The Trouble with God

by Chris Matheson

  “Oh my goodness,” God had realized at that moment. “I am a clear. It’s so obvious once you see it! Think about it. Am I ever sick? No! Do I possess any aberrant qualities? No! Do I think clearly at all times? Yes! Do I have superior senses? Yes! Have I ever had diarrhea? No!” (D, P-SI) For a while after this realization, God found himself feeling tremendously happy and relieved. “I am a clear,” he announced over and over. “I am a clear.” (“L. God Clear” actually became God’s nickname for a while at this time; also, “L. Ron Clear-God.”)

  Q: Had it been disconcerting for God to gaze down at Earth and notice that, as years passed, in spite of L. Ron’s masterful diagnosis of what was wrong with mankind—well, all the same bad behavior had continued to occur? Had it, to be specific, bothered God to feel that people were still disrespecting and disbelieving in him—in bigger numbers than ever before, in fact? A: Nope, not at all. “I am obviously not ‘hurt,’ ‘upset,’ or ‘mad’ about any of this,” God had told himself. “That is because I literally do not have bad feelings. I am a clear now. And as a clear, well—I am simply beyond all that.”

  But L. Ron had started to look different to God at this point. “All that bragging he does, all that self-proclaimed scientific certainty,” God now found himself wondering, “does it actually make him sound confident? Or pathetically insecure?” Even L. Ron’s big theory about what ailed mankind—i.e., Daddy kicking Mommy in the stomach and calling her a whore—was that really something that happened to most … or many … or any people other than L. Ron Hubbard? It seemed to be true for him, definitely, and he obviously had serious engrams about it—but was that how human life typically went? Or had L. Ron simply taken his own story and tried to say it was “mankind’s story”? At a certain point, even the concept of “going clear” had started to seem like bullshit to God. “No one is that happy and do you know why? Because I didn’t WANT them to be and excuse me but I created this whole thing, something L. Ron never seems to point out, not that I fucking care!”

  “This whole thing is made-up,” God suddenly blurted one day in the late twentieth century. “And L. Ron Hubbard is a goddamned conman.”

  That was the moment that God later referred to as his “final revelation.” There was only one thing left to do at that point, he’d understood: End the world and give mankind the punishment it had always so richly deserved.

  CHAPTER TWENTY–FOUR

  “Ohhhhh, I am definitely going to enjoy this,” God had thought to himself as he gazed down on the modern world just before ending it. The world was a cesspool, God felt, a global abomination, rampant with pornography, homosexuality, and legal marijuana. (God despised marijuana; he’d tried it once and it made him feel paranoid, irrationally believing that no one liked him.) Also, people had been openly laughing at God by this time, treating him like he was some sort of a joke, even having the nerve to write books that overtly mocked him! When God threatened these writers—“You will suffer for this, blasphemer!”—that kind of thing—they merely made fun of him even more! “They are treating me like I am a comedy character!” God had thought angrily. “But I am NOT a comedy character, I am GOD.” (“Don’t you dare put this in your book,” God even threatened one writer. “Don’t. You. Dare.”)

  Just before he ended the world, God had gone to confer with Jesus. It had been a tense, difficult visit. Father and Son had become completely estranged by this time. They hadn’t spoken to each other in a very long time. God would sometimes see Jesus gliding around heaven, carrying his golden candlestick and wearing his golden girdle (NT, Rev. 1:12–13), and he would call over to him: “Maybe try losing a few pounds instead, son! Also, in case you hadn’t noticed, it never actually gets dark here in heaven so you don’t technically need that candlestick!” But Jesus would always ignore him. “He seems to think that girdle hides his gut, but the fact that it’s golden kind of calls more attention to it, you know what I’m saying?” God had grumbled to Gabriel, who looked back at him so blankly that God vowed never to speak to him again.

  Jesus mainly hung out with a small group of angels at this time, all of whom seemed to love him. (Of course they had, everyone always loved Jesus, ooooohhh, the little golden boy!) Whenever God walked past them, Jesus and his angel-pals invariably fell silent, and because of that, God sometimes ended up blurting out things that he knew sounded defensive or insecure, like one time he said, “I always knew bats weren’t birds, okay?” Another time God jerked a thumb at Jesus and said, “I did tell him he was going to be tortured to death, so don’t let him tell you I didn’t!” It was meant to be a joke but God had said it a little too loudly and it had come out wrong and he had ended up skulking away in angry shame. Sometimes God gave in and demanded of Jesus and the angels, “Are you talking about me?” They always said no and that was infuriating because God knew they had been talking about him and if they hadn’t, well, they should have been!

  Jesus had a sword he shot out of his mouth now and God had very much liked it when Jesus threatened to kill people with it. (NT, Rev. 2:16) To be brutally honest, though, Jesus had always been inept at making threats. “I will kill children with death?” God had snorted. (NT, Rev. 2:23) “That’s the stupidest threat I’ve ever heard, that’s like saying, ‘I will kill you to death.’ ‘I will barf you out?’ (NT, Rev. 3:16) That’s pathetic. ‘I will eat you, then barf you out’ is much scarier. ‘I will barf you out’ is like a threat to yourself.”

  It was right around this time that God created his talking throne. (NT, Rev. 4:5) It had, from the start, been a lovely part of his day, hitting a button and sinking back into the throne and closing his eyes and soaking in the compliments and thinking to himself, “Why is my chair the only one who truly knows how to make me feel better?” “You are perfect, Lord,” the throne would coo. “You look fabulous.” Which was absolutely true, by the way, God had looked fabulous at this time, with marvelous color in his face; he’d basically been red, orange, and yellow. (NT, Rev. 4:3) “Satan would probably say that I look like a clown,” God thought, looking in a mirror, “but you know what? I don’t look like a clown, I look fantastic. Why, I have some of the same colors in my face that are featured in the majestic rainbow that surrounds my throne!” God adored that his throne had a rainbow around it; he also liked that it shot out lightning bolts. When a few of his Wise Men actually had the nerve to say to him, “You are worthy of honor, Lord,” (NT, Rev. 4:11) God responded by saying, “Oh, thank you, Wise Men, that means so much to me,” before lightning-bolting their heads off.

  When God finally ran the numbers on how many “Good Souls” had lived by the time he ended the world, well, it definitely wasn’t pretty. Out of approximately 100 billion human beings who had walked the planet, God’s chosen people amounted to 144,000. (NT, Rev. 7:4) “That means that in order to get one good person, I had to burn through roughly 700,000 bad ones. Those are terrible odds,” God had thought to himself. This bothered him for an hour or two, until he realized that looked at another way, the genuinely surprising thing was that there had been even one good soul in 700,000!

  Judgment Day had ended up being a monumental pain in the rear. Literally every single person who had ever died had to be essentially “re-formed,” usually so that God could instantly send them plunging to hell. The process had turned out to be nauseating; dealing with a bunch of moldy, wormy corpses and skeletons had not been God’s idea of a fun time. And older bodies that had totally disintegrated had been even more difficult. God had had to re-create them from literally nothing. Sometimes he pretty much guessed what they had looked like. That’s why a lot of the men had ended up looking like the actor Lee Marvin, while many of the women had looked like—well, Lee Marvin in a wig. And that hair guarantee God had given Luke, “not a hair on your head will be destroyed”? (NT, Lu. 21:18) He never should have made it. “I spent an obscene amount of time working on their hair!” God later fumed. As for cremated bodies, well, God never even tried with them. They’d mainly been nonbelievers and As
ians anyway, so honestly, who gave a damn?

  To be fair, there had been some great Judgment Day moments too. Seeing a guy who’d been dead for several years suddenly propped up, eyes wide, mouth flapping like a catfish, and yelling, “Burn forever, sinner!” right in his face and sending him plummeting to hell, shrieking in befuddled horror the whole way down? Okay, that never got old. “Bow down and beg me for mercy as much as you want, sinners,” God remembered thinking. “In the end, I will say no and burn you up and listen to you shriek and LOVE IT.”

  Question: Had God’s two “Witnesses” been a mistake? Hard to say. They had started off great, speaking forcefully about God and, when anyone tried to hurt them, breathing fire on them. (NT, Rev. 11:5) (God had also given the two Witnesses control of the weather, as well as the ability to turn water into blood—which all seemed in hindsight perhaps a bit excessive.) (NT, Rev. 11:6) But then, pretty much the moment they had stopped witnessing, Satan’s Beast showed up and beat the Witnesses to death right in the middle of a street and no one even buried them! After that, mankind basically threw a giant celebratory party, like “Hooray, God’s two Witnesses are dead!” (NT, Rev. 11:7–10) “People literally exchanged gifts!” God had seethed. When the two Witnesses arrived in heaven, God had glared coldly at them. “This is how it’s done, fools!” he said loudly, then pointed a mighty finger down at Earth and caused a massive earthquake. (NT, Rev. 11:13) Seven thousand people died in the earthquake, which seemed to terrify everyone else on the planet into briefly believing in God. (Which had been strange, actually, because seven thousand casualties in a world of seven billion people was not that many, like literally “one in a million,” but you know, you take what you can get.)

  Sometimes things had taken place during the “end times” that even in hindsight still didn’t make sense to God. Mary’s appearance in heaven, for instance, still baffled him. To be clear, God had gotten over Mary completely by this time. They both had hurt each other, he had decided. “She didn’t believe in me and I murdered her son, we’re basically even.” So it had been with great surprise—shock, really—that God had looked up one day and seen, backlit by the sun, yet somehow looking like she was walking on the moon, wearing a crown of stars, hugely pregnant and completely naked, none other than Mary! (NT, Rev. 12:1–2) When she started to give birth in front of God, he averted his eyes: “I definitely don’t want to see that.”

  Then, after the baby came out, the situation had gotten even stranger. Satan, in the shape of a seven-headed dragon, loomed over Mary, looking like he wanted to eat the baby. (NT, Rev. 12:4) God snatched the blood-covered infant away from Satan and huddled on his throne with it. (“You’re safe here, Lord,” the throne murmured comfortingly.) The Satan-Dragon stared malevolently down at God, who had known exactly what it was thinking: “Give me that child, God.”

  “Never, Satan!” God cried. “You want to eat it.”

  “I don’t want to eat it, you fool, I want to raise it.”

  “NEVER!”

  “The boy and I are natural allies. Have you still not grasped that?”

  “ENOUGH!”

  “Oh my god, I think Satan just barfed on Mary,” God then gagged. (NT, Rev. 12:15) “This whole thing has become like a nightmare I can’t awaken from!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY–FIVE

  One Judgment Day decision that had clearly been a mistake, God now acknowledged, was spending so much time and energy on the destruction of Babylon. This misguided decision, in fact, had led to the last actual conversation God ever had with his son.

  “What I’m telling you, Father, is that it makes no sense.”

  “Oh really, Jesus, and why is that?”

  “Because Babylon doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “Ohhhhh, it won’t exist soon.”

  “No, Father, it doesn’t exist now. It’s the twenty-first century, alright? Babylon hasn’t existed as a city for well over two thousand years.”

  “… Eh? What’s that?”

  “As I was trying to tell you, Father, after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, one of his generals, Seleucus, used all of the materials in Babylon to build a whole new city called Seleucia. From that point on, ‘Babylon’ ceased to exist.”

  God stared at his son, irked by his impertinence. “Here’s what I don’t think you understand, Jesus. I said very clearly a long time ago that I would punish Babylon and I intend to do it.”

  “But Father …”

  “Babylon is a whore, Jesus. Do you not grasp that?”

  “You’re not listening to me, Father.”

  “No, you’re not listening to me, Jesus. Babylon is a whore who deserves to be stripped, burned, and possibly eaten.” (NT, Rev. 17:16)

  “Father.”

  “There Babylon sits in her fancy clothes sipping from a goblet …” (And at this point God lowered his voice and leaned very close to his son) “… of seed, Jesus.” (NT, Rev. 17:4)

  “All I’m saying is—”

  “Semen, Jesus! There Babylon sits, drinking a goblet of cum, okay?!”

  “My point is simply that Babylon doesn’t exist anymore, Father. Literally does not exist. If you want to hurt mankind so badly—”

  “If, ha, that’s funny.”

  “—then why don’t you destroy New York City or Beijing or Moscow?”

  God gritted his teeth, increasingly annoyed by what he felt was Jesus’ disrespectful tone. “Because I vowed to get my revenge on Babylon, Jesus, that’s why.”

  “But—”

  “Also: New York City and Moscow didn’t even exist when I made that threat, alright?”

  “Fine, then how about destroying Damascus?”

  “Ohhhh, Damascus is gone, Jesus! I destroyed Damascus a long time ago!”

  “That’s not correct, Father.”

  “I said I would destroy it and I did!” (OT, Isa. 17:1)

  “Father, Damascus is still—”

  “Thank you so much for your opinion, Jesus, I can’t tell you how much I value it.”

  Jesus stared at God for a long moment, then turned and started away. God was unable to resist making one last dig at him. “How’s your girdle today, sonny? A little tight?”

  Jesus stopped and looked back and God suddenly felt nervous. “What if he shoots that sword out of his mouth and cuts my head off?” he thought.

  “In case you ever wonder why mankind loves me more than you, Father—”

  “What what?!”

  “It’s because I love them.” And with that, Jesus turned and walked away. And that was the last time he and God ever spoke.

  The irritating thing was that Jesus had turned out to be right about Babylon. It hadn’t existed anymore; it was basically just empty desert with some parking lots, a few old buildings, and a lot of random debris. So that’s what God blew up, shrieking down as he did: “No more dainties for you, whore! No more dainties! NO MORE DAINTIES!!” (NT, Rev. 18:14)

  God later wondered whether this final dustup with Jesus had led him to the rather peculiar decision to marry Lamb-Jesus to the city of Jerusalem. (NT, Rev. 21:9–10) “That was bizarre, right, lion eyeball-monster? I mean, an animal marrying a city, that doesn’t even make sense, does it?” It vaguely reminded God of when Solomon (that disloyal bastard) portrayed God as wanting to have sex with Jerusalem! “Which was absurd, obviously! Why would I want to have sex with a city, it doesn’t make sense, how would you even do it?!” Fine, Jerusalem had had extremely attractive thighs (OT, Song 7:2) and also grape-cluster-like breasts (OT, Song 7:8–9)—or check that, even better, deer-like breasts! (OT, Song 7:4) Still, God didn’t want to have intercourse with Jerusalem, that was a grotesque idea! (When people later described the “Song of Songs” as “wisdom literature,” God shook his head and announced firmly: “I have another word for it: Pornography.”)

  CHAPTER TWENTY–SIX

  After Judgment Day—big surprise—everything basically fell to shit. New Jerusalem (aka “Heaven on Earth”) deteriorated quickly. With
nothing to do other than pray, God’s 144,000 Good Souls almost instantly seemed to get bored. On the rare occasions that God flew down to check up on them, he found hundreds of them curled up in fetal balls—moaning, beating their heads against walls, or trying to cut the “God” tattoo off their foreheads. (They couldn’t do it because God had seen this coming and used permanent ink, haha.)

  Before long, God’s 144,000 Good Souls were cut in half … and then quartered … and within a decade, there were only a few thousand of them remaining (most of whom seemed to spend the majority of their time weeping.) Eventually, God dumped all of them in hell and New Jerusalem was empty once again—or nearly empty, that is. “Wizards and fornicators!” God bellowed angrily. “Why am I still plagued by wizards and fornicators?!” (NT, Rev. 22:15) Also: Why were there so many dogs gathered outside the gates of New Jerusalem? God loathed dogs. “The way they lick their own buttholes is disgusting,” he had snarled on more than one occasion. (God despised cats too. “The way they stare at me is intolerable.”) For a while, the wizards and perverts had giant sex parties in New Jerusalem and basically trashed it. After that, God sent his angels down to chop them all to pieces and bring their bodies back to heaven to feed to his eyeball-monsters.

  As for heaven itself, it lasted a bit longer than New Jerusalem—but not by much. God’s angels, as previously discussed, had quickly gone bad. Having essentially been created as “guard dogs” and with nothing left to guard, they had rapidly grown dangerous. Before long, God was hunting them down and killing them off by the thousands. Gabriel went missing one day and God never saw him again (until he choked him out, that is.) “Good riddance to bad garbage,” God had muttered to himself at the time. As for his supposed “Wise Men,” well, it turned out that pretty much all God liked about them was snapping their scrawny necks like dry branches.