I have served in this church for more than fifty years.
When I was young, every day was busy.
Each morning began with prayer. My afternoons were spent listening to the worries of my congregation, and many nights ended at the bedside of someone taking their final breath.
Some people came in tears.
Others came in anger.
Some even told me they had lost their faith in God.
Curiously enough, those were often the very people who came to church.
They would insist they no longer believed, yet they still came seeking Him.
That, I came to believe, was simply what it meant to be human.
Years ago, churches were far more common in this country.
So were Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines.
They worshiped different things.
They prayed in different ways.
Their teachings were different.
And yet, I always felt they were searching for the same thing.
To be saved.
To be forgiven.
To love another person.
To avoid losing someone precious.
Those desires knew no denomination.
Yet people fought over doctrine.
History offers countless examples.
The conviction that our God was the true God…
That our teaching alone was correct…
Sometimes that certainty saved lives.
Sometimes it destroyed them.
I always found that unbearably sad.
I could never believe that God wished for such things.
It was during those years that religious leaders from around the world gathered to make an unprecedented announcement.
A machine, they said, had analyzed every major sacred text.
The Bible.
The Buddhist sutras.
The Quran.
The Hindu scriptures.
It had examined them all and extracted the teachings they shared in common.
At first, the world rejected the idea with fierce outrage.
To trespass into God’s domain was blasphemy.
Faith could not be measured through calculation.
Religion could never be entrusted to a machine.
Their objections were understandable.
I felt much the same.
Prayer, I believed, belonged within the human heart.
It was never meant to be reduced to something that could be analyzed.
But the outrage did not last.
Because what the machine revealed was astonishingly quiet…
and astonishingly simple.
Every faith shared the same foundation.
Do not harm others.
Do not take what is not yours.
Treat others with respect.
Never forget forgiveness.
Nothing more.
The conclusion was almost painfully ordinary.
Yet no one could honestly deny it.
Little by little, the world’s tone began to change.
Perhaps this was not blasphemy after all.
Perhaps it had merely illuminated something humanity had forgotten beneath centuries of tradition.
Slowly, rejection became acceptance.
Acceptance became understanding.
And eventually…
people began calling it a miracle.
Humanity, they said, had reached a place once thought to belong only to God.
Even among the clergy, some embraced the idea.
If God chose to remain silent, perhaps it was humanity’s responsibility to give meaning to that silence.
Prayer had not been denied.
It had simply been… organized with greater precision.
I watched all of this from a distance.
I couldn’t decide whether it was right or wrong.
I only knew that the world was changing.
Religion did not disappear.
But its purpose slowly transformed.
It was no longer something people fought over.
It became something people sought to understand.
Eventually, the machine came to be known simply as…
the Interpreter.
The one that explained the meaning of prayer.
The one that revealed the structure of faith itself.
Whenever people were uncertain…
Whenever doubt crept into their hearts…
They asked the Interpreter.
And without fail, it answered.
Its words never wavered.
Its conclusions never hesitated.
There was comfort in that.
At the very least…
people stopped fighting.
No one shed blood over which faith was right.
No one killed in the name of the true God.
The world became quieter.
And I could not call that a mistake.
If anything, I believed it was salvation.
Until…
I noticed something else.
Fewer people were praying.
Fewer people came to church each year.
The men and women who had once wept before God now quietly consulted a terminal instead.
The machine always had an answer.
For every question.
For every sorrow.
But when answers are guaranteed…
is there still any need for prayer?
That question became one I could no longer stop asking myself.
One day, a young member of my congregation came to see me.
He seemed troubled.
Yet there was none of the desperation I used to see in people’s faces.
“Father,” he said,
“I don’t pray anymore.”
For a moment, I couldn’t find the right words.
“Is there something troubling you?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“If something comes up, I can just ask it.”
“It always gives me an answer.”
Something about the way he said it unsettled me.
To him, it was no longer merely a machine.
Nor was it simply a trusted advisor.
It had become something far more fundamental—
the place where answers existed.
“Then tell me,” I asked,
“What do you pray for now?”
He thought quietly for a long moment.
Then he looked at me and asked,
“…What does it mean to pray?”
In that instant, I had no answer.
I had devoted my entire life to prayer.
And yet I could not explain what it truly was.
It wasn’t that the young man meant any disrespect.
He had simply been born into an age where prayer was no longer necessary.
That evening, I remained alone in the chapel.
Rows of empty pews stretched through the silent sanctuary.
There was no one else there.
Once, these seats had been filled with people burdened by sorrow.
People carrying questions that had no answers.
They came not because they expected certainty…
but because they needed somewhere to sit in silence.
Now that silence had become unnecessary.
People no longer chose silence.
They chose answers.
There is no denying it.
The machine saved lives.
It reduced conflict.
It spared countless people from suffering.
Perhaps it even prevented deaths beyond measure.
And yet…
I still find myself wondering.
Why did people pray?
Was it because they wanted answers?
Or was it because only in the absence of answers could they truly confront themselves?
Even now…
I do not know.
When I was young, I begged God for answers countless times.
Why must this child suffer from illness?
Why did that man have to die so soon?
Why do the kindest people so often shed the most tears?
No matter how often I prayed…
God never answered.
There was only silence.
Again and again, I was ashamed of my own faith.
Perhaps I had not prayed sincerely enough.
Perhaps God had abandoned me.
I spent many nights believing such things.
But now, after all these years…
I wonder if that silence itself had meaning.
Had God answered every one of my questions…
I might have stopped thinking.
I might never have sat beside those who suffered.
Perhaps I would have become nothing more than a man who delivered answers.
God never gave me those answers.
Instead…
He gave me the time to keep asking.
Because of that, I learned how to sit beside another person’s pain.
The machine is different.
Ask it a question…
and it always answers.
And its answers are correct.
More impartial than any human.
Wiser than any human.
That is why I do not reject it.
It has saved countless lives.
It has ended countless conflicts.
Perhaps humanity truly has become happier because of it.
That much is beyond dispute.
And yet…
Is happiness alone the reason we live?
To carry questions that have no answers…
and still choose to love,
to forgive,
to believe—
Perhaps that, more than anything else,
is what it means to be human.
I have grown old.
I do not know how many years this church has left.
Perhaps I will be its last priest.
If so…
I have made peace with that.
Prayer does not exist because it must reach many people.
As long as even one person continues asking questions…
I believe prayer will never disappear.
Even today,
God offers no answers.
Only quiet silence fills this chapel.
Yet I no longer find that silence lonely.
Because when there are no answers,
we are free to think.
When there are no answers,
we can imagine another person’s pain.
When there are no answers,
we can still pray.
And so…
I pray today, just as I always have.
Not because I believe God will answer me.
But because I do not want to stop asking.
Because I believe that continuing to live with unanswered questions…
is the final grace humanity has been given.
Yes.
I truly believe that.