God Collar
Page 4
‘There’s probably no God! But I’m dying! Crushed by a bus that claims there’s no God! I want a refund. A rethink. Wait. Maybe there is a God. Sorry. I’ve led a good life, right? Not exactly Christian as such, but still, in principle, in line with many of the main ideas behind the central message of Christ or Mohammed or … Oh shit, who are the other prophets? I’m sending out an all-purpose prayer, any prophet, deity or supernatural power – HELP! I want to confess. I’m willing to repent. Oh crap. What happens now? Where am I going?’
‘Let’s get him to A&E.’
‘Oh no! I made the wrong choice.’ There is a Hell and its first level can be found at most A&E departments. I haven’t had to use A&E much, but when I attended with my wretched sobbing daughter in one hand and her severed finger in the other I would swear to you that Satan himself had taken the human form of the drunken bastard with blood and sick on him in front of us in the queue. The doctors saved her finger and we were sent home and given all the care we could possibly have wished for thanks to the dedicated and brilliant staff. Gratitude to the NHS and its extraordinary doctors and nurses aside, if I never have to visit A&E again it will be a day too soon.
I don’t want to be run over by the Humanist bus, and yes I do fear that my atheism would probably crumble in an instant if I was sufficiently scared. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to be run over by the Christian Party bus either. Bleeding in the road as the words ‘There definitely is a God’ loom over my head. A Christian Party-sponsored wheel squeezing the life from my limp body. I’d have no choice but to face up to the fact that the ‘definite God’ they’re talking about doesn’t care one scrap for me or my life as he’s just allowed a bus to run me over. We’re all children of God, they say … does that mean an adult’s going to hit me? I’m not having that unless we get to play dress-up and there’s a safe word. No, God doesn’t care about me, even though I’m middle-class. Historically he’s been immensely good to my kind of people. The poor and meek may be blessed but I’m not convinced He actually likes the working classes at all. I have a horrible feeling that if I was run over by the Christian Party bus I might be left there as a few people stood about rolling their eyes and muttering about ‘the will of God’ and deciding whether or not to commence some ‘supervised hitting’.
Regardless of my own personal crises of faithlessness and what is fast becoming a pathological terror of death by bus, I still felt that Ariane’s Humanist proclamation and the religious responses to it made for the most fascinating public discussion of the idea of God that I’ve seen in my lifetime. And all on the side of a bus.
Some Muslims used buses to advertise their faith too – in an altogether more horrifying and less intelligent promotion of religious ideas. Blowing a bus up will get people’s attention but a well-thought-out promotional campaign will know what to do with that attention once it’s been got. The terrible 7th July bombings represented a high-impact, low-concept act of religiously driven murder and all of us noticed it and talked about it. As an advertising campaign for Islam it didn’t really win me over, to be honest. How about you? It was very eye-catching, I’ll give them that. When I saw the images of the destroyed bus and understood that again an act of cowardice and stupidity had been used to promote some misguided notion of service to Allah, I didn’t think to myself: Yes, that looks like the faith for me. In fact, I felt more certain than ever that the path towards the God of Abraham was one I could never walk down. Certainly these were proactive believers, but when a person is malevolent, hubristic or thick, being well motivated and willing to act is almost never a good thing.
A wanton act of murder for God’s sake is no way to market your product. If I wanted to sell Cornish pasties and decided the best way to get you to try my folded pastry purse of meat and swede was to blow up the Eiffel Tower on a busy spring weekend, you’d think I was a very confused and vile person. You’d be right. Would you buy my pasties? No, you’d have a sausage roll and wonder how I’d ever convinced myself of such an astonishingly stupid notion. Did you want to try your hand at Islamic practice after the London, New York or Madrid attacks? No. Pasties, politics or piety – it’s all the same to me. A religiously driven act of violence is nonsensical, and as worthy of consideration and compromise as one motivated by a Cornish snack, i.e., not at all. Destruction and brutality are not dignified by faith or religious observance.
I think it’s important to be clear on this subject. The 7th July Islamic marketing murder campaign was perpetrated by Muslims. Extremists? Certainly. Muddled? Undoubtedly. Devout and sincere Muslims? Yes, they were. Could they have done this if they were Jews or Christians? Yes, and they’d have been better funded, possibly with the backing of a democratic state. But these were Muslims. Some people like to claim ‘they weren’t true Muslims, because in Al Qur’an it says …’ blah blah blah. Most religious books are open to so much interpretation you can claim the construction of a banana, tuna fish and gravel sandwich was inspired by the direct word of God. These killers were Muslim, killing in the name of Allah; that makes them distinct from a great many Muslims for whom violence is abhorrent and anathema to their faith. However, it was their faith and their determination that Islam is the right path for all mankind that galvanized their lust for this inglorious death and the destruction of the infidel. Other religious murderers have included Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs and some seriously confused Buddhists. It’s people who kill people, but some people kill people because their devotion to God makes it OK for them to do so and that motivation is alarmingly commonplace. Islamic terrorists and anyone else willing to kill someone for God are usually poor, badly educated and easily exploited. Religion, and most recently Islam, has proved the most excellent tool for encouraging deeds that most sane people would not consider under any circumstances. Politics can do it, but even the most extreme political views don’t promise an eternity in heaven as a reward for stupidity.
If 7/7 or 9/11 turned anyone on to Islam I’d like to meet that person and talk with them for a very long time. I mean, what aspect of the Islamic promotional relaunch was it that turned you on to the product? Was there a snappy jingle I missed? Or was it just shards of metal and glass that stayed in people’s heads? It made the power-brokers in religious conflict more powerful, each reacting precisely as the other had hoped. Recent terrorist atrocities have made plenty of people richer and allowed the perverse agenda of the very few to be forced upon the rest of us. This works when fear is rife and the powerful few convince us that in order to avoid extremism we must act in increasingly extreme ways. As an exercise in short-sighted stupidity it is similar to covering your body in wasps in order to avoid being stung by a bee. Islamic, jihadist terrorism has made the lives of ordinary believers much, much harder and I feel for many of them. I also wonder why their sincere disgust at atrocity doesn’t convince more of them to abandon if not their faith then at least some of the structures of Islamic social and political life.
If you blow something up because you believe God wants you to, then you’ve been lied to, and arguably it’s not your fault, but it takes a much deeper level of dishonesty and ignorance for anyone to convince themselves that the act will appeal to the wavering believer or convert the apostate back to the faith. My suffering is minor and trivial. I fly very rarely, thank goodness, but not once, as I’ve passed through the scanner for the third time with my shoes and trousers and belt and jacket and glasses and underpants on the Generation Game security conveyor belt, have I thought to myself – you know what, those criminal extremists really had a point, I think it’s time to seriously consider becoming a Muslim. These days I undress entirely at the check-in desk and ride through the bag scanner on my back with my legs held apart singing ‘Star-spangled Banner’. Sure it lacks dignity but in the long run that is offset by the time it saves answering security questions.
Perhaps I’m numb from having been marketed to since before I could speak, perhaps my tastes are too narrow, but I like more of a fun advertiseme
nt. Something memorable because it’s funny or beautiful, less of the murder, martyrdom and mayhem stuff. I don’t drink alcohol any more because I’m no good at it, but out of respect for the creative genius behind the Guinness commercials, if I ever do have a drink it’s likely to be a pint of the black stuff. A cute little desert rat with an odd Hungarian accent, dressed in a smoking jacket and singing ‘Compare the Meerkat dot com’ has appealed to many of us more than we could ever reasonably have expected. It’s annoying, of course, but it’s oddly clever and it seems to have been massively effective. There are more adverts for sites comparing insurance companies than there are for insurance companies. I have a tragic image of a mournful, tweed-clad insurance broker, sitting by a dusty telephone wondering why it doesn’t ring any more, no idea that a stuffed rodent and a tubby carefree opera singer have declared war on him and his kind. I don’t get it, but I now look forward to seeing where they will take the taxidermy-based meerkat roadshow next. I don’t work in advertising, for a million different reasons, but I’m certain that Alexander the Meerkat’s antics would not have worked as well if his scratchy little head had been blown off as he screamed ‘Allahu akbar!’ and detonated a backpack full of hate and explosives in the name of cheaper car insurance. I don’t know which controversy-courting agency put the 7/7 bus and tube campaign together for the Muslims, possibly Saatchi and Saatchi, but for me, not to realize that killing people will damage sales of your product or idea is clearly madness. That said, it doesn’t seem to have harmed Nestlé.
There’s probably no God … That’s the anti-faith promotional campaign slogan. It’s been well received by those who already agreed with it. It tested mainly positive in the Marcus Brigstocke’s belief system market research survey. Do you agree with this statement: ‘There’s probably no God’? Yes, I do. That’s what I think. I think there’s probably no God …
But the truth is – I wish there was.
3
Are you there, God? It’s me, Marcus
I FIND MYSELF, A 38-YEAR-OLD MARRIED MAN WITH TWO children, loving my job, reasonably content most of the time, with periods of ecstasy and spells of gloom, and yet for reasons both explicable and inexplicable I wish I could find a God to believe in. It ought to be simple – decide to believe, stop being a smart-arse, find a church, temple, mosque, woodland ritual, statue of a thing, special book or ritualistic dance, and get stuck in. I know a great number of people far cleverer than me who believe in God without any trouble at all. So why can’t I?
I wish there was a God. I’m sincere when I say that. I am not happy with atheism in and of itself. It doesn’t provide any answers for me. It makes no claim to, it’s not comparable with religion in that way, but all the same I wish it did. When you get past the early flush of excitement about rejecting something as important as God, and then move through the defiance and righteous indignation of living as a non-believer … what then? Well, in my case you start to see the value of faith and the comfort of communal worship. You start to envy the bonds provided by a shared belief in something positive. I wish there was a God and that He knew my address. I’d like to talk to him. When I feel sad or alone, when I’m afraid or anxious for someone I love, I’d like to feel there was some magic, positive force watching over me. Caring for all of us and seeing that it’s all going to be OK. I’m embarrassed by this vulnerability, but not ashamed of it. I am no weaker or needier than most people, it’s just that the intellectual rigour of what I’ve come to believe to be true is of very little comfort to me. I want God to make me believe that the feelings I have, and struggle with, will not last for ever.
I want a God. Just not the God who makes His home in the church, mosque or synagogue. I’d settle for that God perhaps if he could sweeten the believing and worshipping contract with a long and thorough letter of apology to mankind, a clear redraft and consolidation of all the major Abrahamic religious texts and the offer of a single public smiting of Dick Cheney – just by way of a send-off in honour of the violent Old Testament God and as a welcome to His new form as a freshly rehabilitated God of the People who not only likes gays and women but loves show-tunes and listens without trying to fix. I am given to understand that the inability to listen without trying to solve is the single biggest ‘problem’ that many women have with men. My wife told me this and I read it in a book. Luckily, me and some guy mates of mine have come up with a five-part solution to the girls’ ‘problem’ which we think will fix it once and for all and cheer the ladies up no end. Bosh! Job done. Can we fix it? Yes, we can.
One of the pitfalls of being a comedian is that when I say something sincere it is often misunderstood as sarcasm. However, I do genuinely wish there was a God I could believe in. I’ve tried to tell people this.
‘I wish there was a God.’
‘Oh yeah, sure you do, Mr Funny Man.’
I’ve found that the more sincerely I wish for a thing to be understood and the more seriously I say something, the more people assume I’m taking the piss. When I occasionally give my mouth a rest and stop talking, I often notice an expectant look on the faces of people around me as a silence opens up between us. They are waiting for me to undermine what I’ve said with some snide quip or sardonic aside. I don’t know what they’re waiting for, the bloody idiots, that’s SOOO not what I do!
Sometimes it is assumed that I will only mention a thing so that I can hold forth on the topic and bang on about it in a humorously overstated and wilfully pompous rant. OK, there is evidence for this. I do love to get my teeth into a subject I care about. From the safety of BBC Radio 4 I’ve sparred with a great number of adversaries on many topics, ducking and weaving with acerbic jabs, occasionally landing a knock-out punch. Though I seek to express myself through comedy a lot of the time, there are some things I’m deadly serious about, and the desire for a workable and available deity in my life is one of them.
I have built myself a fantastically enjoyable career sitting or standing behind a microphone or in front of a camera flinging brickbats at the world as I see it. I’ve employed sarcasm and overstatement to pleasing effect, I’ve pulled the heavily embroidered blanket of personal offence over my head and from beneath it have bellowed and sneered at those I have judged as guilty of sins as wide-ranging as theft, complacency, murder, hypocrisy, deceit and, perhaps worst of all, being a magician. All of which has been tremendously good fun and I’m immensely grateful for every moment of it. I don’t even regret that it now means that my sincerity is called into question.
I wish there was a God. I wish for that God to exist now and for all time. I wish to be fully conscious of God and more importantly for Him to be fully conscious of me. I wish for God to be powerful, infinitely wise, kind, loving, fair and, when necessary, willing to carry out humiliating and painful corrections on my fellow human beings. Watch your back, Jeremy Kyle, for the judgement of the Lord shall be wrought upon you this day, and the might of the all-powerful Father and the terror of his heavenly host shall be unleashed upon thee, live on ITV at about midday. I think in the form of a DNA test where it is proved that Jeremy Kyle is actually his own father and then expresses massive disappointment at his son’s behaviour and disowns himself.
I have occasionally let my mind wander on to the possibility of having a God who was so firmly in my corner that he wasn’t fair, kind or gentle at all but vicious, vengeful and entirely in agreement with me on everything. I think a lot of people secretly wish for God to be like that. A God devoted totally to them, unabashed in expressing how much he favours them over all others. Plenty of religious Jews believe that is precisely the nature of their relationship with the Lord. If I were in possession of a God like that, it would then be a question of prioritizing the list of who would be divinely exploded into particles of dust first. Murder’s so much more palatable if God does it for you. If you don’t believe me, read the Bible, Qur’an or Torah. Divine homicide is positively celebrated in those books. People who had oh so recently stood blinking in astonishment as m
y God and I swaggered towards them with retribution glowing in our eyes would soon be nothing more than a vague memory of an old annoyance I had dispatched with impunity. Like a long-forgotten mosquito bite. Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, might well be first on the list, then we would work our way through his poisonous legion of columnists. After that it would be on to the offices of the Daily Express. A free and independent press is immensely important and must be preserved at all costs … provided all of its contributors concur with my increasingly fixed worldview. If not, all bets are off, and God and I are kicking arse. Richard Littlejohn, you tiny-minded xenophobe, my mate God wants a word with you.
What I’m describing is not so much a God as a sort of psychopathic attack beast entirely devoted to me and my darkest inclinations. In truth, that’s not the God I wish existed at all. It’s one I imagine only from time to time and feel suitably horrified by. What I really want is the kind of God people describe when they choose to ignore the ugly history of whichever religion they’re a part of. The God who seems to make people kind, generous and serene. I want a personal God who loves us all in a way that goes beyond words. A God who fills us with a sort of reassuring and magical light. A God who is the very expression of love so perfect that to feel all of it at once would be to lose yourself for ever in a place of sublime happiness. Even as I write this I’m aware of the limitations of my use of language in describing what I’d really like from God. I can feel the perimeters of my experience pressing in on my understanding of what might be possible from an infinitely powerful, benign and everlasting, organizing force in the universe. My imagination is limited by half-remembered descriptions of what God is. A bric-a-brac of a God borrowed from other people’s experiences and assembled into something composite and less than satisfactory. It’s all I have for now.