How can God possibly hear and answer all those prayer requests? It’s a mind-boggling prospect that one person can interact with so many prayers in an intelligent way. How is that possible, even for God? That’s a question people have wrestled with for ages.
A Bruce Almighty prayer machine
This question is the premise for an extended gag sequence in the Jim Carrey movie Bruce Almighty. Like many Jim Carrey movies, it’s funny, and really weird, and in this case much more sacrilegious than most. Bruce, Jim Carrey’s character, receives the powers of God. As he’s walking down the street, he starts hearing peoples’ hopes, dreams, and prayer requests. This happens all the time, and it is overwhelming to have to deal with. So, he sets up an email system to handle the millions and billions of requests. But that is too hard, too. To avoid having to deal with them, he just answers “yes,” to all. Chaos ensues.
The gag is premised on the simple idea that God is more powerful than a person, but still finds it overwhelming to have to carry on so many relationships and field so many requests (often contradictory) at the same time.
But we have a different way to picture it, now.
The power of AI helps us picture the power of God
Large Language Model AI, like Chat GPT, have upset the status quo in many ways.
Here’s a good way.
The existence of these AI tools that seem to be able to answer most any question in the blink of an eye—all around the world—gives us a conceptual tool to make a little bit more sense of how God deals with prayers. We made this machine. It is subject to the limits of human power and engineering, and yet it’s power is mind-boggling incredible.
How much more than this AI can the God who created the universe and created us carry on a relationship with everyone all at once and never be overwhelmed. Never be taxed. Never be worked too hard by it.
That’s what God can do.
That’s what God does with our prayers.