by God
13 They remind me of thy driver’s-ed teachers: for they, too, fear their classes might wander off the path; thus they share filmstrips filled with gruesome images of the destruction of a minivan, and the collapse of lungs; but the classes react with mockery, and heed them not, and drive headlong into telephone poles.
14 Prophets still walk the earth: retail analysts, and sports handicappers, and science-fiction writers, and that secret panel that gets together every summer to determine what colors will be popular two years from now;
15 They are minor prophets: for they can see into the future, a little bit, on matters of slight import, sometimes.
16 But major prophets, too, still walk among ye; preaching their wisdom, berating your wickedness, expounding their dark visions, and bearing names like Jeremiah Q. Ecologist, and Ezekiel R. Paleoclimatologist, and Al Gore.
17 Their visions are absolutely correct; absolutely terrifying; and absolutely call for urgent action.
18 But will ye take it? Absolutely not.
19 What prophets value above all else, above patience, friendship, even deodorant, is the truth; and so they believe that all men are like them in this valuation;
20 That the masses will eventually embrace the words of another great prophet, my son: “the truth shall make you free.”
21 But what they never seem to understand—and what the masses always do—is that my son in that quote was referring only to convenient truths.
22 Inconvenient truths shall not set you free; to the contrary, by their very nature they tend to impose far more burdens and obligations upon thee, and thus, if anything, set you back.
23 On the other hand, convenient truths—like “our current way of life is permanently sustainable”—are much more liberating for the soul.
24That is the inconvenient truth, Al; and here is another one:
25 Thou shouldst have campaigned another two hours in Florida.
CHAPTER 6
1Looking back over the millennia, if there is one question I have failed to answer more than any other, it is, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”
2 Often the question is phrased differently, like, “Why do bad things happen to me?” or “Why can’t bad things happen to him?” or “Are you kidding? My car got stolen while I was ladling chowder at the soup kitchen?!?”; but I understand.
3 Thou clamorest for earthly justice, a palpable correspondence between moral cause and effect; but only seldom is such justice realized.
4 This dilemma is at the heart of the Book of Job, which attempts to prove once and for all that I either work in mysterious ways, or do not work in very obvious ones.
5 The book is set, according to the very first words of its very first verse, “in the land of Uz.”
6 (Whenever I read that, I cannot help but sing a little ditty to myself:
7 “‘Ah ah ah! Ow ow ow! I wish that I never was!’ That’s what I made Job scream in pain in the terrible land of Uz.”)
8 Job was “perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil”; and as a result he had grown prosperous, with a wife, ten children, a big house, “7,000 sheep and goats, 3,000 camels, 1,000 oxen, and 500 female donkeys.”
9 Yea; he had the biggest soul—and, in the best sense, the shittiest soil—in the Near East.
10 A point of clarification: the initial discussion concerning Job was between my angel Michael and me; he was my adversary in an argument, and the Hebrew word for “the adversary” is “Satan.”
11 This has caused much confusion over the millennia, so Michael has expressly asked me to tell thee that he is not the devil; and also, yet again, that words do hurt.
12 But it is true that one day, he and I were debating whether the righteousness of a man like Job sprang from inherent goodness, as I claimed, or enlightened self-interest, as he did.
13 Was his loyalty tied only to the bounty he had always enjoyed, and had come to see as an entitlement? Or was he so devoted that he would remain steadfast even in the face of unimaginable suffering?
14 In other words: was he a Yankees fan or a Cubs fan?
15 Michael asked for permission to afflict him and put him to the test, which I granted: so he slew Job’s animals, destroyed his house, killed all ten of his children, and covered him with boils.
16 Through all this Job did not turn against me; though it is fair to say he was in a bad mood.
17 Then his three friends came to visit, ostensibly to provide comfort; yet they repeatedly told him he must surely be guilty of some sin to have merited his punishment.
18 It is their conversation that occupies most of the Book of Job, and at times seems to transform its central question to, “Why do bad friends happen to good people?”
19 Zophar the Naamathite, especially; what an asshole.
CHAPTER 7
1 And still Job did not turn against me; but now he began to demand of me an explanation; and this is when a fourth friend, Elihu, entered with a different argument:
2 That in seeking to apply his own ethical standard to God, Job was displaying arrogance; for as a mere mortal he could not usurp my moral authority, only humbly renounce any claim to it.
3 That was the right answer; at least, to the extent that it was an answer; which it was not.
4 Elihu’s words were majestic and lyrical, but teleologically amount to little more than six chapters’ worth of “Because Dad said so.”
5 Then finally I appeared “out of the whirlwind” to ask Job a dazzlingly bullying series of rhetorical questions: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?”; “Canst thou send lightnings?”; “Who provideth for the raven his food?”; “Who put the bomp in the bomp-sh-bomp-sh-bomp?”; and many others;
6 Along with some very frightening monologues about the sea monster “Leviathan” and the land monster “Behemoth”; the terrified Job had no idea what I was speaking of, and neither did I; for I made that part up as I went.
7 The point of it all was to follow up Elihu’s “Because Dad said so” with “Dad’s back, and I’ve been out all eternity busting my ass, and the last thing I need when I get home is to hear you complaining about your ten dead kids. Now go kill me an ox!”
8 Which was a) not an answer, and b) worked.
9 In the end, Job is restored to prosperity, and has ten more children; that is truly what happened, though I can tell thee he spent the rest of his life terrified I was only setting him up for some awful sequel: 2 Job: The Resuffering.
10 Yet it is not Job’s tacked-on happy ending, or even its sumptuous poetry, but the central problem it seeks to address— Why do bad things happen to good people?—that has made it resound through the ages with so many;
11 Including me.
12 For from where I sit, there is an even more resonant way to rephrase the question:
13 “What is wrong with me?”
14 It had first come up with Abraham on Mt. Moriah; it arose again (unlike the Egyptians) at the Red Sea; and over the centuries it had continued to linger like unto a cloud on my conscience.
15 Yea, the question never truly went away; for I am the LORD thy God, King of the Universe; where would it go?
16 And so I never told Job, or the anonymous poet whose hand I guided across the parchment to tell his story, the real reason I allowed him to be so horribly afflicted.
17 It was not to test Job, but to test me.
18 I wanted to see if I could watch him endure his agonies without experiencing any of that same unnameable thrill I had derived from watching the binding of Isaac, and the drowning of the Egyptians, and the countless other mass atrocities and tragedies that I had over the centuries allowed—or, sometimes, caused—to happen.
19 Thou mayest say, that I wanted to see if my heart was in the right place.
20 Did I pass the test?
21 For now, I choose to leave that as my unanswered question.
22 Instead I will answer thine: “Why do bad things happen to good people?�
��
23 I am sorry, humanity, that I have not gotten around to answering it sooner; it would have saved you much needless disquiet; for the explanation is not only logical, but I daresay extremely satisfying.
24 Why do bad things happen to good people?
25 To balance out the good things that happen to bad people.
26 Lo; it’s only fair.
SELL-A-THONIANS
(“On America”)
CHAPTER 1
1The subject of who does and does not receive my blessing puts me in mind of a certain nation whose money claims to trust me.
2 And yet every time I hear “God Bless America,” I get angry.
3 It is not that I dislike the tune; to the contrary, it is far more pleasant than America’s national anthem—that shambling melody to which is set the fetishistic tale of the nocturnal survival of a magical pole-cloth.
4 No, my objections to the song and the saying are not artistic, but personal; for Americans asking me for more blessings is like Tahitians asking me for sunnier days.
5 America is amply blessed; copiously blessed; blessed a thousandfold; countless are the blessings with which I have blessed America in its compulsive blessability.
6 Consider but a few of the blessings I, the LORD thy God, King of the Universe—a region of space that, I might note, extends beyond the central portion of North America—have already bestowed upon the U.S. of freakin’ A.
7 I blessed it in its land: the richness and variety of its topography, the fertility of its soil, the temperateness of its climate, the spaciousness of its skies, the purpleness of its mountains, and what I think any observer would concede is the unusually high level of its plains-fruitedness.
8 I blessed it in its indigenous peoples, whose innate love of freedom was evident in their own freedom from heavy artillery, tolerance to alcohol, the concept of property, or resistance to smallpox.
9 I blessed America with the two groups of European settlers who first colonized it: the Puritans, an odd-hatted, fun-loathing people who imbued the new nation’s character with a healthy sense of wrong and wronger;
10 And to the south, the tobacco farmers of Jamestown, who showed the world that the new “land of opportunity” could bestow success on anybody willing to rely on hard work, the free market, and millions of black slaves growing a death-crop.
11 I blessed it with its Founding Fathers; who, though they dressed funny, had wisdom, and leadership, and courage, and foresight, and eloquence, and the ability to compromise;
12 And who are like the current Tea Party, in that they dress funny.
13 I blessed it with Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest leaders in history; he and I were very close; during the Civil War he cried to me many times; usually about Mary, for she was nothing but trouble.
14 I blessed it with millions of immigrants from every nation on earth; mankind in its heaving diversity arrived on its shores, and every ethnicity fought to find its place, and in so doing each one strengthened the character of the nation.
15 Yea, even the Mexicans.
16 I blessed America with abundant labor; and abundant capital; and abundant means of keeping the two at a healthy distance.
17 I blessed it with the Greatest Generation, whose boundless heroism in World War II helped redeem the nation for the band of spineless cowards it sent to fight World War I.
18 I blessed it with a perfect Cold War bad guy: comically evil, and patently wrongheaded; alternately frightening and incompetent; I blessed it with an era where everyone thought of the United States as the good guy; yea, I go way back with America.
19 I blessed it with Martin Luther King Jr., whose love and forbearance toward those who despised him was so great, Jesus once asked if he was his brother from another mother.
20 And most recently I blessed—literally, for his name means “blessed”—America with Barack Hussein Obama; my Messenger; the Deliverer; the Messiah.
21 (Or at least that is the position he held from January 2008 through February 2009.)
CHAPTER 2
1Yea; I am as American as baseball, apple pie, and acting like it’s the only country I give a crap about.
2 I was on board the Mayflower with the Puritans for all 66 days of their voyage; over two months trapped on a boat with Puritans; talk about an ordeal.
3 I was there for the first Thanksgiving; I ensured the turkey was properly herb-crusted and brined; it was a hit; even the Wampanoags were impressed, for they just roasted theirs plain.
4 I was there for the Boston Massacre in 1770, when redcoats killed five civilians; back then that qualified as a Massacre; times change.
5 I was there when Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence.
6 He asked how I felt about the line “all men are created equal . . . they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights.”
7 I said, “Tommy, it’s not a lie if thou believest it.”
8 And I was there in Philadelphia that fateful summer of 1787 for the Constitutional Convention.
9 I remember the long conversations I had with James Madison; one in particular I recall: it was an early July morning, and James had decided to engage in an exertion with a brisk morning stroll along the Delaware.
10 I tagged along in his cerebral cortex.
11 “God,” he said, “we are starting this experiment called America anew, and as a deeply devout Christian I want my nation to follow on the path of salvation through Jesus Christ.
12 How best can I frame our new Constitution so as to achieve this goal?”
13 “Jim,” I said, “the best way to achieve that goal is to state that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; and that no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
14 “God,” he said, “that is counterintuitive.”
15 “Jim,” I said, “if we out-and-out write ‘Congress shall pass only laws in keeping with the precepts of the Judeo-Christian tradition,’ there would be no way to weed out the heretics in our midst; moreover other countries would get all jealous, and the Supreme Court would have nothing to interpret.
16 Which reminds me: from now on I’d like you to keep thy deeply held Christian beliefs to thyself; in fact, I’d appreciate it if thou couldst make numerous statements on the record that seem to prove beyond historical argument that thou art a Deist.
17 I’m telling Jefferson and Franklin the same thing.”
18 “But God,” he said, “I love thee and thy son Jesus Christ so much, and I want all the world to know!”
19 “Jim,” I said, “trust me.
20 The document thou art creating will not only live forever, but one day be recognized as the explicit endorsement of a Christian theocracy that thou and I secretly know it to be.”
21 This made him feel better; and as by then we had reached the steps of the Museum of Art, he joyfully ran up the stairs, lifted his arms in triumph, and shadow-boxed a group of street waifs.
CHAPTER 3
1America, allow me to address thee directly for a moment.
2 When thou sentest a man to the moon and back, it was the most amazing achievement in human history, and Neil Armstrong correctly hailed it as “one giant leap for mankind,” meaning the entire human race.
3 And then he went and put an American flag on it.
4 On the moon.
5 That is so thee!
6 Thou drivest me crazy, America, yet still I bless thee; despite all thy shortcomings I can quit you not; and I continue to not only bless thee but to love thee, and to do so unhealthily; unhelpfully; in a manner that keeps thee from doing the soul-searching needed to become a better nation.
7 Verily, America: I cut thee 50 arkloads of moral slack a week.
8 Why?
9 I shall tell thee.
10 As thou hast seen, I am a divine being who needs recognition.
11 I like it when those whom I grace with my bounty acknowledge it; and do so in a formal, ritualized way that gives it the stamp of authority.
12 And when I removed myself some years ago from earthly affairs, there was one outstanding issue on this front, as it pertained to America, that deeply troubled me.
13 I never forgot about it; so upon my return, when the staff began to brief me on all that had taken place in my absence, and the subject turned to thy nation, I quickly interrupted them.