"As for the times when God worked directly through people, it was not thanks to us being many and righteous, but precisely because of us being many and wicked. Then, it was not the millennia of dutiful procreation that brought us Jesus (who didn’t come to celebrate man for being obedient and worthy, for that matter), but God’s merciful, self-sacrificial determination to bleed for our reckless perpetration of wrongs. Mortals and the sinful are pitiable. Mortals and the sinful are in need of salvation. In the fallen history, being many has never been the plan; turning as many to God (compassionately and un-coerced; starting with the self) is the only true plan for the living, as the Bible reveals and Jesus strongly underlines throughout the gospel."