20 Days of Chill Writing Challenge (2015)
Day 5: “Invisible”
GOD: You fault me for my lack of intervention?
KEVIN: Of course.
GOD: Just a moment ago, you told me that God should let His children live their own lives.
KEVIN: In an ideal universe, even the most aloof and irresponsible deity would take at least some measures to stop his children from hating and killing each other.
GOD: The funny thing about ideals is that they can differ so greatly depending on the dreamer. Sometimes, not even the dreamer himself can agree with his own ideals.
KEVIN: I see where this is going. You think I’m asking for too much. I shouldn’t gripe about the apathy of God if I truly valued humanity’s free will. You breathed life into our frail little bodies, gave us minds of our own, built us a playground, and then set us free. Well you know what? With all due respect, I’m not impressed. I just don’t understand the point of all of this. Life on earth, I mean.
If what they say is true, then there’s a Heaven somewhere. It’s a place where you supposedly feel no pain. Death is nothing to fear in Heaven because you’ve already suffered enough and died for the final time. But what’s the point of pain, and what’s the point of death if we’re all truly destined for eternal bliss? People like to justify our mortality by claiming that God wants to teach us lessons that we’d never learn without first experiencing pain. Others try to convince you that God expects us to prove our worth before we can claim our right to stop the suffering. Still others conjecture that the physical and metaphysical universe is fragmented, and living a perfectly virtuous life will reconnect you to the greater whole. And the theories continue. To tell you the truth, I’ve never heard an explanation that satisfied me.
The more I think about suffering, the more I wonder why I can’t let go of that vision of the ideal universe in which God is both unconditionally loving, and unconditionally just. Why do we accept these assertions without questioning them? What proof do we really have of God’s infallibility? How in the hell are we supposed to be sure that God is more than just a sadist in the sky? The simple truth is we suffer by design. I wish I could understand the wisdom in this kind of creation.
GOD: I have faith that one day you will.
KEVIN: When do you suppose that will be? And since when did you conduct your affairs on the insistence of faith?
GOD: Oh, kid, you really do have a lot more to learn about me, don’t you?
KEVIN: I guess it was too much to expect a straightforward answer. I should have learned by now to just stop asking.
GOD: But where’s the fun in that?
20 Days of Chill Writing Challenge (2015)
Another painful exercise in forced inspiration brought to you by
A ‘lil Hoohaa
Guess it’s your free will to believe or not is what he’s trying to say? 🙂