Settling down to play God

My brother went and brought Settlers 3 for $9.95 somewhere - a good deal I guess.
Anyhow, I don't usually play computer games (beacuse I am good at getting addicted to things) but, guess what? I played this!

And guess what else? Its addictive!

I've been pretty good really. In the last 3 days I have only played it 3 times. Thats only once a day....
(For how long you ask? Lets not go there....)

But, while playing God over these little computer minions, I realized what a bad job I was doing. Here I was, busy expanding my little virtual world east and west, thinking how smart I was to avoid confronting the enemy to the north early on, and I completely forgot about my little stonecutter. Suddenly, I have five building sites all asking me for stone, and there is no stone left! My little stonecutter keeps leaving me messages that complain about the lack of stone available, and I have to search for another quarry for him to work at.

On top of this, my latest guardtower is unoccupied because there are 'no soldiers in the area.' I try to help relieve this problem by sending a soldier over, but he doesn't want to go into the tower, so it continues to sit empty.

Meanwhile, to the north my spies have been discovered, and are quickly slaughtered by the blue hordes (that show up red on my map), and I realize that I have not yet discovered how to send my loyal troops into battle to save them (heck, I haven't even figured out how to get them into buildings). Subsequently, only one soldier answers my call to war, and valiantly enters the conflict against four blue/red enemies... he is soon dead as well.

Throughout all of this, I just keep thinking that I don't make a good God, and I am so glad I am not one.

I really respect God. I respect someone who, knowing everything, and knowing that we could choose not to follow Him, still loved us enough to not force us to. I respect someone who would give free will to us, even though we would complain about His lack of intervention from then on. I respect someone who gives us a paradise to live in, and then allows us to play with it, and destroy it, as much as we want.

It may seem like He isn't doing a good job, but as soon as you try to stop people doing evil, you take away their free will, and if you do that, you take away their humanity. God could have made a world of robots, emotionless and loyal to the end, but how would that being loving? A truly loving God would want the best for us, and would want us to choose for ourselves our own destiny, even if it is completely opposite to what He wanted.

I couldn't handle that power.

If I were God, I would have lost my patience and 'smited' me long ago.

Thank God I'm not!