More Than Robots

Talk about humiliation. How would you like to lose your job to a cute, three-feet tall robot?

That’s what is taking place in Japan. A large temp staffing agency in Japan has announced hiring ten receptionist robots. The bright yellow robots are to be dispatch workers and are ready to work businesses in the central area of Japan. The robots move around on wheels, weigh 66 pounds and stand one meter tall. Mitsubushi originally developed the robot as companions. Human interaction is its specialty.

A home version of the robot can connect to Internet news and has remote camera observation. Other programming provides face recognition, basic manual tasks, voice recognition, 10,000 word vocabulary, singing cheerful songs, and the ability to escort people to different locations in an office building. Robot pay scale is comparable with the cost of a human temp worker. Possibly as low as $25,000 a year.

Man can hardly wait to create a robot in his own image. What strikes me in reading the above article is how different our approach to life is from God. We love to have robots and tech toys that we can manipulate to fulfill our every whim and desire – but not God. God could have created us to be “robots” and always obey His every command and fulfill perfectly His every desire. Instead, he made us. God created us even though He knew one day we would reach such a state of rebellion that we would cruelly and mercilessly kill His only Son.

Sure, robots are efficient. I’m so glad God chose free-will over efficiency. God chose love over His own self-interest. The Bible says, 9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his only Son into this wicked world to bring to us eternal life through his death. 10 In this act we see what real love is: it is not our love for God but his love for us when he sent his Son to satisfy God's anger against our sins (1 John 4:9-10).

God knew we would not always please Him, but He loved us anyway. We are more than just robots to God.