King of Glory: what do really smart people talk about?

King of Glory convention. Were you invited?

The annual WE Summit – hosted a week ago in Beijing – was hosted by Tencent Holdings, an innovative holding conglomerate active in all of the high-tech, media-embedded, global-explosion categories that explain its $476 billion market value. Active video gaming, they own the world’s most popular multiplayer online battle arena – 200 million smart people play monthly – called King of Glory.

Seven thousand Tencent employees are members of the Communist party in China (23%of their personnel), and their Summit is a gathering of scientific geniuses. The program lacks an opening or closing prayer: in that gathering of the brightest minds, there is no heart for God.

English Physicist Stephen Hawking was on the Summit platform. Still active at 75 despite his long battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS), he issued a dire warning through his speech generator: in just 600 years, overpopulation of the Earth will cause the planet to become an uninhabitable fireball. The solution: invest in his enterprise – called Breakthrough Starshot – that hopes to blast a tiny spaceship to Alpha Centauri. A trip that would take 20 earth years – if traveling at the speed of light – a few pioneers seeking a conducive planet in that distant system where humanity could start over. His message was clear: if we don’t leave Earth soon, increased energy consumption will soon kill us all.

The crowd assembled for the Tencent WE Summit were – by all indications – resolute in their core belief that there is no God, and that faith is the opiate for the intellectual lightweights whose lack of genius finds solace in things they brand as “spiritual.” Devin Patrick Kelley would have saluted that atheist ideology, but he had other plans, at the 1st Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

It’s not a new debate: is there room for God, in a world of really smart people? “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, and their ways are vile; there is no one who does good. God looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. Everyone has turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Psalm 53)

The cultivation of human intelligence often happens with no recognition of the human heart. Hard science has a difficult time with human emotion, but so much of life springs from the heart, including the evil that makes no intellectual sense: “Bring to an end the violence of the wicked and make the righteous secure – you, the righteous God who probes minds and hearts. My shield is God Most High, who saves the upright in heart.” (Psalm 7:9-10)

The crime scene has been scrubbed in Texas, but the “why” is haunting the officials who are trying to come to grips with what motivated Kelley in his murderous rampage. Here’s God’s take on the ultimate cause for the unthinkable: “…just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.” (Romans 1:28-29)

The irony is thick: the godless Chinese company corrupting millions with virtual violence they’ve labeled King of Glory sponsors an annual evangelistic campaign to affirm the top-tier atheistic atheists and to recruit more to their ranks – with their live and YouTube-available sermons – as they offer hope to humanity: a trip for the next Adam and Eve to Alpha Centauri, to replicate the race. Stephen Hawking is their Billy Graham: invest in his spaceship; it’s our only human hope.

It’s no wonder that God speaks to the heart; he knows that both mind and heart are vital for life. The King of Glory’s offered Heaven – not a distant planet that might have the right atmosphere – and there’s room for everyone to make the move.

When we arrive, who’s waiting there? The shocker: it’s The King of Glory.

Bob Shank