The Trouble with God

by Chris Matheson

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Back to the Book of Mormon.

  God despised doubt, he always had. But it was strange. No matter what he said or did to vanquish it, doubt always seemed to return, like a dark and noisome fog rolling back in. Around 500 BC, a man named Sherem had showed up in North America and started to say truly appalling things. “You are worshipping a man who won’t even live for nearly five hundred years,” he said, referring to Jesus. “Or, that is, a man whom you claim will live in five hundred years, because the truth is you can’t possibly know that.” Show me some proof, Sherem had demanded of the Nephites. “Oh, I’ll show you some proof alright, Sherem!” God whispered angrily to himself. Not long afterward, Sherem toppled to the ground and was unable to get up. He was kept alive by a sort of ancient “feeding tube” (BOM, Jac. 7:15) for a few days and in that time he renounced everything wicked he’d said and divulged that he’d been tricked by Satan. (“Knew it,” God thought.) Then Sherem died. “Now that’s the way to deal with doubters!” God crowed to his angels afterward. “Make them fall down, keep them alive through force-feeding for a few days, have them denounce themselves, then kill them. Gorgeous.”

  (One thing that had frankly confused God about the story of Sherem was the ending, however. As Jacob was wrapping up the chapter, he had closed with the word “Adieu.” [BOM, Jac. 7:27] Which had made no sense obviously because, well, this was the year 500 BC in North America, so why the hell was Jacob speaking French? “Sometimes things happen in my books which make them seem laughably fraudulent,” God had noted at the time. “And that is strange because they are NOT laughably fraudulent, obviously, they are absolutely true. But still—’Adieu’?”)

  Sherem’s demise, sadly, hadn’t put an end to doubt. Around 100 BC, a man named Nehor showed up and started saying even worse things than Sherem had. “Don’t be scared,” Nehor told people. “Lift up your heads and rejoice! God created and will redeem all men! In the end we will all live forever!” (BOM, Al. 1:4) “Bullshit,” God had instantly shouted. “That is complete bullshit. Yes, I created all men and yes, they will all live forever, but guess what, Nehor, most of them will live forever in hell. I don’t want humans lifting their heads, I want them keeping their heads down and I definitely want them to stop rejoicing because I hate rejoicing, almost as much as I hate singing and dancing!” “Give Nehor a super-humiliating death,” God then yelled down (BOM, Al. 1:15), and his people did exactly that, impaling Nehor, then letting horses stomp on him and dogs eat him and poop him out—so that had been satisfying.

  But it had turned out that Sherem and Nehor were only previews of someone a lot worse.

  Around a hundred years before Jesus was scheduled to fly down to North America, Satan had done something which God had found utterly shocking: He had created the Antichrist! “What the hell does Satan think he’s doing?” God had roared when he heard about it. “The Antichrist isn’t supposed to appear until the very end of this story, when he’s supposed to be a giant multiheaded dragon-bear of some kind! (NT, Rev. 13:1–2) Why is Satan sending the Antichrist to earth now? And why in the guise of a man?”

  When this Antichrist, Korihor (or “Kori-whore,” as God generally called him), started to preach, well, God found the questions he raised to be old news. “‘Why are you waiting for Jesus to arrive? You can’t possibly know that he’s coming blah blah blah’—same old specious nonsense,” thought God. Korihor’s remarks bugged God, definitely, but what had been genuinely enraging was that they had worked. People had instantly fallen for Korihor’s message and that had led to—what else?—whoring. “Why do humans love to whore so damned much?” God had demanded of a nearby angel, who had shrugged so feebly that God had instantly ripped his face off.

  “Your traditions are foolish,” Korihor had instructed God’s people. (BOM, Al. 30:14–28) “Their actual purpose is to keep you ignorant and frightened. Priests tell you that you are all guilty because of what Adam did. They like it when your heads are down, they don’t want you to look up with courage and grasp your basic human rights.” Then Korihor’s vile message got even worse—much worse, in fact. “Priests want you to be scared of offending this made-up being called ‘God,’ who never has been and never will be either seen or known!” God stared down at Korihor at that moment, heart racing. “Why am I letting him say all these things?” he wondered, on some level genuinely dumbstruck that a moment of such raw power was appearing in this profoundly worthless book. (“You would have to be a monumental ignoramus to believe the Book of Mormon,” had by now crossed God’s mind on numerous occasions.)

  God’s man Alma had quickly let the Antichrist have it with a shot of pure, irrefutable logic: “You deny there is a God, Korihor, but behold, I say unto you that I know there is a God!” he said. (BOM, Al. 30:39) “Excellent argument, Alma!” God cried down excitedly. “Can you prove there is no God?” Alma then demanded of Korihor, and God hooted down derisively, “Can’t prove a negative, can you, ‘whore’?” Then Alma bored in even further. “You believe as you do, Korihor, because you are possessed by Satan, who is using you to destroy mankind.” Now fine, given that Korihor had technically been the “Antichrist,” this wasn’t that deep of an insight on Alma’s part, but God still liked the way Alma had articulated it. He had especially liked hearing Satan described as a “lying spirit,” because when you got right down to it, lying was pretty much all Satan ever did. “I tell the truth and he lies, end of story,” God had noted internally. It had made him think of the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus’ famous line: “Character is destiny.” “Absolutely correct,” God had thought to himself, “Character IS destiny and it always will be.” (As for Heraclitus’ other big idea, that “you can’t step in the same river twice,” that is, that change is constant, well that one was completely false. “I NEVER change,” God often boasted. “That is what makes me so perfect!”)

  Korihor then started to argue with Alma but God had instantly yelled, “I don’t want to hear any more out of this guy!” and struck Korihor dumb. Oh, that had changed his mind, and quick! Now Korihor suddenly believed in God. “I DO believe,” he wrote. “In fact, I always believed, I was merely being tricked by Satan.” (“Knew it,” God thought to himself.) Then came the question that God always found enjoyable: “How shall I kill this asshole?” When God thought of the answer, he literally laughed out loud. “I will have people stomp him to death!” God had cried in delight. “Stomp on this puppety piece of trash until he’s pulp!” Some people called Zoramites did just that and it was glorious to behold! (BOM, Al. 30:59) “The Antichrist got stomped to death,” God chuckles to himself, shifting heavily in his talking throne. “I love that.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  As the centuries rolled by, there had definitely been times when God gazed down on the Nephites and Lamanites battling each other and wished that he’d created a few more tribes. North America had turned out to be a very large continent; it could have easily supported lots of tribes, God now understood. It didn’t actually have to be just two. There had even been moments when God had looked down and thought to himself: “What if I mixed the Nephites and Lamanites up a little bit?” But he had always come to the same quick conclusion about that: “Absolutely not. If they mingle, I will curse their seed.” (BOM, Al. 3:8–9) (“I certainly did have a ‘seed’ obsession in the Book of Mormon, didn’t I?” God later noted. “It was like I couldn’t stop talking about the stuff, ‘seed-seed-seed-seed-seed.’” [BOM, 1N 12:8–20] This had, in fact, caused a momentary concern in God. “What straight man is that preoccupied with sperm?” he had asked himself. But that was an absurd question and God knew it. “I am simply a straight man who is obsessed with sperm and what’s strange about that?”)

  The Nephites, supposedly God’s “good” people, had turned out to not be very good at all; they had, in fact, turned out to be invariably on the brink of turning bad. Every time things had gone well for the Nephites, they had quickly gotten too-full-of-themselves and starte
d doing something that irked God terribly: wearing expensive clothes. (BOM, Al. 1:27, 4:6) “How many times do I have to tell you idiots that I don’t like fancy clothes,” God had scolded his people again and again, but to no avail. (BOM, Al. 7:25) “This is what the Nephites apparently didn’t understand,” God explained to Gabriel at the time. “Wealth was sort of like the fruit of the Tree of Life. I wanted humans to enjoy it, yes, certainly—but I also, and this is the important part, wanted them to be ashamed of enjoying it. In order to make sure they were ashamed, in fact, I had well-dressed people point and laugh at those who enjoyed the fruit! It was like, ‘Enjoy the fruit but also be ashamed of yourselves for enjoying it!’—that was my point.” (BOM, 1N 8:10–28)

  As for the Lamanites, they had been filthy, naked, dark-skinned and frankly polluted creatures who, at moments, had flirted with being good, but really, in the end, just hadn’t been. (BOM, Al. 7:21) The interesting thing about the Lamanites was that God could have made them believe in him any time he wanted to. (BOM, Al. 19:36) “They already believed in a ‘Great Spirit,’ you know, Gabriel?” (BOM, Al. 18:26–28) “All they needed to understand was that that ‘Great Spirit’ was ME.” But God hadn’t “connected the dots” for the Lamanites and here’s why: because he had loved watching them fight the Nephites! God had specifically enjoyed watching the Nephites and Lamanites lop each others arms off. (BOM, Al. 43:44) “The way they ran around with no arms killed me every single time!”

  Still, many of the Lamanites had eventually converted. By 50 BC, well over five hundred years into what had essentially turned out to be an endless and rather pointless “prologue” (“I could have sent people to North America in the year 30 AD and achieved exactly the same results!”), many of the Lamanites had become essentially “Christian.” God found it peculiar that in the distant future none of these proto-Indians (because that’s what the Lamanites had been, obviously; “Redskins” had actually been God’s pet nickname for them) would even remember this part of their history. “You’d think there would be some sort of cultural memory of it,” God had marveled. “Why, it’s almost like it never even happened!”

  Around the year 30 BC things had taken a bizarre turn. A robber named Gadianton (God had tried hard to come up with a good putdown version of the name but “Bad-ianton” had been the best he could do so he had dropped it) showed up and started taking over the whole book. “It was like the Hamburglar was trying to take over McDonaldland!” God much later marveled. (God hated the Hamburglar, by the way; he hated all of the McDonaldland characters, honestly. “Ronald McDonald is literally the least funny clown of all time!” he often thundered. The only McDonaldland character God respected at all was Mayor McCheese, who he thought at least carried himself with a degree of dignity, and also represented law and order.)

  God had been so deeply annoyed by Gadianton that he had done two things, one of which (causing a gigantic earthquake) had felt very much in character, the other of which (talking to people in a wee little voice) had felt completely out of character. (BOM, Hel. 5:27–34) “First of all, I never talk in a mild little voice, I am far too angry for that! I mainly yell because that shows how strong I am! Secondly, this was 570 years into the story, right before Jesus was going to fly down and, you know, whatever, ‘do his thing.’ Why would I choose that moment to fly into some Lamanite’s hearts (I did actually give them heartburn, which was amusing) (BOM, Hel. 5:45) and in a friendly little voice whisper ‘peace, peace’ to them? Honestly, Gabriel, it’s like I was off my game the whole Book of Mormon, like North America rattled me or something, threw me off my game, I don’t know.”

  Weird though: In spite of the presence of the Gadianton robbers (“And what the hell are they robbing anyway?” God had frequently demanded. “Banks? Stagecoaches?” No one had ever seemed to know the answer, they were just “robbers,” that’s all), things had actually, shockingly, gotten to a great place between the Nephites and the Lamanites. (BOM, Hel. 6:8) “That’s amazing,” God had murmured to himself as he watched the two competing tribes interacting peacefully with each other for the very first time. “It’s like they’ve finally figured things out.” This could have been the end of the Book of Mormon, God understood. It would have been a repetitive, dull, and frankly terrible book—but also, ultimately, a book about redemption, unity, and hard-earned brotherhood. The Nephites and the Lamanites, long-time enemies, had at long last made peace with each other. Good people had been revealed to be partially bad, bad people had been revealed to be partially good; they were all a mix and they apparently grasped that and were able to live in harmony with that knowledge. It had all been, in its own way, kind of beautiful, God thought. (Fine, the shoddiest and cheapest version of beauty imaginable, but still, come on.)

  But of course that hadn’t been the end of the book. Not even close. This story had 450 years left to go and things were only going to go in one direction from here: straight down. Jesus was going to take over the story and blow the whole thing up, that was coming, God knew that it was coming, he remembered it now; he remembered the whole damned thing and he dreaded it but he couldn’t seem to stop it. “Should have smashed Joseph Smith’s magic spectacles before it was too late,” God mutters to himself thickly. (BOM, Eth. 3:23–24) “Why did I demand that this story be recorded on metal plates?! (BOM, 1N 9:1) Did I want them all to see my incipient madness and self-loathing?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY–ONE

  By the year 30 AD, the wheels were coming off in North America. The Nephites and Lamanites had gone to war again and basically turned the entire continent into a slaughterhouse. Watching them fight, God had sometimes wondered if they were all going to kill each other off before Jesus even had a chance to fly down and talk to them. God couldn’t help but smile when he thought of Jesus landing in North America and starting to preach before looking around and realizing that the landscape was littered with nothing but skeletons and rotting corpses! Satan had by this time been openly tricking people into being evil; correction, he hadn’t even been tricking them anymore. No, people had known what God wanted and deliberately ignored him. (BOM, 3N 6:16–17) “I made an official announcement that I was entering into the world and they didn’t even believe me?!” God had roared in fury. (BOM, 3N 1:15) Okay, fine, maybe God’s announcement had been slightly muddled. “I am both Father and Son,” he had told another man named Nephi. (“Too many damned Nephis in this book, I can’t keep ‘em apart!”) “I am Father because I am Me and I am Son because of my flesh.” “Did I not explain that adequately?” God had asked a nearby angel immediately afterwards. “‘I am the Father because of me and the Son because of my flesh,’ is there anything confusing about that? There isn’t, right?” When the angel hadn’t respond quickly enough, God violently yanked his wings off and watched him bleed out.

  God had also stopped the sun at this time (BOM 3N 1:15–19) but Satan, that dick, quickly spread the rumor that God hadn’t actually stopped it. (BOM, 3N 1:22) Satan then—unbelievable!—sent yet another Antichrist into the world! (BOM, 3N 7:9–10) “How many damn Antichrists is he going to send in?” God had sputtered. “What is this, the fourth one?” This final Book of Mormon Antichrist, Jacob, had been stunningly feeble, however; all he had ended up doing was running away until Jesus tracked him down and killed him. (BOM, 3N 9:8–9) “Apparently I’m not the only one off his game in the Book of Mormon,” God had thought at the time. “Satan’s work is pretty sub-par too!”

  Then came the moment the entire book had been building toward, Jesus’ climactic appearance in North America. It began with earthquakes so massive that they literally sank cities. The city of Moroni, for instance, collapsed into the ocean, drowning the whole population. (BOM, 3N 8:9) (None of whom, apparently, had been able to swim.) After that, the city of Zarahemla went up in flames and an enormous twister carried away a bunch of shrieking, terrified people. (BOM, 3N 8:16) Also, less horribly perhaps, but still disturbingly from God’s point of view, some extremely nice and level roads were ruined. (BOM
, 3N 8:13) As God watched all of this destruction taking place, one question had filled his mind: “Who exactly is doing all of these things? Because I most certainly am not. (I would never ruin such nice, level roads.”)

  God looked around for the answer to his question—and suddenly stopped short. There, roughly fifty feet away from him, staring down at Earth, stood Jesus. He had obviously just been killed. His robe was filthy; his hands and feet were gruesomely wounded; his face was stained with dirt and sweat and etched with pain.

  “This isn’t my plan,” God had thought to himself. “Jesus isn’t supposed to destroy cities like he’s ‘fast-forwarding’ to Judgment Day! He’s supposed to fly down and tell the North Americans all about ME, that is what he is supposed to do! I am going to march over there and tell him to stop what he’s doing right this minute! He has no right to take over my book like this and I am NOT going to permit it, I am going to shut him down immediately.”

  But before God could do anything, it suddenly grew very dark. (BOM, 3N 8:20–25) It was the kind of darkness that God hadn’t experienced in a very long time, like since the void, really—and he didn’t like it.

  God wasn’t sure how much time had passed at that point—was it three days?—whatever it was, it had felt endless. Then, finally, out of the darkness, he heard Jesus begin to speak. His voice was lower than God had ever heard it before. “Behold Zarahemla,” Jesus said. “I have burned it and its inhabitants with fire. Behold Moroni, which I buried in the earth. Behold Gilgal, which I sunk in the earth.” (BOM, 3N 9:3–6)