Gawd

For whatever reason, I have always wondered about the notion of an omnipotent lima bean that created the universe. Now mind, when I say “God” with the capital “G” I mean God. Not some clown pulling rabbits out of a hat or some putz who is locked in an “eternal battle” with the Devil or whatever.

God is a being that would of necessity be able to encompass contradictions. Consider the following paradox:

(1) Everything I say is a lie.

(2) I am lying.

If statement 1 is true, then statement 2 must also be true. But that means statement 2 is false, and therefore the statement is true; and on and on. This is what is sometimes referred to by people with glasses, or at least hard contact lenses, as a logical fallacy or paradox. It demonstrates that a single true/false logical system is incomplete (or whatever).

Yet an all-powerful, omnipotent green bean would have to encompass such things. It would have to be able to create a rock so heavy, that it could not move it, and still move it.

Gawd. Capital “G” and all that.

At any rate there are two things that I think about frequently when I come back to the whole G-O-D thing:

• What the hell were you thinking?
• Forgiveness

What the hell were you thinking?

This sort of question would actually have several exclamation points after it. The thing is, God would have to answer for that. God would have to answer for everything. Nothing could exist except by God’s will, and thus everything that exists does so by said pinto bean’s will. This being the case, there are a whole bunch of things I would want an answer to.

Now mind you, if we are talking about some lesser fruitcake, sitting on a throne and dispensing “justice” or whatever a la one of Jack Chick’s little comic books, I’d lie through my teeth or say whatever I had to in order to avoid whatever horrible fate was staring me in the face.

But I would always be thinking: “what about PeeWee Herman?!!” in the back of my mind.

Forgiveness

The other thing I would ask for is forgiveness. I can only say "I'm sorry" in so many ways and yet, I bear with me the stain of every perceived misdeed. It seems rare to me that other people feel guilt about what they do, and because they do not even perceive that they have wronged me, I bear resentment. This being the case, I walk around feeling guilt and resentment. I would prefer that this ended, that I was truly forgiven and that I would forgive everyone and everything else. That I would stop carrying around the burdens of guilt and resentment. This is, of course, impossible. But hey, we are talking about God with a capital "G", right?

What came before comes after?

I myself do not believe in God, but I leave myself open to the possibility that such a being exists. One consolation that I feel I have in that part of the mind where faith would dwell in someone else is this: taxes. Actually I do believe in taxes, but I also feel that oblivion would serve the same purpose that forgiveness would. If I did not exist, then I could not be holding a grudge. If I did not exist, I could be blamed for something, but I certainly would not be aware of it. I think that oblivion would be a state that is the same as I was in before I was born. When I think about yesterday, there is the concept of the day before that. Eventually I come to my earliest memories where there is no "before." Then I consider what came before that, and there is nothing. It is still possible that there was something, some experiences that came before birth, etc. but it seems less likely than the simpler explanation that there was nothing. On the other hand, there is a Buddist saying: "Want nothing and have everything. Want everything and have nothing." Since what I want is nothing, it seems like getting exactly that would be everything I want.

fnord