Hey, God; Got a Minute?
Good questions to ask the next time the Big Guy calls you in for a chat.
“I tried to lighten up the conversation by talking about the Big Bang,
the thing that got the whole universe going. But when I said, "It must’ve scared the hell out of you when it happened," God stared at me for a long time then woke me up.”
Reviews
“Sometimes lighthearted, sometimes introspective, always
thought-provoking and attention engaging”
“Unique insights worthy of contemplation”
“Lingers in the heart and mind long after the book is finished and set back upon the shelf”
Midwest Book Review
“The perfect gift for anyone who muses about the deeper issues of life”
Scribes Review
“Brilliant”
Steelcaves
“A humorous quick read”
“Interesting approach”
“Amusing and thought provoking”
“Andy Rooney could have performed this”
Blosm
“I fell in love with it from the first paragraph”
“An interesting discourse “
Aphelion
Also From Noel Carroll:
Novels
Circle of Distrust
Accidental Encounter
Never By Blood
Broken Odyssey
Starve The Devil
The Exclusion Zone
(soon to come) A Long Reach Back
Short Stories
Slipping Away
The Galapagos Incident
Silent Obsession
Recycled
The Collection
Butterflies
Stairway Through Agony
Beyond Sapiens
End of The Beginning
By Invitation Only
Humor-Satire
Hey, God; Got A Minute? (as John Barr)
Soul Food
Political (as N. C. Munson)
If You Can Keep It
**********
Hey, God; Got a Minute?
by John Barr
Published by Noel Carroll on Smashwords ISBN 978-1-4523-2321-3
Also available in print under ISBN: 0-9658702-2-7 or ISBN-13: 978-0-9658702-2-1
Published in the UK on the STEELCAVES ezine, 2000.
Published in the United States on the APHELION ezine, 2002.
Copyright 2000 by Noel Carroll
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Cover by KC Creations
Author’s note
One who professes to have the "true" knowledge has an obligation to fully and fairly consider opposing opinion. If he fails to do so, if he fails to challenge himself with all the doubts and counter-arguments that man can devise, then the beliefs he holds are less than commendable. They are little more than recordings in a stagnant mind, to be replayed upon Pavlov's call.
*********
To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions;
both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
Poincare
Harold’s Questions
1 - This ‘in God’s image’ thing; did you evolve from apes like we did?
2 - If you’re guiding us and we do bad, whose fault is it?
3 - When you said, ‘Let there be light,’ who were you talking to?
4 - Doesn’t it bug you to be interrupted so much on your day off?
5 - If we’re your ‘chosen,’ why did you make us a Chevy and not a Cadillac?
6 - You going to write any more books?
7 - (This being the seventh day, me and God rested.)
8 - Why should the meek inherit anything?
9 - Don’t you believe in democracy?
10 - Is heaven like permanent welfare?
11 - Could I get a second opinion?
12 - Are you mad at us for inventing it?
13 - You ever bet on a football game?
14 - You okay with all this ‘begetting’ stuff?
15 – If there’s only enough food on the table for some, do the others have to say grace?
16 - If there is no limit to your powers, why did you have to rest on the seventh day?
17 - If everything is preordained, what do you have to look forward to?
18 - Do we have to be ‘children’ forever?
All of this is true; I swear to the big guy it is. Well, maybe not exactly true. I mean, a lot of it is from memory and thus could stray just a tad from what was actually said by God as well as by me. And maybe some of the feelings more represent my take than God’s, like I almost lost it when I saw the outline of a frown pushing through the glow surrounding his face (even now it scares me to think how close I might have come to encouraging the old heat treatment).
Anyway, what kicked it off was I fell asleep one night a little down about life in general and weary of all the conflicting thoughts that kept bouncing around in my head, thoughts about religion, why we’re here and what all this stuff means, I mean, really means. You know, one of those times when you’re flooded with doubts you gotta admit are there but don’t feel right about bringing up (you don’t even want to form the questions in your mind for fear you might actually ask them and in doing so tempt some kind of lightning bolt your way).
But the doubts are there just the same, and if you try to pretend they’re not, it just makes you itchy inside, like somebody’s calling for boarding on the last train to heaven and you don’t even know what kind of ticket to buy.
Now don’t get me wrong; it isn’t like I doubt the whole shebang. Heck, I’m not that far gone. I just doubt everything I’ve ever been told by everyone I’ve ever known. I mean, there are a lot of people out there screaming their heads off about what’s what in this world and the next, and most of them have no doubt whatsoever about what they’re saying, even when what they’re saying goes against what other guys (who also have no doubt whatsoever) are saying.
Until this thing with the big guy happened which I’m gonna tell you about in a minute I had just about given up. I had no one to turn to, no one to ask, no one who wouldn’t hit me with the same old platitudes and half-answers. “Just have faith, Harold,” they’d say, which to them meant have faith in what they were saying, not in what anybody else was saying.
Anyway, I just turned sixty, my back hurts from all the exercises I did to strengthen my legs, and my hair, which had already turned a horrible shade of dirty gray, is now falling out. Plus my feet hurt, my eyes see a little less each year, and I’m getting shorter. This all combines to tell me that I need to make sense out of what I am and where I’m going and that I’d better do it soon before whoever’s keeping score decides the game is over. “Time’s up, Harold. And oh so sorry, you should have followed religion 5,642. Step closer to the furnace, please.”
Anyway, the problem I’m trying to tell you about started for me at an early age. I was even more confused about religion then than I am now, and when I tried talking to my friends about it (I remember asking, “If God can do no wrong but can do anything he wants to do then why can’t he do wrong? I mean, if he really, really wanted to?”) all I got was laughter and ridicule. They didn’t much like the questions (and couldn’t answer them anyway) so they responded in the only way they knew: they attacked the one doing the questioning. Enough episodes of this and I knew to bury my curiosity in favor of going along with the crowd. I liked the guys who were telling me the religious facts of life, so backing off was no big deal.
But one day I moved to another town and a new set of friends who believed something different but who sounded just as sure about what they were saying as the guys I left behind. When that happened a third time, I got to wondering what gives. I mean, they were all good guys, but what they said just couldn’t be, not when you viewed it all together. Some said black, some said white, some said something in-between I was young, but not so young that I couldn’t see something wrong with that. When for the second time in my life I got on their case about it, this time to question how so many different religious opinions could be right at the same time, I got to see my first funny look: a look that said, How could I not understand? How could I question the unquestionable? (I figured out that the “unquestionable” meant what they believed, not what my earlier friends believed.)
That’s when everybody began picking on me. A few guys got angry, but most of them just stared at me as if I had brain cells leaking out of my ears. It was funny to watch the progression; their eyes would widen and their smiles would become fixed and unsure as if they’d just cut one loose and were afraid the teacher had heard. Then, and it’s interesting how many of them did this, they’d take a step backward to avoid an accidental hit from a lightning bolt aimed at me.
But my playmates are not the guys I complained to God about. I still like those guys, all of them. Besides, we were kids; we didn’t know any better; we’d all been brainwashed by our parents. The gut aches I feel now come from grown-ups, the guys who are doing the brainwashing. The guys who stab their fingers at the sky, reveal enough of their eyes to make little kids fear the dark, wave whatever book they think proves their point, and cry out their message to the world, a message that demonstrates love of their own ideas, scorn for anyone who can’t see the wisdom of those ideas, and reasons why you should give them money.
What really bothers me is there are so many of them and so few of me.
Anyway, getting back to the night I’m trying to tell you about, I woke up in my dream (that’s exactly what it was; I was dreaming then there I was, as awake as I’d ever been in my life) and found myself standing alone at the edge of a rolling puff of cloud watching rambling rivers and winding roads run a neat pattern through multicolored patches of farmland far below. The only company I had was a gentle breeze, which, because there were no trees or stuff like that to catch the wind and make a noise, I felt more than I heard. As I stood there watching, I began to feel a need to make the most of this before the magic of the moment changed, before the pushing and shoving of a celestial rush-hour began.
But before I had time to decide how to do that, along walks the big guy himself, God. Because of the light radiating from him, I couldn’t see much, but I knew right away it was him. (Or her; I never did get the answer to that one.) Well, I gotta tell you, this surprised me some. It isn’t often that this kind of thing happens, not to me it doesn’t (to the guys running around in robes collecting money, it supposedly happens all the time).
But anyway, I seized on this great idea, the idea that this meeting was preordained; I mean, it must have been, right? The big guy must have guided us together just so I could hit him with my questions. I felt pretty important at that moment, even holy. And I figured who am I to risk angering God by passing up an ordainment, or whatever you’re supposed to call it. So I grabbed the moment and got the ball rolling. As you’ll soon see, once it started rolling it wasn’t so easy to stop.
“Hey, God; got a minute?”
ONE
This “in God’s image” thing: did you evolve from apes like we did?
“What is it, Harold?”
“Hey, this is great; you talking to me, I mean.”
“Yes, Harold, I understand. But I am a bit busy...”
“Oh yeah, God; didn’t mean to hold you up and all. I just got a few things on my mind. You know, things I can’t make gel.”
“Gel?”
“An expression where I come from, God. But you see, that’s part of what’s bothering me. I thought you would know that.”
“You think the way you speak should rank high in matters that occupy my mind, Harold?”
“Well, that’s what we’re told all the time. That you know everything, I mean, even the things that aren’t worth knowing.”
“I know you, Harold.”
“Ha! Good one, God. I’ll remember that I mean, if you let me remember it.”
“You have questions, Harold?”
“Yeah, a few thing I been thinking about.”
“What kind of things?”
“Well, like ... now, you’re not gonna take offense, are you, God?”
“That depends.”
“Yeah, well I don’t mean this the wrong way, you understand. I’m just ... well, sorta confused. I don’t want to get my buns scorched for stepping outta line.”
“Get with it, Harold.”
“Yeah, no sweat; I’ve been standing here writing it all down. Hold on a second, God.”
“Harold.”
“Yeah, God?”
“You said ‘a minute.’ How many sheets of papers do you have there?”
“Now see, there you go again. You’re supposed to know things like that.”
(sigh) “Pick one, Harold, and let’s get on with it.”
“Yeah, okay. It’s just that I have trouble believing all I’m told and I need a little help sorting it out oh yeah, move on; right, God. Eh, how about this one: Now as I understand it, you made us in your own image, right?”
“What is your point?”
“Well, what image are we talking about? Homosexuals have...”
“That’s ‘Homo Sapiens,’ Harold.”
“Homo Sapiens; got it, God. Well Homo-what-you-said have changed a hell ... eh, a heck of a lot, even in the last million years we don’t look anything like we did back then. And go all the way back to the time of the dinosaurs and you see us looking like mice. Eh, you’re not telling us you’re a mouse are you, God.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Hey, no way I see you that way; I just said that to prove a point. But you know, with all that glow, I can’t tell what you do look like you couldn’t turn down the power a little could you, God?”
“Maybe you haven’t really tried to see me, Harold.”
“That’s exactly what I’m getting at, God. I mean, that’s the point of this whole talk. I wanna try harder; I wanna know how to see you, how you want to be seen.”
“Is it so important that I have a specific image?”
“Well, no, but that’s what we’re taught all the time, that we look like you, I mean. All I want to know is whether it’s true. Or whether you’re evolving like we are and, if so, what you have in mind as the end game eh, you got pictures, maybe?”
“Maybe I want to leave that up to you, to permit you to see me as you wish.”
“‘Maybe’ don’t exactly pay the rent, God.”
“You want to run that by me again, Harold?!”
“Hey, no offense; I really want to understand. There are a bunch of guys out there saying all kinds of contradictory things. And these guys, they don’t say ‘maybe;’ they say ‘this is how it is and there isn’t any question about it.’”
“But you do question them.”
“Yeah, but I question them, God, not you. I mean, they come up with way-out stuff, stuff they’ve got to have made up. Like this ‘in your image’ thing. I mean, mankind has gone all the way from one-celled creatures to what we are now there’s a lot of in-between there, God. Heck, we’ve changed a lot even since your guy Jesus came on board. We’re taller now by a lot of inches. Eh, how tall are you, God?”
“Here’s another ‘maybe’ for you, Harold: Maybe I ‘evolve’ your image because I don’t like you looking so much like me you people are not something one can easily take pride in, you know!”
“Present company excepted, right, God? Eh, just a little human joke there. But why do you let these people tell us something like that if it isn’t true? I mean, they say they got it straight from the horse’s mouth no offense. They say they’re just passing on what you want us to know?”
“Your minute’s up, Harold.”
“Oh, yeah. Well can I come back and see you later, God? I got a lot more of these questions.”
“I can hardly wait.”
“Hey, great! I was afraid you'd be offended.”
“Goodnight, Harold!”
“Eh, right; see you later, God Oh, one quickie, if I can?”
“‘Quickie,’ Harold?”
“Yeah, that means like...”
“Do me a favor, Harold.”
“Yeah, God?”
“Don’t explain.”
“Oh, yeah, sure. I guess I really don’t have to. I mean, you would know that like you know everything, right?”
“Your ‘quickie,’ Harold?”
“Yeah, Eh, is ‘God’ your first name or your family name?”
(sigh)
TWO
If you’re guiding us and we do bad, whose fault is it?
I woke up at that point, but let me tell you, I thought about that little get-together all through the day. I felt really good about it; that holy feeling came over me again; I even walked a little lighter. Not exactly on tiptoe but lighter, like I was already on my way to the big K-Mart in the sky. (That thought triggered another question which I quickly wrote down on my list of stuff to ask God. It’s always good to know where things are in advance of a major relocation. I mean, if I got to heaven really close to Christmas and had to waste time figuring out where K-Mart was, I wouldn’t have time to shop.)
I figured questions like that wouldn’t hit him the wrong way he seemed a little testy about that image thing. They’re easy to answer and a step below heaven-shaking. Another good one is whether he still rests once every seven days, and if so, whether he’d like us to worship him when he’s back on the job. I mean, there’s nothing worse than being interrupted a billion times on your day off.
I couldn’t wait until bedtime. My friends must’ve thought I was wacko, the way I treated them that day, like I had a big secret they wouldn’t guess in a million years not unrealistic timing considering where I was and who I was talking to. When they pushed me for an explanation, I took on my best holy look, one that spoke of the notch I had risen above them, then started humming. Not a hymn or anything like that; just an old Beetles’ tune. At one time, I thought of hitting them up for money, you know, like those guys in the tents do when they talk to God. I didn’t, of course. I loath those guys and don’t want to do to people what they do to people, especially people I like. Not only taking their money, but taking advantage of their human weaknesses: preying on their superstitions, their fear of the unknown, their fear of dying. If I did that, I wouldn’t be able to sleep nights. And then I wouldn’t get to chat with God.
By the time I climbed into bed I was too excited to sleep. I tossed and turned for hours before finally giving up and going out to the kitchenette for a drink, hoping it would calm me down I live in a two-bedroom apartment when I’m not on a cloud with God. Funny thing, though: all the while I was drinking this late-night cocktail, I couldn’t help thinking of it as holy water. I mean, look at what it was leading me to.
Holy water or not, it didn’t help; I still tossed and turned. It got to me, the amount of night I was wasting, I mean suppose God got tired of waiting. I fought harder, at one time pressing my eyelids down with such force that it gave me a headache.
Then it was the headache that kept me awake.
It must’ve been three in the morning before I finally calmed down enough to let go, but before that I went though a period of thinking that God was keeping me awake on purpose, this so he’d have more time to think up answers to my questions. I understood that; it’s what I would do.
Anyway, I finally got there, there being the same cloud as before, overlooking the same scene. Except now it was raining down on everybody.
“Hi, God, It’s me, Harold.”
“How could you possible think I don’t know that, Harold?”
“Yeah, gotcha, God. And that leads to another question of mine, this one about people being a pain in the ... eh, neck ... at times, some more than others.”
“Funny, I was thinking along the same lines.”
“Ha! Good one, God. You’d be great at parties.”
(sigh) “Your question, Harold?”
“Eh, yeah. Eh, this one has to do with why we’re the way we are. I mean, not so good at times. I mean, if you’re in the driver’s seat, God, why don’t you change us into something more to your liking? For that matter, more to the liking of each other?”
“Don’t you think I try?”
“Now that I don’t understand. What’s ‘try’ got to do with anything if you can wave a magic wand and make it happen?”
“There is no magic to any of this, Harold. Not with respect to what you are, and more importantly, not with respect to what you are not.”
“Well, how do you do it then?”
“The details would be beyond you.”
“Yeah, but you did do it; make us, I mean. Right? And some of us are made better than others. Some can’t be other than a pain no matter how hard they try.”
“Have you taken into consideration that I might be testing them? And you, Harold?”
“Well pardon my asking, God, but why would you do that unless you goofed in the production phase? I mean, if you made us, and if you can do no wrong, then by definition, we don’t have any bugs in us that you didn’t put there in the first place. So what’s with the test? And why punish us if we fail? That’s like making a car with three tires then getting mad when it drives on an angle.”
“I work in mysterious ways, Harold.”
“Yeah, I can believe that, God, but still, I gotta ask.”
“(sigh) You don’t think mankind should have rules to go by?”
“I got no problem with rules, but if you made us weak, then I figure you expect us to be weak. If we act like we don’t like the weaknesses you gave us, it makes us look kinda unfriendly, know what I mean? Like we disapprove of your handiwork.”
“You’re not always easy to understand, Harold.”
“Just one of my weaknesses, God. How am I doing with it?”
“Not funny, Harold!”
“Yeah, sorry, God. But you don’t know what they’re saying about you well, maybe you do, but I gotta believe you don’t like it.”
“Saying about me?”
“Yeah. Like we should be afraid of you, afraid you’re gonna burn our butts if we act like what we are. They say out of one side of their mouth that you guide us through each day, that anything we do is really you pulling the strings, then when we do something they don’t like, they change over to us being in control and you about to zap us in the butt for doing it. What happened to the guide-us-through-each-day bit?”
“I help you with the good. Do you think it reasonable that I should also help you with the bad?”
“Well as I see it, if you’re in there guiding us, how can we think of anything bad? And how can we get started doing something bad if you’re in there guiding us?”
“Did you ever think of entering the law, Harold?”
“Well, if you’re guiding me, God, maybe I should ask you that question.”
“I can’t see it making matters worse.”
“Hey, I’ll go with whatever you decide. But getting back to the us-being-guided thing, what sense does my whole life make if all I am is a puppet on a string yeah, I know, except when I’m being bad, which I don’t know how I can be with you pulling the strings?”
“Are you saying being alive doesn’t make sense?”
“Hey, it beats the alternative at least I think it does; I don’t have much experience with that particular alternative. I mean, I don’t remember what I was before I was born. But that’s not what I’m asking, God. From where I sit, I’m in a movie house watching your grand plan for me unfold. And all the while I’m thinking that if you wind up not liking how that plan turns out, I stand a good chance of getting torched this is what they’d have us believe, God.”
“Exactly who is this ‘they,’ Harold?”
“The guys I’ve been wanting to tell you about, the guys with loud voices, funny eyes and fingers that keep pointing up, regardless of what side of the world they happen to be on when they get fired up.”
“The ones who speak of me, you mean?”
“Hey, I’m not talking about all of them, God. Just a heck of a lot of them. Well, maybe most of them. It’s just that they don’t think through what they say or do. I mean, they don’t even feel an obligation to. They make up stuff then toss it into the crowd as if, having said it, it’s gotta be true.”
“If you are referring to a time when they gather in worship, it is likely that the one doing the speaking feels he or she is being guided by me.”
“Well, that’s what I mean about thinking it through, God. He thinks he’s being ‘guided’ into saying ‘black’ at about the same time a guy in a place down the street thinks he’s being ‘guided’ into saying ‘white.’ I mean, I got enough smarts to see a problem with that, why don’t they?”
“They don’t have your genius, Harold.”
“Yeah, I see your point, God. I mean, you only had so many brains to pass out, right?”
(sigh) “Go on, Harold. You were telling me about ‘making up stuff,’ I believe.”
“Eh, yeah. Anyway, their audience just sits there nodding and smiling, as if there couldn’t be any doubt about the truth of what they just heard. I tell you, God, this gets me to thinking that there’s nobody out there who has any idea what the real skinny is. They come on like they do, but it’s obvious by what they say, and by what other guys say about what they say, that they don’t.”
“You have needs as they have needs, Harold. When you feel strongly inside as you do now rather than keep those feelings to yourself, you endeavor to pass them on, to encourage others to believe what is very real and very valid to you this does not in any way refer to the validity of those feelings, only to the imperative nature of them. There are certain people who feel a ‘need’ to instruct, Harold. Does it hurt so much to have others practice this need on you?”
“Hey, I still got things I don’t know, God. But the kind of guys I’m talking about don’t instruct as much as they bully. They tell you what to believe, how to believe it, and what’s going to come down on you if you don’t. I once had a guy hand me a list and say, ‘This is what we believe. You want to join us, you gotta believe it too.’ Now how does a guy tell his mind what to believe? I mean, a mind looks over all the facts and arguments then tells you what it believes, right?”
“They are encouraging you to open your mind to their words, Harold.”
“Yeah okay, but it doesn’t sound to me like they got much room in those words for debate, and that means that they intend the opening-of-the-mind thing to be one-sided. You should hear these guys, God.”
“I should, Harold?”
“Oh, yeah, I guess you do hear them. You hear everything, right? But doesn’t it pis ... eh, get you angry some of the stuff they come up with?”
“Are you saying they are being dishonest?”
“Well, no, I guess not; not ‘dishonest,’ I mean. More that they’re being ... irresponsible. They gotta know people are afraid to question them, afraid the sky’s going to fall in on them if they do. When somebody does question them, the first word out of their mouth is ‘blasphemy.’ Then they tell that somebody he’s got a problem ‘opening his mind.’”
“Unlike you.”
“Hey, like I say, God, I still got things I don’t know. But I don’t see these guys having a open mind when the kind of answers I get from them are ‘all I know is’ and ‘that’s good enough for me!’ If a guy admits ‘all I know is,’ I don’t think he should come on like he knows everything. And saying ‘that’s good enough for me’ tells me he’s not interested in hearing anything but the echo of his own voice.”
“But you do want to be heard.”
“Well, I always got an urge to, but I don’t give in to it all that often. I mean, if I argue, it just gets a lot of people looking at me funny like. Easier to just let it go.”
“I understand.”
“And it isn’t just guys in tents; it’s anybody with a loud voice and the idea that you’ve called on him to “spread the good word,” even if that “good word” contradicts the next guy’s “good word.” I gotta ask you, God, doesn’t that ever ... eh, get you mad? I mean, it’s like these guys think you have a split personality, that you hand out contradictory callings?”
“You think I’m confused, Harold?”
“Hey, no way. I’m talking about them, God, not you. But when these things happen, I get to feeling like I’m the only one out there who’s not either hypnotized or blinded by fear, the only one able to see the ‘light’ that my neighbor thinks I don’t see when I disagree with his version of what that ‘light’ is maybe that didn’t make as much sense as it did in my head before I let it out, but you know what I mean.”
“I appreciate the clarification, Harold.”
“Yeah, well I figured you might need it, what with me working in mysterious ways at times.”
(sigh)
“Anyway, these guys can also be found in basilicas, bethels, churches, mosques, synagogues, tabernacles, temples, you name it I mean if you want to. It doesn’t matter what you call it; what matters is what they say and how they say it; what they claim and how willing they are to think through those claims.”
“I see, Harold. But why complain to me? How much you believe of what ‘they’ say is up to you.”
“That’s just it, God, I want to believe in you, but I have trouble figuring out how all the noise down there figures into this. Like there’s this guy from the orient who tells me you want him to have a fleet of Rolls Royces he’s way up there on my ‘they’ list, God.”
“There will always be the gullible, Harold.”
“Yeah, and the guys who take advantage of them pardon me for saying it, God, but they could use a little straightening out. There are more of these guys popping up every day.”
“You hint at indifference, Harold. I see other than that. Look for signs.”
“Yeah, I know, thunder and lightning and birds carrying snakes, stuff like that. But it seems to me a better sign would be one written in a common language on a giant billboard.”
“Are you questioning my methods?”
“Hey, no way, God! It’s more like pleading. I mean, I see things down there as pretty screwed up. We could use a little help.”
“And if I clarify everything for you today, what about tomorrow?”
“I don’t follow you, God.”
“The minds of humans are fickle, Harold. What you believe today, you are inclined to modify even ten minutes from now. If I enlighten ten of you, within twenty-four hours these ten will have begun to modify their thinking. Even as they stood together during the lecture, they will express varying interpretations of what they heard me say. Given enough time, they could well form ten entirely new religions.”
“All the more reason why I can’t put stock in what they tell me, God. Besides, can’t you keep reminding them? A daily newsletter, something like that? Heck, I’ll even help you print it.”
“Too tedious, Harold.”
“Tedious?”
“Yes, like this conversation.”
“Oh yeah. I get your drift, God. It’s just I feel this great need to know.”
“Why do you ‘need’ to know, Harold?”
“Well, I guess you would know that better than me, God. After all, you made me.”
(sigh)
“I guess I’m tired of holding it inside me, God. Tired of being told that to pose too tough a question is blasphemy. Tired of people bullying me with their smug looks and knowing smiles when in truth they don’t know any more than I do. Tired of the comfort these people take in the large numbers of people around them who believe as they do, like these numbers make them more right than me.”
(sigh) “Okay, Harold, go on.”
“You know that ‘seek and ye shall find’ stuff, God. Well think of this as me ‘seeking.’”
“I said go on, Harold.”
“Oh yeah. But, eh, I got a little request first.”
“A little request?”
“Yeah, about the guys who cry ‘blasphemy’ every time I question their way of thinking. I thought maybe you might zap their tails a little. You know, throw the fear of you into them, keep them from coming down so hard on the rest of us.”
“Condemnation reflects one’s own inadequacies more than it advertises another’s, Harold. You should pity them for that. But in strict answer to your question, I offer what I said earlier: Ten minutes after being ... zapped ... they would be right back at it. Better is for you to assume more responsibility for protecting yourselves. I’ve given you the means; it is up to you to employ them.”
“Some of us have more ‘means’ than others, God.”
“It happens, Harold.”
Now at that point, I began to wonder which kind I was. Did I have more “means” or less “means”? I don’t like the loudmouths, but I don’t feel strong enough to take them on directly. I mean, all kinds of people would come down on me if I even hinted that I thought these guys, as popular as some of them are, smelled like they walked through a chicken coop in their bare feet. So I guess I have enough means to protect myself, but not enough to win out against the harm these guys do.
“Yeah, I hear you, God. And I know I gotta go along with whatever you say ...”
“What exactly do you mean by that, Harold?”
“Well, you know; the butt-burning thing.”
“Is that the only way you can believe, Harold? By fearing punishment?”
I thought about that some. I have fears like the next guy, but I don’t know that it makes me more religious. Or less. And I don’t know how much of it comes from being too close to the funny-eyes guys when they let loose in speech, I mean. For years they’ve been telling us we gotta fear God, that he has some kind of holocaust going and that we’re going to be tortured in a horrible way if we don’t fall into line. Even if that was true, which I don’t think it is, why is it so holy to give in to fear? If on Earth we keep from doing something just because we're afraid, we’re branded as cowards I don’t think anybody is going to say I’m ‘good’ or ‘holy’ just because he sees me trembling in fear. No, when fear strikes, we try to get hold of ourselves, even when, as in wartime, it might cost us our lives.
The same thing could be applied to the morality thing. What kind of sense does it make to say a guy is moral when the only reason he keeps from doing something bad is because he’s afraid of being punished? I’d say he’s more chicken than moral. Moral is a guy who keeps from doing something bad simply because he thinks it’s wrong.
Are we supposed to go through all eternity afraid to speak our minds? Me, I don’t think so. I mean, no two people think alike, and assuming we aren’t given a brand new personality after death, there are going to be a whole bunch of contrary opinions flying around heaven, all of them at the same time. (If we are given a new personality, then what was the sense of having the old one?) It doesn’t change anything if you keep those contrary opinions to yourself. If God looks into your heart, he’s going to see them and know.
I think the funny-eyes guys don’t give God enough credit. They infer that he feels threatened by diversity of opinion, even way-out opinion. Me, I figure he isn’t worried, that if it comes to a verbal boxing match, he knows he’ll come out ahead.
I sure wish I could’ve gotten an answer to the “guided-through-life” thing. When am I a puppet and when am I not a puppet? Am I worrying about stuff I can’t do anything about believing I have decisions to make when in truth they’ve already been made for me, that everything is preordained?
I don’t think anything’s preordained. I mean, if “preordained” means God knows everything in advance, seems to me he would do something to prevent the bad from happening. Like a cop who knows a crime is going down; if he does nothing to block it, we’d get all over his case.
But I had already come close to being “tedious” on that subject, so I decided to move on to something else, something sure to be close to God’s heart.
“Where exactly is heaven, God?”
“Where do you imagine it to be, Harold?”
“Well, in the past, people used to think of heaven as up in the air. I mean, there are a lot of paintings, some of them showing angels with wings and others showing you pushing clouds out of the way so you can point a finger down at us. But now we know that the higher you go, the less air you get, and that you can go on forever in any one direction without this changing. That tells me that heaven’s got to be sandwiched between Earth and the start of space. I mean, otherwise, why give angels wings?” Hey, why are you laughing, God?”
“You take things too literally, Harold.”
“But that’s what I mean, God. We got people out there preaching that we have to take what is said in the Bible literally.”
“I am afraid, Harold, that this is something else you must work out by yourself. I say again, what you believe is up to you.”
“But I don’t see ‘believing’ having anything to do with truth. Aren’t we supposed to go for truth?”
“Truth is something humans only give lip service too. More important to them is what they wish to believe.”
“But you’ll scorch our butts if we ‘believe’ the wrong thing.”
“Will I?”
“That’s what they say.”
“Then to you, that is what will happen. However, I caution you to open the entirety of your mind when regarding the arguments of others. What ‘they’ say may have little to do with what I expect of you.”
“They claim they’re only repeating what you say to them.”
“They talk to themselves and attribute it to me.”
“Don’t you talk to people, God? I mean, you’re talking to me now.”
“Am I?”
It was at this point that I woke up. And did that ever leave me with an empty feeling! I knew I had been awake all that time in my dream, I mean but the doubts began to pour in big-time. The day that followed was nothing like the one that preceded it, the one where I felt some kind of holy. Now I felt like an empty-headed worm. And I couldn’t put my finger on why.
THREE
When you said, “Let there be light,” who were you talking to?
The next night I decided to be even more careful about what I said no telling what God might do if I really pissed him off. I figured he was getting tired of hearing about all the bad from Earth and could use a little cheering up, so I went through my list of questions and picked out a few that weren’t so heavy.
“Hi, God, I’m back.”
“Joy to me!”
“Yeah, that’s cool, God. Good to see you in a better mood. You know, last night might’ve been a bad day for both of us. Maybe I said things that didn’t come out the way I thought about them when they were still floating around in my mind. You follow me?”
“Incredibly, I think I do.”
“Well, I didn’t mean to be hard-nosed or anything, I just....”
“Harold, are you apologizing?”
“Eh, yeah, I guess I am, God.”
“Well, don’t. I see genuine confusion in your mind, and however obnoxious you are in expressing it, there is nothing wrong with your reaching for answers. Indeed, you have a me-given need to do so.”
“Yeah, well thanks a heap, God. That’s mighty nice of you. And you know, I do have a little more of that ‘confusion’ to work out.”
“I am overwhelmed with surprise.”
“Ha! A God joke, eh, God?”
“Proceed with the questions, Harold.”
“Right on, God. Eh, here’s an easy one. Why does everyone look up when they’re talking to you I mean, you see it all the time? If a guy is on the wrong side of the Earth when he’s doing this, isn’t he looking away?”
“I’m everywhere, Harold.”
“Well then, why look up?”
“Next question, Harold.”
“Oh. Yeah, sure, God. But do you ever think about things like that?”
“Next question, Harold.
“Eh, well I read where you said ‘there shall be no other gods before me.’ What I wonder is, why would you say that if there are no other gods?”
“Figure of speech, Harold, an expression. Don’t think about it too much.”
“Yeah, but if there’s only one god and you’re it, no need to be jealous, you know?”
“Good point, Harold. Next question, please.”
“Oh, yeah, sure. Eh, I guess I’m doing that obnoxious thing again, huh, God?”
“You got it, Harold Oh good me; I’m beginning to sound like you!”
“Yeah, God. I like it. Guess I’m a good influence.
(sigh) “Your question, please.”
“You got it, God (just joking). Here, I got another one all ready to go. Eh, in the Bible, it talks about the four corners of the Earth. Was that because they didn’t know the world was round?”
“Another expression. Don’t let it keep you up nights.”
“Oh, I like being up nights, at least like this. I mean, you and me shooting questions back and forth, challenging one another.”
(sigh)
“But you got lots of Christians with pictures on their walls of Jesus looking up; didn’t he know the world was round?”
“Harold?”
“Yeah, well the reason I ask those kinds of questions is to demonstrate another thing about the guys with the funny eyes. If you look back in history you see them being sure as heck about something one day then sure as heck about something completely different the next: The world is flat; next day it’s round. The sun revolves around the Earth; next day it’s the other way around. And they never seem to learn; they go right on fitting new discoveries to what they want to believe. And they’re sure as heck when they’re finished that their interpretation is the absolute truth.”
“Humans are reluctant to revise long-held opinions, Harold.”
“But messing with the facts is just fooling yourself, God not you; I mean them. Why go right on like you were never wrong in the first place. And get pissed ... eh, mad ... if people start asking for proof the next time you come up with a new ‘truth’? You ask and you get something like, ‘What else can it be?’ (Isn’t that particular answer a contradiction, God. I mean, they’re saying they don’t know, therefore they know.)
“They’re trying, Harold.”
“Yeah, well so am I, God. But I’m looking for real truth not support for preconceived ideas. You know what I mean?”
“Yes I do, Harold. But you are suggesting that others do not harbor a similar quest for truth.”
“Hey, I’m the first to give the other guy his due. I mean, if I see any reason to, that is. But what am I to think when the rules change and not a heck of a lot of people see a problem in that?”
“Fear, Harold, the fear timid people have when faced with the prospect of questioning those they perceive as stronger than they. You share that tendency. I see it in you when you catch yourself before saying something you think might offend me.”
“Yeah, well I’m not dumb, God.”
“Dumb is relative, Harold.”
“Huh?”
“Please go on. I sense you are about to tell me more of what you believe to be inconsistencies.”
“Hey, how did you know that? Oh, yeah; you’re God. Well, you take the case of what happened during the 18th century. God’s ... eh, I mean your ... tendency to anger was hushed up a bit, especially in the Bibles people gave to children. Up to that point everybody said you were ‘demanding and vengeful.’ After that point you were declared to be a ‘benign educator of humanity.’ Now, how can both be true? What happens to yesterday’s truth that I’m not supposed to question when a new truth that I’m not supposed to question is put into play? You see my problem, God?”
“More than you know, Harold.”
“And what about the guy who’s supposed to be infallible? One of your guys?”
“No human being is infallible, Harold.”
“Well, he says he is.”
“Saying so does not make it so.”
“To me it doesn’t, but to a lot of other people it does. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a great technique. I wouldn’t mind if people believed that of me. Harold, the infallible; self proclaimed!”
“Would you ‘lord’ it over them, Harold?”
“Hey, not me. Not more than a little anyway. It’s just a neat thought, that’s all. Anyway this same infallible guy used to insist that the sun went around the Earth he was ready to zap Galileo for saying something different.”
“He was human, Harold. As I said, humans make mistakes.”
“Yeah, okay, but it’s humans who are telling me what’s right and what’s wrong and what to do. How do I know what they’re saying now isn’t just another ‘mistake’?”
“The really passionate believers work with a crutch, Harold. The light of their religion makes them see what they believe I got that from Thomas Aquinas by the way.”
“Eh...”
“Give credit where credit is due, Harold. The point is, you must judge the passion of the person on whom you rely for any kind of information. Too much enthusiasm could block some or all of the value of what he or she might have said.”
“Yeah, I buy what you’re saying, God, but it sure makes me uncomfortable at times. These ‘really passionate believers’ can do harm to guys who don’t play along.”
“It is a discomfort you can do something about. There are people, Harold, who simultaneously hold great stature and questionable motives. What they believe they also imagine to be true and, as such, they become less and less able to handle what might threaten beliefs that they have no desire nor inclination to alter. The onus is on you to not be afraid to judge each of them on his or her merits, to decide for yourself how much of them you wish to endure.”
“Not easy to do, God. Everybody’s afraid to say something nasty about a guy who claims he’s talking to you directly.”
“Then they must suffer their lack of courage. As I have said, the passion of one’s beliefs has little to do with whether those beliefs hold any validity. One who professes to know truth has an obligation to fully and fairly consider opposing opinion. If he fails to do so, if he fails to challenge himself with all the doubts and counter-arguments that man can devise, then the beliefs he holds are less than commendable. They are little more than recordings in a stagnant mind, to be replayed upon Pavlov’s call.”
He let me see his eyes then, and what I saw was determination and just a hint of disgust. What I didn’t know, however, was whether this was for me or for mankind in general. Since I was a lot closer to the lightning bolts, I hoped it was the latter. I even angled my head to see if the puff of cloud I was sitting on was grounded.
I also hoped he wasn’t thinking I was picking on just one of his boys, the guy who thinks of himself as infallible, I mean. Just in case, I let him in on some of the other things I’d heard.
“You know, God, there are guys out there who believe it turns you on to see them murder people who don’t think like they do. They say you take them into heaven faster when they do this.”
“And you take them seriously?”
“Hey, you should see some of these guys, God. They get so wrapped up in one way of looking at things they go crazy if they don’t get to die during an attack.”
“Do you really imagine that I would be impressed by someone who tries to please me by hurting others, either physically or mentally? Do you imagine, with all I am capable of doing, that I need such people to accomplish what I wish to accomplish?”
“Hey, to me a crazy is a crazy; it doesn’t matter what else is floating around in his mind or what side he’s on. I’m just telling you what kind of opinion is floating around down there, what kind of people I gotta put up with. But these same guys, even though they try to get to paradise in a hurry, want to take revenge against whoever helped put them there that’s what I mean about not thinking things through.”
“When you follow someone or something blindly, all you can truthfully say about yourself is that you are blind.”
“Hey, I like that, God. That mean you agree with me?”
“No, Harold, it does not. It means only that I agree with your premise that human beings should think through what they believe. Especially if they are prone to act on those beliefs.”
“Yeah, but what if they don’t, God, think things through before they act, I mean? Some guys can only get to feeling good about themselves if they get others to go along with their ideas. They don’t get satisfaction, they want to lash out at somebody.”
“Then deal with them.”
“Eh, we could use a little help in that, God. It’s a humungus mess we’re talking about here.”
“The help you seek can be found among yourselves. I am not here to play human, Harold, as you are not here to play me. As humans you have created problems and as humans you must solve them.”
“We can’t call on you, God?”
“You can call on me all you want, Harold, but you must rely on yourselves.”
“I gotta admit, God, I don’t understand that.”
“Someday you will, Harold. Someday you will.”
I was a little surprised at that. It sounded like he was telling me we weren’t exactly way up there on his list of priorities, that we should go our way as he intended to go his. But I held back asking him that, figuring there was something in his words he wanted me to think about. I mean, if I push everybody else to think things through, the least I can do is follow my own advice.
It was, however, a natural lead-in to my next set of questions.
“You know, God, one really big religion down on Earth says the gods are an invention of man, that you’re sort of an imaginary playmate for adults.”
“What do you think?”
“No way! Hey, I’m here with you now.”
“You are asleep, Harold. How do you know you are not dreaming?”
“Well ... You know, God, these are the kind of questions I’m supposed to be asking you.”
“Oh but you are asking them, Harold.”
The air was getting thicker, and it was beginning to make me sweat. I looked around to see if God had a little stand-by fire going, you know, like a pilot light. There was nothing other than the cloud, nothing I could see at least, but just the thought of it was enough to make me want to play it safe. You know, go with the light stuff.
“When you waved your magic wand and said, ‘Let there be light,’ who were you talking to?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Hey, no problem, God. A little too much to eat maybe?”
“I mean your question. Where did that come from?”
“Oh. Well, that was the start of everything, right?”
“Go on.”
“Well who was there before everything started?”
“You would not understand, Harold.”
“That’s exactly it, God, I don’t. I mean, if you were ordering someone to create light, were you sitting there in the dark? Did you need the light to see; did you even have eyes I mean, if there wasn’t any light, why would you need eyes? And who are the guys who did the job for you? Electricians maybe? Do they have the magic, or did you give them just enough to get the job done?”
“Harold?”
“And how did you know what light was if you didn’t already have it?”
“Harold?”
“Eh, more ‘expressions,’ God?”
(sigh) “There are some questions that have no meaningful answers, Harold. Time, for example. By definition, it could never have begun, thus there is no answer to give whoever would ask that question.”
“Gotcha. Boggles the mind, doesn’t it, God?”
(sigh)
“But that brings up an interesting point We have to assume you’re always right and we’re always wrong sounds a little like my ex-wife, by the way. But how do you yourself know that you’re right? I mean, who told you this; who set you up in this God thing, and what was here before that?”
“I was always here.”
“But how do you know that unless you asked somebody? I mean, you can’t look back to the beginning of your memory because there is no beginning sorta like time, and you just said there’s no beginning to that. All you can do is keep searching further and further back, and not finding a beginning, you got the problem of not knowing why you’re here. Or who made you. And the other part of that as well: not knowing for sure that whatever you’re doing is right I mean, who would have told you that? If there was a somebody, where did this guy come from, and how do you know he was telling the truth? It’s sorta like that infallible thing: saying so doesn’t make it so.”
“You want to rephrase that, Harold?”
“Hey, no offense, God. I’m not always good at how I put things. What I mean is, even you can’t know the beginning if there never was a beginning, and not knowing the beginning, you can’t know how you got here or why. Yeah, I know, I’m playing lawyer again, but what this tells me is I don’t know why I’m here either.”
“You are here because of me.”
“How about why you’re here?”
“I’m here because I want to be.”
“But how did you know you wanted to be here before you were here?”
“I was always here. I revert back to my statement that some questions have no meaningful answer.”
“Well, okay, but aren’t they still legitimate questions? Do we have to just accept things even when, in our minds, they don’t fit so good? If I did that, just accepted it all, I mean, what I feel inside would still be there. I would still wonder why you were here, and I would still think that there would never have been a start where you could have made a conscious decision to be here, and if that didn’t happen, you couldn’t know why you wanted to be here and what the sense of it is and why being here is better than not being here.”
“I am so pleased you decided to share all this with me, Harold.”
“Hey, no problem, God, I just think a lot. Like where is ‘here’ for instance? In the scheme of things, I mean. How can you know the extent of your own boundaries if, by definition, you don’t have any boundaries? How can you check out everything, keep a Godly eye on your realm so to speak, if there’s no such thing as everywhere?”
As you see, I had trouble keeping the conversation light. Plus, I think I pissed my buddy, God, off a bit in pushing it as hard as I did. Still, I sure wish I had the answer to that don’t know what I’d do with it, but I’d sure like to have it. And while I was asking him about how he knew he wanted to exist, I was thinking the same thing about ourselves. How did we know we wanted life before we had it? What were we before we had life? Whatever it was, was it so bad that we wanted to switch to what we have now?