Quicksand (48 page)

Me:

I got dicks flying at me from all angles! This shit's funny to you?

Voice:

My turn to ask a question. What do you
actually know
about the ineffable?

Me:

Only this: if you had a peek at its profile you would not hook up with your own soul on match.com.

Voice:

Let me ask you, why is an agnostic praying? Why now? You're like those people whose relationships with God begin and end on airplanes during severe turbulence. This is a divine booty call, isn't it?

Me:

Yeah, all right. I'll cop to that. I'm not actually a believer.

Voice:

The thing is, I don't blame you. Why should you be? Imagine, if you will, a person with no nerves at all—he cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or feel—
now
who wants to meet the Holy Spirit?

Me:

No one.

Voice:

Right. What do we know about the risen Jesus other than his head shot? Isn't the resurrection just three days he never got back? And
I never understood why people are expected to cry for Christ's suffering in particular when one hundred others were crucified
the exact same day
, a
thousand
the same week. His suffering was pretty standard fare for that time and place.

Me:

Or how we are expected to believe in God at all when there's so much evil in the world.

Voice:

Haven't you ever heard of the bystander phenomenon?

Me:

You mean, during the atrocities God's up there, expecting some other deity to intervene?

Voice:

Maybe.

Me:

I know history is littered with stories of people pissing on corpses. I've always found it curious that nobody ever shits on a corpse, not even in wartime,
not even in Auschwitz.

Voice:

That's true. But what's your point?

Me:

I don't know. I'm just trying to find a way to say: Where the fuck has God been all this time?

Voice:

Perhaps the sad answer for God's absence from human affairs is that he's been denied visitation rights.

Me:

What are you saying? That God lost us in a custody battle with the devil?

Voice:

Aldo, for those who love God, that love is enough.

Me:

Yet any god who commands love doesn't understand the first thing about love.

Voice:

Touché.

Me:

In any case, love for God is just Stockholm syndrome.

Voice:

God's silence is an injured silence.

Me:

Injured by what?

Voice:

Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, dementia are God's ways of acting out against mankind tripling the median mortality age and so rudely delaying their reunion with him. He's starting to think you're avoiding him!

Me:

Look at Gary sleeping there. Why is it that whenever God or his angels talk to someone they are incapable of being overheard by a third party or corroborating ear-witness?

Voice:

Is
that
really what you want to know? What else?

Me:

Off the top of my head? Does God allow mass murder because it's like carpooling to heaven? In the afterlife do eunuchs get their balls back? Why didn't he send down a daughter? Or twins? Admittedly the creation of the universe was terrific, but why no encore? Is God's mobile ringtone the braying of an ass? And if he felt it necessary to point out right there in Leviticus
You shall not place a stumbling block before the blind,
what kind of cunts were running around Jerusalem back then? Are souls like fingerprints to identify the dead for processing? When it comes time for the dead to rise from their graves after Armageddon, what happens to all the cremated ash? Will it wriggle in jars and stir in flower beds and fish stomachs? It's understandable that those Axial Age miracles drained him of power, but that was over two thousand years ago; how long does it take the Lord to charge back up? If His son does come back, is He just going to raise the dead like last time? Does God so fundamentally misperceive human desire that he won't turn back the clock instead? Doesn't He know
that's
the miracle we've all been waiting for? To make Lazarus young again? And why the fuck didn't He simply make the inflictor of pain the equal recipient of its sensation? It's such an obvious idea, I'm almost embarrassed for having to suggest it!

Voice:

You still want to talk about an absent father. A deadbeat dad.

Me:

Yeah! Aren't we just seven billion children in a single-parent household? He's left Mother Earth holding the bag.

Voice:

Let me ask
you
another question.

Me:

Shoot.

Voice:

What if I was to tell you that upon death God lets you ride him bareback, judges you Best in Show, waits on you hand and foot as reparation for the scandal of consciousness; He swaddles you in his endless beard, pulls out the complete set of recordings of all your interior monologues, that you have to listen to, but if you've given a lot to charity, He'll make you a compilation.

Me:

I'd say that sounds awesome. Is that true?

Voice:

The question is not,
Is that true
, Aldo. Nor,
Do you believe it to be true
, but
Can you believe it to be true
?

Me:

Gobbledegook. What can I concretely tell the people of earth?

Voice:

Children, if an angel wants to take you under his wing, run to the nearest adult.

Me:

What else?

Voice:

I'll give you a clue.

Me:

To what?

Voice:

To the answers you are truly seeking. Tell me, what is consciousness for?

Me:

To become aware.

Voice:

Of what?

Me:

I don't know.

Voice:

This is the human condition in one knock-knock joke:
Knock knock, it's me, Death. Who's there?

Me:

I get it.

Voice:

So consciousness gives us awareness of what?

Me:

That we are mortal.

Voice:

Which leads us to?

Me:

Seek.

Voice:

Seek what?

Me:

Meaning. God.

Voice:

You're always asking, Where is He? Where is He? Why aren't you asking,
When
is He?

Me:

When is he in Time?

Voice:

Which is relative. Which is circular. Which loops. Am I right?

Me:

You don't half-ask hard questions.

Voice:

I'm not
asking
questions. I'm giving answers.

Me:

That I don't understand.

Voice:

You want an easier clue?

Me:

Please.

Voice:

Christian mystics report seeing Jesus, Muslims see Mohammed, Buddhists see the Buddha. What does this tell you?

Me:

That we have the power to cast our own mystic visions.

Voice:

Precisely. And?

Me:

We're getting sick of waiting.

Voice:

Waiting? Who are you
waiting
for? Who are
you
waiting for? Jesus?

Me:

What's so funny?

Voice:

Imagine on the first day of the Second Coming the priceless look on His face re: biodiversity! Imagine Him saying “Do unto others as you wish to be done unto you” to the subs in the S & M crowd! Imagine your crestfallen Lord rejected for His body mass index not being like it is in the paintings! Imagine a billion people tweeting their ultimatum: “An eye for an eye OR turn the other cheek. You can't have it both ways!”

Me:

I've always felt we learn more about the cosmos from Buddha's death by poisoned mushrooms than from Christ's ostentatious showboating on the cross. Although nobody ever talks about the fact that because the Buddha abandoned his family, his greatest unsung legacy is actually the use of the philosophy of detachment to avoid child-support payments.

Voice:

Let's face it, Aldo—as soon as the meek discover they are to inherit the earth they turn nasty. Happens every time.

Me:

When you're right, you're right.

Voice:

Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism are patently insufficient tools for answering twenty-first-century ethical questions, like: Is sexual intercourse with one's own clone masturbation or incest?

Me:

Ooh. I know this one. Is it incest?

Voice:

Your sclerotic churches, synagogues, and mosques have no idea, that's for damn sure.

Me:

This
is the pilgrim's frustrating lack of progress.

Voice:

You look at your own life, Aldo, at your suffering, and what really pisses you off is there's no one you can drag to The Hague for this ultraspecific crime against humanity.

Me:

You want to hear the truth? If there is a God, I'm just so sick to my stomach sick of Him. Who even
wants
a deity who'll crash a plane for a juicy haul of souls?

Voice:

Is that what He's doing?

Me:

And frankly, someone whose face you can't look into might as well be faceless.

Voice:

Maybe He is. And maybe He's sensitive about it.

Me:

And who even wants to be in a relationship with someone who freaks out when you say His name?

Voice:

I can see how that might be a dealbreaker.

Me:

And all this here, all my failures, my pain, my loss. Now it's also personal.

Voice:

How so?

Me:

Smite me once, shame on You. Smite me twice, shame on me.

Voice:

So what do you intend to—

Me:

Smite me a third time, and I will fucking
replace
You.

Voice:

There you go.

Me:

What?

Voice:

You're almost there.

Me:

What are you saying?

Voice:

What are
you
saying? You're so close!

Me:

To what?

Voice:

Think.

Me:

The secret shortcut to God is to make him yourself.

Voice:

How many of the born-again are in breach?

Me:

I don't know those statistics.

Voice:

The Calvinists say, let God in! What do you say?

Me:

Let God out?

Voice:

Precisely! What you want in place of universal justice is the Messianic experience without—

Me:

The mess?

Voice:

You weren't praying, Aldo. You were making someone to pray to.

Me:

I was?

Voice:

Did you know that over thirty-five percent of all religious people are “displeased” or “extremely displeased” with their deity?

Me:

Is that right?

Voice:

And thirty percent of those with no religious affiliation whatsoever are tired of atheism and ready to switch brands but feel there is no viable alternative.

Me:

So there's a market.

Voice:

Hell, yes.

Me:

Is there a hell?

Voice:

Forget that medieval crap. Don't get bogged down in inherited concepts. You need to be creative. What does your old teacher Morrell write?

Me:

Morrell? You know Morrell?

Voice:

Imaginations require limits just as creativity requires boredom.

Me:

He also said that
you achieve your goal only when you forget that you can't.

Voice:

No one thought an alien god would take off. Nobody thought a known con man like Joseph Smith could sell Mormonism. They drummed up some bullshit cosmology. They faked some visitation from God. They offered suckers water glimpses of salvation for monthly credit card payments. You, on the other hand, have the real thing.

Me:

You really think this is viable?

Voice:

God still has star power. Let me ask you, who is always crapping on about creating a better world and leaving a better planet for their children?

Me:

Uh, every adult on earth.

Voice:

Right. That's your fucking market. Don't you think they should want to leave a better God too?

Me:

You're right! But . . .

Voice:

But what?

Me:

This is a big project. Where do I even begin?

Voice:

Whether the gates of heaven open inward or outward is up to you.

Me:

Meaning . . . ?

Voice:

Let me start you off. How about a process of taking back regretted prayers—a forty-eight-hour cooling-off period, if you like.

Me:

I see where you're going with this. Less punitive, more contrite, more inclusive, less withholding. A God who clearly understands clinical frustration, obviously; with thunder, lightning, earthquakes, tsunamis being outward displays of His thwarting His own desires. And we don't have to let that Peeping Yahweh creep us out!

Voice:

Nice idea. You can opt out of omniscience by simply adjusting God's privacy settings!

Me:

Online confessional booths. Home baptism kits. I'll need a Thou Shalt Not Kill, a break-out commandment. One that crosses over demographics. Maybe for that we'll engage the female brainiacs currently hard at work on exegeses of male text messages and set them the task of creating a multistoried celestial realm people can believe in. But hang on. Will people believe in what they know is created? Isn't that the flaw in this idea?

Voice:

People believe in aliens, astrology, reincarnation, ghosts, homeopathy, cold fusion, karma, fate. They believe you shouldn't wake sleepwalkers, that chewing gum takes seven years to digest, that romance and passion will outlive a decade! People are nuts! Cognitive dissonance is a fundamental part of consciousness, the seed just has to be planted. It doesn't even matter if people know you've planted the seed yourself. Confirmation bias will do the rest. You don't need to worry about that part.

Me:

OK. So we will not persecute the nonbeliever, but make him feel bad about his life choices.

Voice:

Just don't make your God like the reproduction-obsessed irascible legislator of the Old Testament.

Me:

How about when you die, God does it personally . . . ? The midnight knock at the door and He looks you in the eye. He should be a good communicator. He won't send eerie blind seers talking out of slits in their throats, or speak through the mangled intentions of a summer storm.

Voice:

You should market a creator that speaks to people's actual day-to-day experiences.

Me:

The hilarious deity who gave me a big head that won't accommodate most hats. A god who loves it when someone diets their whole lives. A god who longs for the day a man finds that he's inferior in the precise area he thought he was superior.

Voice:

That's right. You don't have to avoid making explicit references to His indiscriminate and no-nonsense cruelty with this wised-up street-smart generation.

Me:

Our God clearly enjoys sprinkling over the earth the half-dozen megasuccesses needed to mentally torture the billions who are not.

Voice:

Now you're talking.

Me:

And those arriving in heaven will have post-traumatic stress disorder from the unbearable nightmare of dying and thereafter will live among a bunch of shell-shocked layabouts who all know each other and thus bore you senseless with their abominable private jokes for all eternity. And the only people who will be rewarded with the highest honors the afterlife has to offer are the pedophiles who never touched a child, for they are the real unsung heroes of our world.

Voice:

You might want to rethink that one.

Me:

It's just an example.

Voice:

The main thing is you can put God back in circulation.

Me:

But how exactly?

Voice:

You've heard of Moore's law.

Me:

The rate at which we cannot live without the things that didn't exist before yesterday?

Voice:

Not exactly. We'll call that Aldo's law. But . . . close enough. My point is. Forget the old bible. God is dead on the page there. He can stand a little remodeling, a little imaginative effort, and it could be interactive. You don't have to do it alone.

Me:

Meaning?

Voice:

Groupthink. The wisdom of crowds. Your market is a bunch of people who have fallen head over heels in love with the inorganic—their phones, of all things, for heaven's sake! The most embarrassing turn of events in human history. Get
them
, the subscribers, to
be
the contributors and they will
become
the believers.

Me:

And in the process, make him go viral.

Voice:

And eventually, with the singularity and Artificial Intelligence technology, who do you think will come online just when we need Him?

Me:

I see! God too has to evolve, and we ourselves will be the agency of that evolution.

Voice:

Now you understand the second purpose of consciousness.

Me:

The creator has given us the means to create his own prototype. That will evolve and become a better God.

Voice:

And so?

Me:

So there will be no divine will until we will the divine. God can be regifted. He will be the fruit of our labors and dwell where we tell him to dwell! We'll stumble across Him by using His greatest gift—the imagination. This both makes no sense and is the exact idea I've waited for my whole life.

Voice:

You're welcome. If I may offer one last observation and one last piece of advice . . .

Me:

What? What?

Voice:

You only call God perfect vis-a-vis your congenitally low standards of perfection. You're always searching for the perfect romantic getaway, the perfect cup of coffee. What is that?

Me:

And the advice?

Voice:

You people.

Me:

Yes?

Voice:

The human race.

Me:

Yes? What? What about us?

Voice:

You
really
took a wrong turn at monotheism.