The Last Testament: A Memoir

by God

  8 Thanks, Google, thou pun-hoarding, mirth-killing parade-pisser.)

  9 I have filled the first one out by way of example; the other three I leave to the reader’s sanctimonious imagination.

  10 There are millions of ways to fill in these blanks, but I am confident not one of them will improve upon the poetry or profundity of the original.

  11 However, in the interest of promoting creativity and sales, but mostly sales, I will be sponsoring a contest to determine the winner.

  12 Once thou hast filled in the three selections, tear them out and place them in an envelope addressed to: Godlibs Contest, c/o God, 1600 Holy Avenue, Heaven.

  13 I have no ZIP code, but that matters not; for the next step is to wrap the envelope in a ring of ram fat and burn it on an altar.

  14 I will then reconstitute the submissions and judge each one based on originality, legibility, and savoriness.

  15 One grand-prize winner will receive an autographed copy of this book; eternal admittance to the Kingdom of Heaven; and a $50 gift certificate to Boston Market.

  16 Two runner-up winners will receive their choice of one of the above.

  17 Enter, skeptics; it is not often the LORD encourages thee to burn one of his books.

  PLEADER

  (“On Prayer”)

  CHAPTER 1

  1 I magine being in fourth grade; the bell for homeroom rings, thou takest thy seat, and suddenly a deafening voice booms from the PA system:

  2“Good morning, students. I am the LORD thy God, King of the Universe. Here are the announcements.

  3Starting today, I will no longer be accepting any prayers addressed to me from this public school.

  4The Supreme Court hath ruled such prayers violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause; and their ruling applies to not only thee, but me.

  5Please refrain from addressing or thinking of me at any time while on school grounds.

  6Also, the chess club will be meeting in Mrs. Binder’s classroom during sixth period.

  7Siiiiiixth peeeeeriod!”; followed by thunder and lightning effects, and hundreds of plastic spiders falling from the ceiling.

  8 Ah . . . one of these days I shall go to an elementary school and do that; it will surely be one of that week’s mirthfullest home videos.

  9 I can afford to take the banning of school prayer lightly; it is not as if I need another venue wherein to hear thy supplications.

  10 For thine is the Golden Age of Prayer; never before have I received so many pleas, from so many people, for so many reasons, accompanied by so many helpful suggestions.

  11 Do I answer them? I shall get to that.

  12 But first, let me provide an overview of prayer, for its very definition is a matter of debate; it is a vague concept whose domain overlaps with those of ritual, and meditation, and panhandling.

  13 My own definition, is that prayer is any consciously thought-out statement—spoken or silent—that is addressed to me, and underpinned by the fundamental belief that I take requests.

  14 I know the many functions prayer fulfills for thee: catharsis, comfort, enlightenment; not to mention that praying has always been, and will always be, the perfect thing to do when there is nothing else to be done.

  15 But to be frank, for me prayer provideth neither catharsis, nor comfort, nor enlightenment.

  16 For me, prayer is like unto a suggestion box that receives 200,000 suggestions a second.

  17 Or an emergency services switchboard manned by one operator who gets 12 million calls a minute.

  18 Or a sheaf of “Did you enjoy your dining experience today?” tear cards filled out hourly by 700 million Wendy’s customers.

  19 Or a large chariot bearing a rearward-facing sign that reads, “How is my driving? Dial 1-800-JEHOVAH”; only the chariot has broken down, and cannot be moved until the next day, and blocketh the path of 16 billion other chariots; each of whose drivers have a cell phone, and nothing better to do.

  20 As for what these prayers sound like en masse, from where I am sitting I would describe the noise as not unlike that of the cosmic background radiation astrophysicists have detected emanating from every corner of the universe.

  21 Alas, sound is the only perception needed to apprehend a prayer these days; a change from Old Testament days, when group prayer was also accompanied by the sight of slaughter, and the smell of burning fat, and the taste of sizzling calves, and every desperate plea was a feast for the senses.

  22 I do not mean to sound arch; I do not regard the human phenomenon of prayer cynically; I am merely trying to describe what it feels like to be incessantly nagged, pestered, and reminded of things I already knew.

  23 (That is a puzzling and mirthful quirk of mankind’s prayers: the way they are used to notify me of recent developments in the lives of thou and thine.

  24 It is one thing to ask, “Please take care of Bobby in his time of need”; that is an expression of a well-meaning wish.

  25 But it is another entirely to say, “Please take care of Bobby in his time of need; he just broke his leg skiing, and the karate meet is in three weeks and he’s been training so hard ...”

  26 Heed me: I am the LORD thy God, King of the Universe: I know Bobby broke his leg skiing, and I know about the damned karate meet.)

  CHAPTER 2

  1So: do I answer thy prayers?

  2 I shall address that soon enough; but first let me mention a few that I hear frequently.

  3 The most popular prayer by far is the Hail Mary, which I have now heard over 3.2 trillion times.

  4 Not surprisingly, 482.5 billion of these were offered as penitence for masturbation.

  5 More surprisingly, 4.5 million of these devolved halfway through into new acts of masturbation centered on the Virgin Mary.

  6 The Hail Mary is a good prayer; a solid prayer; a safe prayer; and asking Mary to ask me for help rather than asking directly is a smart move.

  7 But I am less fond of the LORD’s Prayer, which is a flat-out cut-and-paste of Matthew 6:9–13.

  8 It works very well coming from Jesus’s lips during the Sermon on the Mount, but from mortals it comes off pushy.

  9 “Give us this day our daily bread”? “Forgive us our debts”? “Lead us not into temptation”? “Deliver us from evil”?

  10 Dost thou know me as one who responds well to threats?

  11 (Still, at least it is not as presumptuous as the American custom of ending every swearing-in ceremony, from the president on down, with “So help me God.”

  12 Not “Let me be worthy of thy help, God”; not “So please help me, God”; no, my immediate assistance is demanded.

  13 Every day billions of people humbly petition my aid, but I am supposed to put them all on the back burner because it is the Omaha city treasurer’s first day on the job and she needs me there on standby?)

  14 Judaism’s most famous prayer is Sh’ma Yisrael: “Hear, O Israel; the LORD our God, the LORD is one.”

  15 Not the most specific prayer I’ve ever heard.

  16 It is the same with Muslims; their most common prayer is, “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is his messenger”; which is not even a request, but a tautology followed by a fact.

  17 They may as well get on their knees and chant, “There is no country in Australia but Australia, and Canberra is its capital.”

  18 By far my favorite of the templates is the Serenity Prayer.

  19 The serenity to accept what cannot be changed; the courage to change what can; and the wisdom to know the difference—these are wise life principles that should be known and followed by everyone, not just those too gutless to handle their liquor.

  20 As for my least favorite, that would be the old childhood lullaby: “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray thee, LORD my soul to keep. And if I die before I wake, I pray thee, LORD, my soul to take.”

  21 Now, I am no softie; I am not one who “loves kids”; my record with young people will not win me many Godfather of the Year awards.

>   22 But even I consider it bizarre, that the last words on children’s lips before they go to sleep would address the prospect of their own premature death.

  23 They are children.

  24 They should be asking me for ponies.

  25 In fact, if there are any children reading this, I make unto them this deal: the next one of you who asks for a pony instead of for me to take his or her soul,

  26 Gets the pony.

  CHAPTER 3

  1So, I know what thou art thinking: Do I answer thy prayers?

  2 I will get to that.

  3 But first, some statistics; for I am a bit of a sabermetrician when it comes to praying;

  4 And though statistics may seem a coldly numerical way to analyze the desires of the human soul, they can offer a broader, more “fan’s-eye” view of the activity than one gets when one is thyself “at the plate” of abject supplication.

  5 For example: prior to 2001, the year with the highest daily prayer-per-believer (PPB) rate was 1349, which finished at 2.458: this great harvest being the sweet fruits of the Black Death.

  6 Yet this figure has been exceeded in no fewer than six of the past ten years, reaching an all-time high in 2010 of 2.475 PPB; with that number rising still further to 2.488 on Sundays, and 2.501 on Sundays during football season.

  7 Among monotheists, the highest PPB can be found among Muslims, with 5.000; that number has held steady for some time.

  8 Among Christians, the highest PPB (2.871) can be found among Catholics, the lowest (0.921) among Methodists; unless one includes Unitarians (0.573), which I do not, and neither does Jesus.

  9 The overall average among Jews is a very efficient 0.856; indeed, among reform Jews that number drops to an astounding −0.003;

  10 Which means I am actually very slightly more likely to ask them for something.

  11 Daily PCE (prayer caloric expenditure) levels also vary widely, from 145.2 among Southern Baptists to 2.5 within the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod.

  12 (Tallying a respectable 87.4 PCE: Hasidic Jews.

  13 Who knew? All that shuckling really pays dividends around the waist and thighs!)

  14 The average VMG (value of material goods) for 2010 was $843.25; almost identical to the figure from a millennium ago, when adjusted for inflation.

  15 Here is a number that may surprise thee: only 45.2 percent of the families that pray together actually stay together.

  16 This compares to a 44.8 percent staying-together rate among non-praying families; a difference that though slight, is, on a scale as massive as this, statistically significant;

  17 But still pretty slight.

  18 Yea, I could ramble on and on about prayer stats, but most likely even this brief discussion has already grown tedious and a little too “inside baseball” for most of you.

  19 If anyone wants to learn more, send me $4.99 and I will give thee a 10-pack of prayer cards.

  20 Each card has an exciting action picture of the prayer in front, and on the back, statistics for every year they’ve been praying; plus, all packs come with a string of chewable rosary beadgum.

  21 Collect all five billion!

  CHAPTER 4

  1 So: do I answer thy prayers?

  2 I will now answer that question, in two ways.

  3 The first way is by assuring my flock that every single prayer of thine is processed.

  4 As an example: let us say that tonight thou wert to offer up a prayer; for argument’s sake, let us call it, “O LORD we just got this puppy three months ago, and the kids love her, and it’s going to break their heart if it dies from this stomach thing the vet’s saying she has now, so please give her a break and let her poop it out or something. Amen.”

  5 Within a trillionth of a second of its utterance, that prayer—not only its words, but its emotions, context, and complete spiritual gestalt—is sitting in the inbox of one of my hard-working undercherubs in the Department of Entreaty.

  6 Then, within five to seven business days, it is fed into a device whose fathomless complexity would dwarf mankind’s power to comprehend it.

  7 To conceive of its like in thy three-dimensional universe is impossible; so I will simply call it the celestial equivalent, of what thy limited imaginations might most accurately envision, as a Dell Inspiron 580 Desktop.

  8 (I cannot stress enough, that the actual machine looks nothing like a Dell Inspiron 580 Desktop; indeed it is invisible and transmaterial.

  9 As I said, my analogy is merely a rhetorical device, made so that thou mayest fully grasp the salient point:

  10 Our new iPads haven’t arrived yet.)

  11 This machine then quantitatively analyzes the prayer using no less than 143 different metrics; not just the obvious ones, like PPB, PCE, and VMG, but others, such as selflessness, eloquence, and ROOI (recognition of own insignificance).

  12 The results are then plotted on a 143-dimensional chart; and each of these charts is folded into millions of other composite charts profiling specific demographics: evangelicals, for instance, or male thirtysomething suburban beseechers, or those who refused to give money to homeless people within the past six months.

  13 And this ever-fluctuating matrix of data is then broken down by a team of quantitative angelysts; who prepare a daily report based on their findings, seeking therein patterns, and trends, and numerical significance; and this report then, and only then, finds its way to my desk;

  14 Where I immediately get around to skimming it over.

  CHAPTER 5

  1Line; but do I answer thy prayers?

  2 Let me address that question the Jesus way: with a parable.

  3 Every year, the president of the United States receiveth over ten million letters.

  4 It is the full-time vocation of a small army of decreasingly idealistic apparatchiks to read and reply to these letters.

  5 Some of these replies are to the effect of, “The president appreciates thy support.”

  6 And some are to the effect of, “The president appreciates thy concern.”

  7 And some are forwarded to the Secret Service for further investigation.

  8 But each is duly answered on White House letterhead; and though each recipient knows in his heart his epistle never made it within eight security-clearance levels of the president, he is still somehow grateful to hear even a distant echo of his childhood belief that those in charge heed the will of the people.

  9 But once in a great while, a letter will come across a flunky’s desk that happens to fold in perfectly with a policy item the president was already seeking to advance.

  10 And through the usual bureaucratic mixture of accident and self-interest, that one letter will make its way to the Oval Office.

  11 The letter is genuine, but reads as though custom-written by the president to fulfill his purpose; for so numerous is the correspondence he receives that it is inevitable he receives one such letter; usually dozens, but he only needs the one.

  12 And so phone calls are made; flights booked; hotel reservations secured;

  13 And now it is the night of the State of the Union address; the president is speaking; he is laying out a broad vision of something; the language is grand but general;

  14 Until, at a certain critical moment in the speech, he changes tone.

  15 “This week, I received a letter from Mrs. Stephanie Henderson of Enid, Oklahoma.

  16 She is a hard-working American; a single mom who pays her taxes and plays by the rules; and she devotes her life to her three kids.

  17 Last month, Stephanie was laid off from her job at the lumber mill.

  18 Now, the good news is, a new mill is opening across town on June 1, and they’re hiring.

  19 The bad news is, Stephanie’s unemployment benefits run out at the end of April.

  20 Stephanie wrote, and I quote: ‘Mr. President, I can’t tell you how much passage of the Omnibus Extend Unemployment Benefits Through the Month of May Act would mean for my three kids.

  21 It
would make all the difference between them living out the American dream, and drawing straws to see which one gets eaten by the other two.’

  22 Well, Stephanie is here with us tonight, and Steph, I am pleased to say that tomorrow, because of you, Congress is going to pass the OEUBTMMA—or as I like to call it, ‘The Stephanie Henderson Act’!

  23 Stand up, Stephanie!”

  24 And Stephanie bashfully stands, and waves, and basks in the applause of the nation’s lawmakers; for her it is, indeed, a dream come true; more than she ever imagined would happen that awful day two months ago when she was laid off, got drunk, went home, watched Ellen, screamed the kids down for dinner, wrote her first letter in over 15 years while ducking airborne Spaghetti-O’s, and drove drunk to the mailbox.