In the beginning, there was disbelief. During the days of innocence, I was once enshrouded with great doubt and uncertainty regarding the existence of God. It seemed that the only things more omnipresent than this mysterious introvert were all the questions I had about Him. “If this moral virtuoso is all-powerful and all-knowing, in charge of everything from the infinite to the absolute, then why is this planet that I’ve sprouted up on such a war-torn apocalyptic hellhole? With all of His everlasting wisdom, why was He unable to see a short 6,000 years into the future? Wouldn’t this divine architect have taken a few measures to prevent this plethora of war, famine, disease, rape and natural disaster?” It felt like every time I turned on the news, I had to relive my disastrous first game of SimCity. “If we were given free will, couldn’t He have at least made us into creatures that aren’t so naturally filled with violence and hate?” As skepticism consumed my soul, I fell into darkness. “Why is He so obsessed with capitalizing pronouns? Are lowercase letters not His creation too?” This perennial questioning bothered the hell out of me, until I reached a point where I really just needed a cigarette to try to alleviate a seemingly endless anxiety. “Why are there so many logical inconsistencies to His nature?” “Why is His planet in such shambles?” “Why is He so bad at His job?”
But on the seventh day, I found a light. As I took a deep breath, I suddenly became filled with a penetrating revelation. “Perhaps the reason that this world has been so neglected lately, that both our species and planet are at the brink of destruction, is that He is just fed up with always being assigned to such a heavy heavenly workload. Why would He suddenly stop going to work, unless…” And then it hit me. God’s gone on strike!
Since the beginning of time, this God character has had to put His blood, sweat and tears into the same old monotonous supernatural job. After what must have felt like forever, He’s grown absolutely sick and tired of all His goddamned divine duties.
But can you blame Him? Maybe, just maybe, we should give this Almighty guy a break—I mean just look at His job description. The Holy Spirit has to sculpt entire universes using only His incorporeal hand; you can’t even begin to comprehend how hard it is to try and mold physical reality when you’re not even physical yourself. He’s like a blind person aspiring to become a famous photographer. For eons this Creator has also had to produce billions of complex beings, each unique in their own way. I often have trouble just trying to produce a bowel movement! Not only did He have to pump out all this stuff, but now He has to remember to keep watch on everything that happens, constantly supervising and surveying the lives of His creatures. Meanwhile, I can hardly remember to fill up my Brita filter. And all this in such an antisocial work environment … it’s really no wonder He’s been putting the “tense” in “existence,” the “moan” in “monotheism,” and a defiant “no” in “all-knowing.”
Who put Him up to such a demanding task? I suppose that’s something no one knows. Up there, breaking His back for eternity, and yet I can’t hold onto a job for more than a month. We really should give Him credit—I mean after all this time at least He’s still showing up. And to such relentless shifts! At least here we have labor laws that prohibit working more than eight hours a day; this guy doesn’t even get a lunch break. Lord! I really hope He gets paid overtime. If I were in His position, I surely would have quit by now. But I doubt that He actually could leave His post, no matter how badly He wanted to.
It seems like everyone is always whimpering about how short life is, dreaming that they’ll go to live on forever. But people truly take death for granted; few people can fathom what a ruthless torture chamber immortality really is. For example, I used to get severe headaches where it would feel as if my brain was trying to frantically escape through my eye sockets. What helped get me through them all was the calming consolation that they were only temporary. Do you know how many migraines the Man Upstairs gets? Infinite migraines. He’s had innumerable headaches and He’s going to have innumerable more. His noggin is perpetually throbbing. The extent of His misery is that He’s done everything before, an infinite amount of times, yet He still has to sit through them all again an infinite more. They say that variety is the spice of life, but after a long enough time, whether it takes 21 years or 20-million years, that spice starts to lose its zest. Excitement comes from experiencing the strange and unknown—what could possibly be worse than to be eternally all-knowing? If immortality really is the pie in the sky, I’ll just take a slice.
This God guy is getting lonely and bored, forever trapped inside his little white celestial attic, with no exit. Day after day He suffers, praying that He could just die and break free from his existential prison. While down here, people yell, “The end is near!” up there, God sits grumbling, “The end is far…” He’s been stuck up in the clouds for God knows how long and is starting to go a bit stir crazy. So what if He’s been doing a poor job superintending our planet—the guy is in serious need of a vacation. For heaven’s sake people, give God a break.
