The word of God

or

Who Would Want My Job?

Invented by human beings for their own purposes I have a variety of names, among them God, the Almighty, Creator, Father, Jehovah and many more. It all becomes quite confusing, having to listen out for so many names when those down below are listing their requirements, which, I can tell you, they do on a regular basis. They also seem unable to make up their minds regarding the name of the place where I live. They mostly call it Heaven, but there are other names, Paradise, Nirvana, Zion etc. You might already get the notion that they are a quarrelsome lot and do their utmost not to agree on anything. They used to tell their kids that I lived up in the sky, above the clouds, but then they outsmarted themselves and went out into space. When the kids asked if they saw God they had to get a tad more inventive and say first that I’m invisible and then that I’m not a real being but more an idea, a presence. Well thanks!

Have you ever been outside at night and looked up at the sky? Have you ever looked at the world around you? Apparently I made that lot in six days! Then they gave me a day off. Big deal!

I’m expected to look out for these goons, no matter how stupid and reckless their behaviour and to pluck them from the jaws of whatever idiotic predicament they’ve got themselves into. Sometimes I just happen to be looking the other way! Well, I mean, I need some time to myself!

Sunday morning! That’s the one. They crawl out of bed, hungover from the excesses of Saturday night and, dressed up in their posh clothes, trying to outdo the neighbours, drive in their flash cars down to the church. Then they start haranguing me! God do this! God do that! Then the tuneless mumbling they are pleased to call singing. And what do they sing. Hymns! More of their demands, with a few compliments thrown in, trying to get on the right side of me. And set to music, if you please!

So what do I have to listen to? We’re having this war, so will you smite mine enemy. Don’t they know I’ve got the other lot asking me to do the same thing. Smite your own enemy, you picked the quarrel with him, don’t involve me! And by the way, have you seen the size of him? He’s built like a brick shit-house, leave me out of it.

Then there’s the bloke who’s smoked all his life, with government warnings on fag packets, doctors telling him to stop, his family pleading with him to give it up. Now he’s down there with the others on Sunday morning expecting me to sort it all out. What does he think I am, a miracle-worker? He wants to remember who invented me.

I finish up with a list of jobs as long as your arm, bless this (whatever that means), save that, protect the other and while you’re about it, calm that storm down in the South Atlantic, where ships are being thrown about. But what do they do when they’ve finished whining to me on a Sunday morning? They’re out of the church and straight down the pub. Having had a skinful they’re home for Sunday lunch and then out into the garden, pull up a few weeds and then three hours on the sun-lounger. Next it will be skin-cancer and I’ll have to put that right!

Then there’s the blame! The insurance companies love this one. It’s their excuse for not paying out. There’s a flood, an earthquake, a volcano erupts! Who gets the blame? Me! “Act of God” they say! I didn’t do it! I’m sitting up here, minding my own business, when I see all this mayhem starting down below. “Oh yes,” I think to myself, “How long before this is my fault?”

I tell you, it’s a hard life being God. Sometimes I wish I’d never been invented.