Does God know what we are thinking?

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/063016.cfm

AM 7:10-17

MT 9:1-8

Let us say that it is true, that God knows what we are thinking. Is the idea even a possibility to imagine? Can an entity actually unlock the cypher code that protects the free space of our mind? How can God peer into our secret opinions and broodings? 

For some of us the consideration that God could have such a capability is absurd. Too many brains populate the planet. Secondly, in order to know our thoughts, God would need to sift through both the mundane and the ridiculous junk that flows through our noggins just to pop out a cogent idea every week or so. Nonetheless, imagine that God surpasses the capabilities of Santa Claus who keeps a list of our outward good actions and bad, and reads our innermost thoughts.

Put aside the absurdity for a moment. Pretend, if you have to. Imagine that at every moment of every day as our thoughts churn out reactions and plans, God knows what proceeds through our minds. Now, as an essential next step, allow the reverberation of one person’s thoughts being monitored by God into the supposition that God would then be able to replicate this capability. This would mean in a room of people, perhaps this very room of a dozen or so old men, God knows what everyone here is thinking.

From any point of view tracking the cacophony of internal conversations going on in just one room challenges the architecture of the world’s best software engineers. The mathematical calculations required to capture and digest the musings and ruminations of just twelve aging minds, all at the same time, exceeds our understanding. It’s an exhausting and frightening exercise.

At this point, I’d like to throw in a God factor that we seldom, or maybe never, have considered. The aforementioned absurd consideration that God can know our thoughts not only must be true, it is the very root of both our creation and our continued existence. God both needs to know our thoughts and must be able to manage the unbelievable whirlwind of imaginings from a universe of minds in order to meet the expectations of a divine, unconditional, fully involved love relationship. The absurd truth, in fact, presents the proper description of who God must be.

Under any definition of love at the simplest levels, we desire and at the least strive to discover, what our own beloved is thinking — be they our children, our spouse or our friend. This must be true of God, that he loves each and every one of us, or God is no God at all. We may not be able to imagine that God can know our thoughts, but God must be able to know them, or there is no God. 

If God cannot know our thoughts, then God cannot relate to us any more than another human being. Like we relate to our fellow creation, we would be able lie to God, fool God with a phony demeanor, and manipulate our relationship. If he can only hear us or watch us, then we cannot have him inside of us. That defeats the divine love relationship with the Holy Spirit. We must be loved by God who knows our thoughts, or God knows nothing about us. Our life bounces like a pinball, a random and fraudulent existence. Without God’s intimate love, we have no path to eternity. No experience of hope. 

Love demands that our lives overcome death. Otherwise, this life more than steps through a blank, unloved existence. It is a cruel exercise in futility.

The human portrayal of love proves the point. God must know us at the core of our desires and dreams, because that defines relationship.

When we stare into our child’s newborn’s face, we want to know what is going through their minds in order to meet their needs. As we nurture our children, we watch their lives unfold, searching for ways to address the questions they voice and the hopes they express. The expressed and unexpressed thoughts of our beloved children are the very data that directs our love relationship. Are they happy, sad, tired, hungry, joyful, curious, or afraid? We work at knowing as much as we can. We pray that God comforts them when we fail and cause them pain.

We often are fortunate to experience reciprocal love and caring from our children. Their bond with us is akin to permanent, as much as this life can give us anyway, and we thrive on that love relationship with them. We don’t want them to ever die, and when they do we must get the opportunity to meet up with them again. We insist that a reunion be possible. The love relationship between parent and child demands to be repaired after death. Grief is only overcome with the hope of eternal love.

Second, using our example of a room of old men, when we look into the eyes of the woman that we love, when we push away all the bothersome distractions and our selfish concerns, we search for what she is thinking. There are a great number of books written about the difficulty and chaos involved in a man’s pursuit and ultimate conclusions about what his spouse is thinking, but the act of loving another single person as our life partner engenders this need. Are they happy, sad, tired, hungry, joyful, curious, or afraid? We work at knowing as much as we can. We pray that God comforts them when we fail and cause them pain.

The reciprocal nature of spousal love is built into our biological and emotional bodies. Our thoughts, from our dreams and shared plans, expressing our lived reality, thrive on being shared intimately with our beloved wives.

The same is true with our friends and family. We yearn for the interdependence of shared thoughts and lived lives together.

If we, created beings, desire love and deep sharing on so many levels with so many beloved family and friends, where we share our thoughts, even guarded as they may be, then God must be able to surpass our limitations, exhibiting perfect love, where ours fails. There is no allowance for a loving God to be incapable of knowing our thoughts. Anything less than a loving God is unthinkable. 

God must exemplify and exceed our parent/child love relationships, or he is no worthy father. God must transcend the spiritual bond between a man and a woman, or he is no worthy spirit. God must eclipse the loyalty and selflessness required in brotherly and sisterly friendship, or he is no worthy friend.

The resultant fear and horror of our existence without a loving God leads to hopelessness. The only answer to this fear and horror is for God to respond in love. In fact, the requirement that God must love us or not exist, means that the absurdity is to think anything else other than that God loves us. He must know our very thoughts, or he is not God.

We have proof that God knows our thoughts, because our world attempts to do the same thing, emulating the power of God, driven to know our desires and dreams.

All the grocery store chains and shops across the globe process the transactions of purchases 24 hours a day. This has been going on for centuries. Today, databases and interactive data warehouses manage incomprehensible amounts of information at speeds never before possible. Transactions used for ordering, inventory, sales, and marketing decisions coalesce constantly into more effective services and products. All of this data processing emanates from a commerce between customers and vendors that insists upon knowing the needs and wants of populations clamoring for sustenance and assistance.

Amazon, as an example, manages the trends of its customer purchases in the billions in order to process orders and deliver products. The baseline for all product sales today demands that suppliers must know the shopping and buying patterns for all their customers.

We can no longer reject the notion that we are citizens of a world-wide effort to provide us with products and services that meet our most intimate desires. The world wants to meet our needs. The world wants to be like a loving, intimate God.

But, the world only operates on a return on investment model. The world expects us to do something for it in return for meeting our needs.

Without God, our existence reduces us to robots for the world’s progress, or sources for polled opinions. As constant consumers for the world’s products, transactional love explains the worst of our imaginings. The progress of intimate transactional love, however, is evolutionary. As it moves it spits and starts, ultimately it doesn’t want us to know what it is doing. 

God, however, if he truly is God and truly loves us, demands no transactional reciprocation. God does not morph through our relationship, either, improving his love. Plus, God only desires that we love him back. He hides nothing from us that we ask from him. He showers us with family and friends in order to fill our lives with love. 

The world, by it’s incessant desire to create an intimate relationship with us, even if it is one that is jaded by survival reciprocity, proves that God’s relationship of love is also the yearning of the world. 

Not only do each of us need God, intimately aware of our thoughts, but the world knows that we need his love, too.