A thought experiment for the Christmas Season celebrating the birth of the King

Faith & Science Conversation
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What if…

  • Imagine a land of immortal beings, living in perfect harmony for an eternity under the most benevolent King imaginable.
  • During this eternity, the population expanded exponentially and the people longed to see their wonderful King, but His visits became less often as the Kingdom expands.
  • One day, in the distant they see the King coming. They can see his radiance in the distance and they are excited to see him after such a long time.
  • When he comes into the village, their hearts drop when they find out it is not the King, but the King’s prince. The people tell the prince that they have not seen the King in a long time and they long to see him again.
  • The prince experiences this behavior in many of the villages he visits. He talks with the people and tells them that King will come soon as He is visiting all the villages.
  • After many such interactions, the prince has a thought: there are now too many citizens for one king to manage. I could serve as a second king!
  • Now in his travels, when villages react as they did before, he discussed his idea with them. “Would it be better if we had two kings?”
  • After a very long time, and much campaigning by the prince, he goes to the king with his followers and announces that he should be the second king, this is what the people want.
  • The King tells the prince, “this is not what you promised me in the beginning when you swore to follow only me.”
  • The King ordered his army to rid the realm of all those who broke their promise. “Drive them out into exile in the desert where they will suffer an eternity. And when our brothers and sister have repented, we will bring them home to us and this type of insurrection will never happen again.”
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So I think I feel like one of Jesus’ disciples just after he tells a new and mysterious-sounding (to them) parable. I know … you’re presenting this as a thought experiment. But still, it would seem you have some ideas behind it motivating this story.

Like them, I think I need this one broken down for me. What are you suggesting here?

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Rehoboam?—

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Sounds to me like it is time for a representative democracy and time to put an end to all infantile unreasonable vicious tyrants, not to mention the disgusting craven toadies grasping for power in his name.

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Dear Mervin,
Thank you for the kind comment. My intension was to see how people react to this line of thinking and maybe for Christmas we can unpack it.

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It sounds like you are saying followers of Jesus will go to hell.

So, go figure, I think it’s a lame thought experiment.

The scenario is unacceptable to Trinitarian Christian doctrine and contrary to the entire message of the Bible.

God made Jesus King. The Kingdom started with Jesus, not before. God and Jesus are not in competition, because Jesus is God and there is only ever one King.

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It would appear that speculations just won’t remain idle. The wrapped “present” here is getting shaken pretty hard. If anything in it is more subtle than what it seems to be inviting us to consider on the surface, you may have to divulge more to get any due consideration. We’re all about things being brought out into the light here.

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Dear Mervin, We are coming up on the anniversary of the birth of the King, dated by some as Dec 1, 7 BC. I have pulled out an old story from the enlightened Greeks. The founders modern science had an interesting theory for the meaning of life.

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Well, I’m glad you are referring to Jesus as “the King” here, since the thought experiment you shared above certainly did not seem to be leaning in that direction!

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The spiritual Christian group that I belong to was founded by scientists, doctors and historians who have used modern discoveries to verify Biblical events. Using planetary sciences, they looked for a logical explanation of the star of Bethlehem. Today is the anniversary of the most likely day that Jesus was born, under the 7 BC conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn.

We use this weekend as our celebration of the coming of The King, so that He gets our full attention, away from the materialistic, party filled Christmas time. I wish you all a blessed weekend.

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And a blessed Christian celebration today to you too!

I remember listening to “the star of Bethlehem project” many years ago and being fascinated by what he found. He might not have “landed on” the same date as you (I don’t recall), but I thought the methods Larson used to arrive at his conclusions were insightful and intriguing. He too was convinced that the star could be understood in terms of retrograde motion of Jupiter near the “King star” of Regulus. It sounds like it may have a lot of similarities with your approach too.

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