I suppose I grew up in the “Nintendo generation”, having graduated from Pac-Man and Donkey Kong  to spending hours squashing “goombas” to save the princess in Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. Then there was Link, always working to save Princess Zelda. But regardless of which game I was playing or even which genre of game I played, each video game had its own consistent laws of what was possible. Mario and Luigi may be able to jump several times their own height, which is impossible in our world, but that was perfectly normal in the Mushroom Kingdom of Super Mario Brothers. And those laws had to apply equally to each player for the game to be fair. But… as any gamer knows, there are “cheat codes” – those little hidden combinations of movements, game actions, sequences of pushed buttons on the controllers, and so on, that allow a user to sidestep the rules of that game’s reality. A cheat code may let the player get more lives, become invincible, get abilities beyond what’s normal in that game’s world, access new weapons or levels, or bypass difficult levels or enemies to finish the game faster.

But what does all this have to do with miracles? Well, consider where cheat codes came from, and why they’re called cheat codes. These have historically been programming “back doors” for the game developer to test different parts of the game without having to play through the entire game at the intended rate.[1] If I’m developing the game, and I need to test game play in level 37, I don’t want to have to play through the first 36 levels that I know work well just to repeatedly test out small changes in level 37. An easy way to handle this is for me to write in a hidden jump to the higher levels, or a code for superpowers that would let me go through the tedious parts quickly. As the creator of the game, I’m outside the game, while the players are immersed in the game. I’m not limited by the rules of that game world (unless I choose to be), while the players are limited by the rules in a fair contest. With that in mind, it’s not cheating for the game creator to bypass levels or grant himself superpowers to accomplish his work. However, if a player learns of the programmer’s secret, and uses it unfairly, then it is cheating.

Now, this leads me to a few observations.
1) We are open to the possibility of miracles (i.e. bypassing or circumventing a world’s observed physical laws) in a game world.
2) We recognize that the game’s programmer isn’t violating any actual real-world constraints when he alters physics inside his game – the code he’s writing in his dimension is functioning perfectly in accordance with whatever programming language he used whether he writes a “normal” game scenario, or one with a secret invincibility switch in the game’s dimension.
3) We recognize that these “miracles” (from an in-game perspective) tend to be the work of the game’s developer as a means of accomplishing his work outside of normal game play.
4) We have an expectation that these events are not the norm, and are supposed to be used judiciously by the right person (i.e. the developer) to make the game better.
5) We recognize the right of the game developer to exercise privileges beyond our own as players.

With that in mind, I have to ask why we turn around and deny even the possibility of miracles in our physical world. Why think that it is impossible that our world had a developer – a Creator – who is not bound by our reality’s constraints? Why think that such interactions between our Creator and His creation – ones that appear miraculous from our “inside-the-game” perspective – are impossible if He’s simply not limited like we are? Why think that our Creator doesn’t have a right to alter our world’s “game” as He sees fit to make it better? When we look at the miracle of God entering the game He created at a specific point in this game’s time and space, and becoming a player like one of us, but still retaining His title of Sovereign Programmer, using His power to beat what we never could, we see a move of unfathomable love and mercy that made the game immeasurably better. Imagine playing an unwinnable level, with the deck stacked against you, and suddenly, the game creator appears in the game next to you and says, “You can’t beat this on your own, but I’ve got this – just follow me.” That’s what Jesus did when He physically appeared almost 2,000 years ago and conquered death. Will you turn away and keep playing on your own? Please don’t. There’s a better way.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_video_games#Cheat_codes, accessed 9/7/2015.