You Say Your Last Name Isn't Damnit?

Mr. God
Suite #∞
Everywhere, Universe

Dear God/Allah/Yhwh, etc.:

Do you mind if I call you just ‘God’? Seems easier that way, plus it’s all Judeo-Christian and stuff. Yeah, that’ll do, seeing as I have to go with what I know, and what I know is a lot of stuff I have forgotten about being a Christian. Plus, who spells their name without any vowels at all? Huh? Who does that?

Oh. That’s right. You do. Another example of something that is supposed to be deep, but really just doesn’t make sense at all. Jeez, talk about the name fitting the thing being named.

Writing this letter seems nonsensical too, so I guess were even in some way. After all, I don’t believe in You, do I? I don’t think I do. No, I am confused about whether I do. Believe in You, that is. I believe I am writing to You, I can tell because I am hitting the keys right now. Hitting the keys is one if the indisputable facts of my existence. I can hear the clickclickclicketyclick and I can see the words forming on the screen. So there.

I don’t really know why I am writing to you. It isn’t like you have paid attention to me before whenever I have asked you for some of your time or a blessing. I won’t count praying for you to pleasepleasePLEASE get the prettiest girl at Portsmouth Catholic to dance with me, or letting Ravens win the Super Bowl. (For the record, G-money, she DID dance with me. But seven years between Super Bowls? Not cool, dude). Praying for stuff like that now, well, that seems a bit like masturbation: great fun for the person involved but ultimately it doesn’t produce life.

Life. I don’t quite understand it. And the one entity in this effed up multiverse who I thought could help me figure it out doesn’t return my calls. Yeah, You are a busy dude, I know. Don’t you have assistants for this stuff? You are omniscient and omnipotent and you can’t take FIVE minutes and give me a hollaback? My local DMV looks like a textbook on customer service compared to You. People keep telling me to give you a shout out, good things will happen, but even You have to admit, it ain’t looking great.

“Either He doesn’t exist, or He is unimaginably cruel” I heard that on a television show, one of those one hour hospital dramas, and it has stuck in my head ever since. I love a good joke, I’m sure you do as well. Knowing that I have heard some of the most profound statements ever from something as mundane as television makes me laugh like a hyena. Funny, yes?

So which is it, Mr. God? Non-existent or unimaginably cruel?

There is no shortage of reasons to believe you don’t exist. All I have to do is read the daily news to see all the misery and carnage going on in the world. And no, you don’t get off the hook by blaming it all on the bloody-mindedness of human beings. If You did create us in Your image (which may have been a huge mistake) and You created all things, then You created evil and pain and war and sickness. You created the Ebola virus, for God’s sa--, for PETE’S sake! What a hoot, dying by having your insides liquefy and shooting out of every orifice. Of course, if You don’t exist, then that just falls under the heading of Random Bad Shit That Happens. There are some advantages for not having You exist, I see. No Judgement Day, no being lorded over by the All-Powerful Father, and a huge laugh when certain religious extremists go to Meet Their Maker only to find the house is empty and nobody was ever home. Exquisite irony, don’t you think? Your nonexistence also confers upon me some security. I no longer have to worry about all the times I took Your name in vain. I no longer have to worry about all those bad things I said about you. Friends and family can sit near me without fear of being caught in the blast radius should finally decide to extract the ol’ Divine Vengeance (‘vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord, blah, yadda, blah..’) on me the blasphemer. Good, no penalties for having called you a liar and a hypocrite and a bastard. I guess that takes the sting out of being told You love me; it was never true because You were never true.

Maybe what really bothers me about Your apparent non-existence is all the wasted energy and effort I put forth in praying to You. All that crying I did. The frantic prayers for help as we drove to the hospital the night my daughter died. The down on my knees, pounding the floor in the NICU hallway BEGGING you to please let my son live when his lungs started to fail. All for nought, as You must know. Led me to believe that all the praying I did, when their Mom was so sick and pre-eclampsic, was just a palliative, that it ended up being dumb luck after all. I could have used all the energy I burned to better keep from losing my shit.

I did lose my shit. You know that, assuming You exist and that You care.

Which brings us to unimaginable cruelty. Oh my G--, I mean, wow look at all the reasons to believe this! You give us brains and heart and feelings and then cancer and war and good people dying of horrible causes, and You expect me to believe in Your infinite goodness? As we used to say back in the day, what kinda bullshit is THAT? Yes, here my Son, take this most precious gift of life…PSYCH! (HaHaHaHa). What is the point of all that? I cannot believe, do not want to believe it was simply to teach me a lesson and make me appreciate the good things that do exist in life. I DO NOT NEED A BRANDING IRON ON THE ASS TO MAKE ME REALIZE THAT FLOWERS ARE BEAUTIFUL. Remember those brains and reason you gave me? Well, I am many things but I am not stupid. Allowing my wife to become dangerously ill, forcing my kids into emergency delivery, letting them live an existence of days only to have them die, and then expecting me to believe it was all part of a PLAN? A PLAN? You sick fuck. The Almighty Father. Pffffttt. If my earthly father had treated me the way You have treated me, I don’t think there is a jury in the world that wouldn’t have convicted him of child abuse and mental cruelty.

I know what You are thinking. Well, I can guess, anyway. A short time later, I was graced with the presence of my Wee Lass. A more beautiful child I have never seen, and that proves God loves me. See, He answered my prayers. Right?

Wrong. A little secret You probably already know: when I found out The Spouse was preggers with Wee Lass, my mind went blank. I kept it that way until the day she was born. I avoided praying, asking for anything, as long as I could because I couldn’t have borne the crushing pain if something had gone wrong. I couldn’t have taken having asked for help a second time only to be denied yet again. I had no energy to put faith in an entity that was just going to severely fuck with my head. In that case, I don’t know if I can give you credit for anything. My little way of sticking my finger in your eye for being so abusive.

Here’s a quote from a famous Italian dude, name of Galileo, perhaps you have heard of him:
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” Amen to that, brother! (amen. That’s a little sarcastic humor for You. Thought You’d appreciate that). See, the problem is, I have been trying to use my sense, reason and intellect to understand You. But nothing is making all that much sense, no matter how hard I try.

It reminds me of the miniature train set my brother and I had when we were kids. It was one of those little tiny ones. Cool looking engines about the size of a Snickers bar, tiny tracks, the whole bit. I loved watching that train go around the track. Big Bro and I even staged the occasional train wreck with Matchbox cars. Good times. But my big headed self was mighty curious: just how did something so small do what it did? How did it work? I really wanted to know. So one day, I raided Dad’s tool boxes and got a tiny little screwdriver. I sat down and disassembled that miniature engine, one tiny bit at a time. I was fascinated. The screws and wires and gears were so small and compact. Everything fit together and it all worked. I was delighted to see the mystery revealed!

The real problem came when I went to put it back together: I couldn’t do it. In my wonder I hadn’t thought to keep track of all the screws and wires and how they all fit. I ruined that engine. And as you may know, Dad was pretty pissed. Those engines weren’t cheap, and as the old man kept reminding me “Do you think I shit twenty-dollar bills?”. So I learned a valuable lesson.

Life is like that train set to me. Amazing, intricate, complex, beautiful. But unlike life, the train parts were all there in front of me. There really was no mystery, I just failed to keep track of all the parts. You are a different story. Put You together? I don’t even know how to take You apart! Where do I start, where’s my screwdriver?

Ah, enough. I have taken up too much of Your time already. All I can say is this:

I hate You for what happened to us.
I love You because You are the only place I have to turn.

The problem is I don’t know if I believe in You. What am I supposed to do with that?

I look forward to your response.

Peace,
Me


(So there it is: my 100th post in 100 days. Can you believe it? I can barely get my head around it. I am exhausted. I know the rule of thumb is to do a “100 Things About Me” on this occasion, but anyone who read my post of yesterday will probably understand why I didn’t do it that way. Perhaps later.

I cannot let this pass without mentioning the earthly impetus behind this post. The idea of it has been in my head for a long time, on the order of years. But it took some lovely ladies to kick me in the rear and get the boulder rolling. So I’d like to especially thank Charmaine (for the gentle encouragement), ChurchPunkMom (for making me really think about it) and Heather (for giving my Cúchulainn plenty of reasons to keep getting in the chariot). What can I say? I am a sucker for pretty Irish lasses. Thank you all so much, from the bottom of my heart.)