I talked to God last night, and here's what She had to say

Tansy_Gold

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Wed Jul-11-07 02:52 PM
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I talked to God last night, and here's what She had to say

Let me state right up front that I'm an atheist. I simply do not believe in a supernatural being or beings that control the universe and/or parts of it.

However, having been told by many believer friends that the existence of God is independent of my belief, I thought I'd just sit down and try to initiate a conversation with any deity or deities who happened to show up.

Much to my surprise, She did show up. I guess I'd describe Her as an attractive woman, no particular age or ethnic persuasion, no particular height or weight. But very definitely female. I asked Her about that.

"Well," She said, with a hint of either weariness or impatience, as though She'd been asked that question too many times before, "it's just the way it is. God creates, and so do women. Therefore, doesn't it make sense that God would be a woman?"

As much as I would have enjoyed exploring that line of thought, I decided to move on, since I didn't know how long She'd be willing to hang around. There was one question I really did want an answer to.

"Maybe this is a bit too personal, but could you tell me if you really forgave Sen. David Vitter for his infidelity? I mean, he was almost flippant about it. Said he asked for and received forgiveness from you and from his wife. Acted pretty damn sure, like he was somehow entitled to forgiveness just for the asking."

She laughed once, a kind of Chris Matthews "ha!" before She said, "Truth is, that lying sack of shit never asked, and if he had, I wouldn't have forgiven him. It's not the sex, you know, or even that he went to a prostitute. And as for the whole sacred institution of marriage, I personally could care less. Marriage as a legal contract is all about property rights, including men's ownership of women, and I think it's a crock of crap. It's a guy thing, which is why guys get far more upset about infidelity -- other than their own, of course -- than women."

This was another avenue I'd have loved to discuss with Her, but I didn't want to get myself, or God, off on a tangent.

"So you're saying Sen. Vitter never asked for forgiveness, and you didn't grant it?"

"That's what I said, didn't I?" She sounded a little pissed off. "Look, I've got lots more important things to do than worry about some little piss-ant sexual hypocrite and his wayward willy. If he wants to think he's got My forgiveness, he can add that to the list of lies he already believes. But the only forgiveness that really counts is when he forgives himself enough to stop doing whatever silly thing it is that he calls a 'sin.' I don't think he's there yet, and maybe he never will be."

I was about to ask Her another question, but She took a deep breath like She was getting ready to leave. Instead, however, She launched into a lecture that made me completely forget whatever it was I was going to ask.

"You know, it's a lot like this whole business with Iraq and the god-awful war that imbecile Bush got you into. Too many people keep coming up with reasons to keep the war going, none of them 'good' reasons, because they simply don't want to face the fact that when it's all over, someone is going to have to forgive them for some pretty bad sins. When you win a war, like you did in 1945, you don't have to answer to anyone. All the deaths are justified by your victory, deaths on both sides. But it's different when you don't win, when you have to face your loss of the war and your losses of life.

"As long as you haven't lost, those lives haven't been lost in vain. You've already got those 58,000 or so lost in Vietnam, all lost in vain. You got nothing out of that disaster, not even a lesson learned. But at least you didn't come out of that one defeated and humiliated, forced like the Germans and Japanese to surrender, to acknowledge publicly that they'd been beaten. You never had to go back and confront your collective guilt and acknowledge your collective mistakes and admit you were collectively responsible for killing so many people, Americans and Vietnamese and Chinese and Cambodian and Laotian. You never had to ask for collective forgiveness. Oh, Johnson and McNamara got the blame, but they were scapegoats; there were plenty of ordinary citizens who supported the war, who believed the threat of communism, who were in it for the money.

"Sound familiar? It's the same story now. You can blame Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Powell and all the others, and you know damn well they are never going to admit they were wrong, make a public confession and ask for public forgiveness. Richard Clarke did that, on a very small scale, but they never will. And one of the reasons they won't ask for it is that they know they'll never get it. Do you think the Iraqis are just going to say, 'Oh, sure, you're forgiven for destroying our country, killing our children, poisoning our environment, looting our oil, plundering our history. Friends again?' It's not going to happen that way, and the people responsible know that. They're perfect examples of why capital punishment is the easy way out: the killer never has to confront his guilt and his victims day after day after day after day. Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz -- what an icky creature that one is! -- and Perle and Adelman are one thing, but their apologists are the real scary crew. All that business of fighting them over there so they won't come here, and that other bullshit -- all if it is an excuse not to admit defeat in the international public square and then face the victims, the dead and the maimed, the poisoned and the bereft, the homeless and hungry. If there are not victims, or if they are kept safely out of sight and out of mind, then there is no guilt. Guilt is a terrible burden, and few are willing to pick it up.

"The American public, or at least that portion that's of legal voting age, hasn't been willing to admit the mistake and shoulder the burden of guilt either. Oh, part of it is the lingering fear and anger after 9/11, but if people had really been angry enough about the war, they wouldn't have allowed the results of the 2004 election to stand. If they'd been angry enough, they'd have turned out in such overwhelming numbers to vote that little turd Bush out of office that nothing would have sufficed to rig the count. But it was easier to let the creep stay in office than do what would have been necessary to kick him out.

"You know, the Germans have had to confront their guilt over the Holocaust, and it hasn't always been easy for them. Not as individuals and certainly not as a nation. They know Hitler was the leader, but he was elected, and as too many people have said over the past seven years, everything Hitler did was perfectly legal. And then there was that whole incident at the 1972 Munich Olympics to rub salt into a barely healed psychic wound, to create more victims and more guilt. How you Americans are going to fare after Bush and this Iraq catastrophe, I have no idea, but I have a feeling it's going to be almost as bad as post-war Germany. You've made a lot of victims, and that means one hell of a lot of guilt."

She paused for a moment, and I took the opportunity to ask Her, "You mean, you can't see into the future? You can't tell me what's going to happen in Iraq or in the 2008 elections or anything?"

She shrugged. "Oh, I could tell you, but it wouldn't do any good. You'd either sit back and say you couldn't do anything to change it, or you'd set out to try to change it and then it'd happen anyway and you'd be pissed off. You're better off not knowing."

At that point, She leaned forward and patted my shoulder. "David Vitter's god is as imaginary as his forgiveness. He's a petty little sinner about his own sex life and a not-so-petty sinner about everyone else's. The little shit got what was coming to him, pun intended."

And then She was gone, so quickly and so completely that it was like She'd never been there, never existed at all.

But I knew in my heart of hearts, in my gut, that She was right. After all, She's God, and who am I to argue with God?

I'm just

Tansy Gold