Thanks to ChatGPT, a long-standing personal question about "Son of Man" has been resolved

I read Yi Mun-yol's 《Son of Man》 more than 10 years ago.
The content wasn't easy, but even back then, the story regarding Ahas Veretz was deeply impressive.
If God is almighty and loves humanity, why do so many people suffer?
Before talking about salvation in the afterlife to a starving person, shouldn't we give them bread right now?
It wasn't because I'm not a Christian, but throughout the reading, I kept thinking that Ahas was actually the one trying to reach out and provide practical help to those suffering.
One of my favorite sayings is "Generosity comes from a full granary."
This doesn't mean people automatically become good once they are full, but I believe that at least the anxiety regarding survival must decrease for one to have the mental capacity to think of others and make long-term judgments.
That is why Ahas Veretz's question—
"Before demanding goodness and love from people, shouldn't we first create the conditions under which they can live humanely?"—was quite persuasive to me.
However, there was one thing in this book that I had never understood: the ending.
After strongly criticizing Christianity for such a long time and pushing Ahas's logic almost to the very end, the part where Min Yo-seop returns to Christianity felt too sudden to me.
At the time, I even thought to myself:
"Did Yi Mun-yol stop here on purpose?"
"Did he fail to say what he wanted to say until the end because he was conscious of the backlash from Christian society, and just hastily patched up the ending toward Christianity?"
I even wondered if that awkward ending itself was a message like, "I can only write up to this point. I hope perceptive readers understand." haha.
But today, it suddenly occurred to me, and while discussing this with ChatGPT, I learned about an interview with Yi Mun-yol that I didn't know about.
Yi Mun-yol said that 《Son of Man》 was not simply a work written to attack Christianity, but a work that emerged from the questions about God and religion that he had harbored for a long time.
And what was even more impressive was the fact that he didn't just write it once and finish; he revised it several times afterward and personally worked on it even decades later.
Knowing that, my previous thoughts have changed significantly.
If he had truly settled the ending that way due to external pressure, there wouldn't have been much reason to maintain that core ending despite having many opportunities to rewrite it later.
Rather, it seems that the ending itself was a quite clear personal thought of Yi Mun-yol.
For a long time, I felt the ending was too rushed and thought,
"Did the author fail to go all the way?"
But at least I have now clarified that "it wasn't an ending where he intentionally backed down due to social pressure."
A question I had held alone for over 10 years regarding the ending of 《Son of Man》 was unexpectedly resolved today.
It makes me want to read it again after a long time.