179579776988148618882559168 53533That is a single 617 digit decimal number (2048 bits). It is the product of two large prime numbers. There was a brief moment when one of my computers knew what those prime numbers were when it it constructed this number. But that information was quickly and completely and securely wiped from that computer. I never saw those numbers and have absolutely no way to reconstruct them.
No technology currently on Earth can find those factors.1 But this should not be a problem for an omniscient being.
Once an answer is proposed, it is easy to verify. Multiplying the two factors can be performed on any modern computer in the wink of an eye. I, and anyone else, can check to see whether the answer is correct or not.
One trick available
There is one potential method within human power to appear to solve this problem. And that would be for someone to, say, hack into this account or my computer to actually change the number listed above to a different number. Just as I was able to create this number from two large primes (which I threw away) someone could create a different number by similar means but retain the factors.
I am taking some precautions against that trick if Jesus actually shows up at my door. I have some different numbers for Him to try in addition to the one posted, as well as other questions or tasks that satisfy the criteria.
In conclusion
If, as many people claim, belief in Jesus is based on the evidence, then Jesus should provide me with the kind of evidence that would persuade someone like me. There is evidence that an omniscient or even super-intelligent entity could use to persuade me.
My invitation to Jesus stands open. I should be available on Saturday. You know where I live. I’ll try to remember not to serve figs.
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If it turns out that someone does secretly have this power, the chances that they would risk exposing such a secret merely to play a trick on me seems negligible. Such an ability give them the capacity to break the codes used in a the bulk of encrypted communication. ↩
