Depeche Mode
sang, “I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumors; but I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor; and when I die, I expect to find him laughing.” Is that it? Is God just a sadist? Some people stop believing in God because they don’t understand why an omnipotent being would let all that bad stuff happen to people. Others just hate God because He’s so darned cruel.
Robin Williams speculated that God must’ve been stoned and joking around when He created the platypus. If He created us in His image, then it’s just as likely He needs to blow off a little steam sometimes. At least the platypus didn’t hurt anybody.
In Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits, Clara, the clairvoyant matriarch, sees all the suffering around her, but she doesn’t take things too seriously. Why? Because God has a sense of humor, always testing people. It wasn’t that Clara wanted to laugh at people’s misery, it was that God created beauty and suffering all together, and there was always a good side, something to laugh about.
Like, who put that snake in the Garden of Eden, anyway? And who got Noah to cram all those stinky animals and his stinky family on a big old boat so he could blow away the world and start over? Then when He started over, He had to do it with Noah and his child molesting self? And who put Jonah in the belly of a whale just so He could yank him out again? And who helped the Israelites escape from the Pharoah just to get them lost in the desert for hundreds of years?
Personally, I think God is into slapstick.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 at 6:40 pm and is filed under losing my religion, meanderings.
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