God’s gift to man

Let’s solve the theodicy question. Right now. Is God ominscient and omnipotent and omnibenevolent? Yes. Proof? Drugs.

There are many times when humans should have been wiped from the face of the Earth because we act all hard-ass and stuck up like the fake sonsofbitches that we are. And when God started to think “Hmm… How can I get rid of these pests? Ruining my beautiful creation! Let’s see… wildfires? Flesh-eating locusts? Oh! I have it! Waterbourne diseases that affect only humans!” He realized that humans are also infinitely dumb in their fake, big-egoed machinations and decided that they might find salvation eventually. But the waters were still contaminated. Not by any act of God, but because humans were shitting in their drinking water like the filthy rodents we are. The irony kills me. God looked down and thought “those poor bastards! I don’t even have to try, they’ll kill themselves if it weren’t for me.”

So God sent a message via D-mail (that’s dream mail, the official carrier of divine messages) to a group of monks in the Briton Isles. These were educated men, mind you. But when they were finally given a set of straightforward instructions with unmistakeable applications devoid of any obscure metaphysical symbolism, they had to confer with countless other educated people. Alchemists, poets, astrologers and politicians (yes, politicians were educated then) were called to the table to try to figure out what this vision meant.

grain powder      water       yeast

pot for cooking     tubes     a nice oak barrel

Mix the grain in water. Cook until a nice thick carmelled liquid is made. Add yeast. Ferment for a night. Boil again in the sealed pot with tubes running out to collect the vapor and condense it to a new container. Store in an oak barrel to taste. Enjoy. -God

What could this mean? It wasn’t until a local peasant piped up and said “It’s for booze!” that the discussion went anywhere. “Shut him up,” a friar sneered. As two militia men led the intruder out, the friar popped a thought bubble. “I got it! It’s for booze!” God not only gave an above-and-beyond solution to the problem, He had the grace to give us a (really tasty, might I add) life-saving drink that would be enjoyed for centuries to come. And after drinking the “water of life” as it had been called, the rodent humans avoided drinking their own shit and were saved from waterbourne illness.

To answer the theodicy question: Yes God is infitely wise and loving. And why is there suffering? Because humans are infinitely dumb and depraved. And the conflict between divine love and human stupidity continues to be the great cosmic battle. Satan is a businessman and a politician. The adversary is not some evil external force, it is very internal and present in humans. We cause ourselves to suffer. Imagine if we rejected God offering us a round. Hellfire and damnation I can assure you. We suffer because we freak out over the dumbest of things and when a real crisis is impending, we ignore it (cause greed is good, man). And perhaps that’s why God put weed here on the planet – to propagate a culture of stoners who try to remind us it just… it isn’t… oh, fuck it. Only agents of Satan would fear the Apocalypse, mind you. Jesus is sitting back with his Che Guevara t-shirt chanting “Down with the system! Down with Babylon! You thought you could get rid of me by nailing me to a cross! HAHAHAHAHA! Just wait till God brings in the revolution!” The whole bloody thing called life gets out of hand. I’ve sat in enough smoke-filled rooms with happy left-wingers with fingers craving the trigger like a nice menthol cigarette ready for revolution to give life something to be worthwhile for and I’ve had nights with classy yuppie hipsters looking for love and excitement and I’ve had days hearing the profound sob-story laments of poorfolk that just want a couple of my fries (you can have my whopper, buddy. that story was amazing) to figure out what the meaning of it all is.

Is God siding with the working-class bohemian? Is He siding with the rich-bitch bohemian? He’s siding with the bohemian who’s had enough of the bullshit and just wants a friggin’ burger, man. The point to life? Ha! Life is not pointy at all, you fools! Life is round. Living is the point. And helping others to find life is the main attraction. We can stay on this roller-coaster economy. Or we can build a new one. Right now. An economy of love, baby. And let it spill over until trickling down is irrelevant. We can take this 500 billion dollar military budget and instead of creating dissarray so that our wealth distribution remains in the ever-erecting phallic shape it is, spend it feeding the poor, building schools, encouraging innovation and mutual profit for all. We can stop moving opportunities arround to benefit the elite and start locally, fostering more choices, smaller corporate structure, and more fair competition. We can give the ownership of every factory to the people who run them because the capitalist models of distribution are ineffective, exploitative and irrelevant. We can start coming over to the ghettos not with a police brigade, but a can of paint and some shingles, maybe have iced tea on the porch with the struggling families and build real community. We can bring the system down without violence and coercion, but with real work, real rewarding work and watch the cities really light up as we work together to come up with energy alternatives and local, regional economies. Wishful thinking? If there is anything that history can teach us, it’s that anything is possible that people put their minds to and mutually agree to work for. Dr. King didn’t pack any heat. Didn’t need to and what did blacks gain? The most monumental legislations that our country passed are the result of people coming together. The most profound cultural transformations happened as a result of people’s willingness to get up and seize it.

Wishful thinking? If you see litter on the ground, pick it up. If someone cuts you off, just chill. Light up a cigarette. Whatever it takes. Don’t try to act better than other people or bring people down. Don’t judge, bring everyone to the table without discrimination. Start volunteering. Do something really productive instead of trying to be the fake, classy, holier-than-thou piece of shit that you would like to be. Wishful thinking? I think we’re all California Dreaming here. When God offers you a round, you better not refuse.