GRILLING GOD: 1

Well... I’m surprised and delighted you’ve agreed to see me, Lord, though it would have been nice if I could actually see you.

I sense some annoyance in your voice, My son.

Well... Lord... yes. More like anger. I’m angry as hell.

That’s not good...anger...

All this bad shi... uh... stuff that’s going on around the world. Shouldn’t You be doing something to stop it?

Me?

Yes, You. Let’s start with all these people being slaughtered by terrorists. Christians!

You believe Christians deserve some special protection?

They’re Your people aren’t they?

Yes, all people are My children, no more special than any other people.

But believers are Your people.

No more than any others.

Even terrorists... evil demons who slaughter children for gain... You consider these people Your people too!? I can’t believe that, Lord. What about the Israelis? I thought they were Your “chosen” people. What about them? These terrorists vow to wipe them all out. How can You allow this to happen?

Because I allow everything. That’s the beauty of the free will I gave you. It’s the greatest gift I bestow in the universe. Do you think stars and galaxies have free will? And as far as Me choosing anyone over anyone else, you have Me confused with all those “lower-case g” gods of antiquity. You know; Bal Marduk, Ra, Yahweh, Ishtar... that bunch.

But...

No buts. I am The Creator. Remember? The alpha and the omega. Your own Aristotle and Aquinas – a couple of pretty smart fellows – reasoned it out. They had Me pegged. The First Cause. Something had to start all this up. I set this thing you call the universe in motion; okay, a couple of inviolable rules of physics. Your theoretical physicists even named a subatomic particle after me. I made the Beginning happen; the rest is up to you. All of you. If you want to go around killing one another that’s your choice and your prerogative. You blame Me for giving you freedom? That’s rather humerous, don’t you think? Do you think I enjoy seeing you humans make the wrong choices 99 out of 100 times? Like I have nothing else to do in the cosmos but fix all the stupid mistakes you dumbbells make?

Whoa! Just a second, Your Gloriousness. That alpha and omega bit may have gone down back in the day, but this is the Twenty-First Century. We have Science, y’know. We can figure stuff out. And Science says the universe was created by random fluctuations in the vacuum and quark soup that emerged with the Big Bang. So now a lot of people believe them and not You. And without belief there is no moral imperative. So they do terrible things without fear. If You don’t step in now and then with Your magic wand or whatever You call that thing, well ...cold, heartless Science wins. More and more terrible weapons. More war. More misery.

Fluctuations. Ha! That reminds me of a joke I heard about this Chinese lady who couldn’t speak English too well... (God’s laughter causes the Ring of Fire to erupt; a 7.2 quake sends a tsunami rushing across the Pacific towards San Francisco.)

Don’t you understand that “randomness” is just Science’s pseudonym for Me. You think I am a metaphor for randomness? You think that perfect symmetry is “random?” These scientists of yours... aren’t they the same clowns that made a religion out of global warming? As usual, they have it all backwards.

Far be it from Me to dictate how anyone should believe. You’re free to believe whatever you want, no matter how stupid. Make right choices, and humanity prospers in every conceivable way. Make wrong choices, and... welcome to Earth.

So what are you saying, Lord? We’re on our own? You don’t give a damn about us? There are hundreds of millions of poor, suffering humans on this planet... lots of them look to You for help. And You just let wars and killing and misery go on? Forever?

Try to see it from My perspective, bucko. I’ve kept this cosmos thing going for eons. Your wars and miseries have all happened in the blink of an eye. You’ve piled up bones and ashes in a monument to stupidity, all in an infinitesimal slice of Time. But you are doing the piling, not I. It’s all the doing of your race, My son.

Don’t give me that My son, My son crap! Who needs a Father Who doesn’t care!

You are angry.

Well...?

Of course I care. Humanity is My child.

If You can make night and day, why can’t You help us?

There you go again, thinking just like a dumbbell. I gave you FREE WILL. Just as I gave it to Marduk and Isis and Odin and all the olden gods... who I might add abused it terribly. Warring against one another over the same stupid things as in your time, teaching you gullible Earthlings how to make more and more terrible weapons. Tsk-tsk. Don’t you think it hurts Me to see how My children are so easily drawn to darkness? Frankly, eight thousand years of your countless screw-ups is enough to make Me think you are a hopeless lot.

Well, what in hell are we supposed to do? We’re just human beings, You know. There are evil, miserable people in this world You created. Own it. They don’t listen to reason.

It does seem to have become part of their genetic make-up, doesn’t it. But believe Me, I had nothing to do with that either. Wrong choices become habitual. Habits become engrained. Over the generations it becomes part of your genetic code.

So, Mightiness, what do You suggest we do?

Millennia ago, Yahweh’s attempts at peace failed to work with the evil ones of his time. He was a pretty clever god... had a bit of a temper... but smart. He knew how to handle wrong-doers.

What!? What are You saying? That we should eliminate the bad genes by killing all the bad people? Won’t we burn in hell for something like that?

There’s more than one way to skin the proverbial cat. Or are you “Twentieth Century” know-it-alls unable to think your way out of a paper bag? If appealing to the goodness I gave your kind isn’t persuasive enough, maybe your glorious Science can find a way to excise evil from the genes. All these things and more are possible. It’s your choice. You worry about burning in hell? The world is burning now anyway. It’s up to you to put out the fires. But you can’t do it by complaining to Me. As one of My angels once put it, “For evil to triumph, all that’s required is that good men do nothing.”

Yeh, I get that, alright. You help those who help themselves. Maybe the good guys have been looking the other way for way too long.

Amen.

And by the way... maybe you ought to stop being mesmerized by your crafty fellow men. Stop choosing the wrong people for your leaders. Making celebrities out of dumbbells with minor talent always leads to bad results. Learn to see and trust rightness.

Well, kiddo, I’ve enjoyed our little chat... but I’ve got to be on my way now. There’s some serious trouble with a couple of spiral galaxies that have rather large black holes, all about to collide. Ten billion quadrillion souls praying for Me to intercede. And that’s just before afternoon tea. 

Wow.

Did anyone ever tell You that You sound amazingly like Brando in The Godfather?

Uh-huh. I get that a lot. But I sounded like that looong before My ol’ friend, Marlon.

So be thankful. Your problems here are small potatoes. Anyway We must do this again soon.

Ta-ta for now.

Yah... see Ya’ ...and Lord... thanks for the advice. I’ll try to get everybody to spread the word.