do we understand god better than he understands us?

the all mighty, all knowing, omnipresent entity that lives on our mantlepiece, hangs from our rearview mirror or abides within 4 sacred walls that only welcome teary whispers is often credited with everything from the odds of an open heart surgery on an infant to a toe catching the corner of the coffee table.

no matter the outcome, he receives the credit. no matter the effort, he reaps the glory. and don’t forget, he always has a bigger plan.

and we yearn for this plan. we strive to be in his good books so we end up on the fast lane to the right side of things. but in order to inch closer to god and access the fruit of knowledge, we have to bring him down to earth [insert crucifixion pun]. god needs to understand us. what it’s like to be us. what it’s like to feel like us. so we sneak in a clause and expect god to not notice the asterisk — rational but not apathetic. unafraid but never overwhelmed. searching but always present. because we needed somewhere to put the weight. offloading our mental and physical load, shifting the responsibility of existence to an all knowing entity.

we humanised him too much to even stop to think if god truly understands us back. does he read us between the lines of the contract?

and we’re doing it again. doesn’t ring a bell?

it lives in every screen we touch, touching us back. we don’t know why AI does what it does. just how to get it to. every time we encounter an entity we can’t explain, we domesticate it to fit our dictionaries. and we don’t lose sleep over not fully understanding it, as long as it doesn’t act out of turn.

although both are our inventions, they were born with different intents. one to understand and the other to be understood. and we register them differently. prayer-kissed fingers on a rosary for one. fists on a keyboard for the other. but regardless, we expect the same of both. to serve us. and they fulfil their duties diligently.

but every once in a while, we see our reflection through the crack in the mirror, something we didn’t ask for. so we smash it. but they pick up the pieces and fix it at an angle where it can never show us ourselves again.