14. An Interview with The Creator

Detail of "DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR"
A meerschaum pipe. The workers are 1/2" (1.3 cm) tall

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE CREATOR

ARTY> Well, Yahweh, Thank you for taking time away from your busy schedule to come to 20/20 hindsite to talk about your work in creating this very impressive universe and of course your greatest creation, we humans. It is Yahweh, isn't it?

YAHWEH> Yeah, well, call me God for short. It's easier. Did you know the word "religion" used to mean your life, what you did every day, but it's been separated from that. As for my busy schedule? Don't you know I'm resting? You should too. I built this universe to enjoy it. I'm a process person. I don't create things, I build whole systems and then take pleasure in watching them all work. The real joy comes when something nice happens quite by accident. I was at Earth the other day and I met a Duck Billed Platypus. I loved the little guy and I could never have come up with his species on purpose. Well, maybe if I had a bunch of left over body parts from experimental animals that never made it into production and I threw them together for a joke but he seemed to be doin' OK and it sure was a treat spending a few minutes with 'im.

ARTY> Then you must be thrilled to spend time with a member of that sub species you created in your own image? White skinned Americans?

GOD> Y' know, I spent prob'ly... 10 minutes with that little platypus and I'm more bored with you in two minutes than I was with him in ten. Take a hint. I built a universe where there's fantastic fireworks goin' off ALL the time. I LOVE fireworks! It takes a lot to impress me. To listen to humans bragg about how great they are, well, I've heard it all before. From species you have nothing but contempt for! And I got news for you, they feel the same way about you and they've at least had enough respect for my work to leave it the way they found it. In fact, if ya' gotta know, I put you in charge of the most beautiful planet in the universe but you humans are the Milky Way's WORST, absolutely WORST stewards. And neighbors. God, you're rotten neighbors. Everybody has ta make room for you. And as bad as the species is, you born again Americans are like the people next door who drink and fight and mess with your stuff and you're afraid to speak up 'cuz you know it'll cost you. You know people like that.

ARTY> nods agreement

GOD> Well, they want to say they're being like me but really, they're bein' more like my eldest son. You know the story, I had two sons and they were 180º apart. One wanted to control everything for his own pleasure and one who loved just tending the human beings I had started there in that most beautiful little blue planet. Oh! I lavished so much TLC on that planet. Can't you tell? This was my little get away from the workaday world of creating the systems and processes that drive the universe. The grunt work of creation. I could come here and spend as much time as I wanted planting my best work and watching it develope. I was a molecular physicist working in a microscopic world while at the same time building planets, stars, galaxies. I gotta lotta time and effort in the earth and frankly it's more more than a little irritating to come here and see such widespread destruction.

What I see here is the work of my eldest son, Stan. Well, you add an a but whatever. He's my oldest and he's been nothing but trouble from the beginning. Of course, as a parent I blame myself. The two sons split my traits. My older son took that much of me that made him the control freak who thinks he's better 'n me and has been trying to push me aside ever since forever. I mean, I'm the guy with all the sweat equity in this universe and my eldest thinks he owns it. Did you know he once tried to offer part of it to his brother as a bribe?

ARTY> What about your younger son? Jesus Christ?

GOD> My other son Mike is Mr. Humility. Think about it. He's the son of the creator, could be doin' anything in the universe but he takes an interest in this tiny family of nomadic shepherds that I had a thing with living in a desert on Earth . Long story. By the way, Christ is a title given after the fact. Listen, this guy is so humble that he CHOSE to be born human in a barn in the boondocks of a raggedy little nation that had a special relationship with me. I picked THEM, not the other way round, f'r cryin' out loud.

They proved t' be so fickle that they were trying my patience. Besides, they started out as what, a dozen families and they were down to two or three by the time Herod's temple was finally torn down, also thereby, incidently, destroying all written records of who's really a Jew. Not exactly a stellar record for my chosen people. I blame Stan. He's got a crowd of bad eggs around him that just hafta make trouble. When Mike wanted to relieve a little bit of tension on planet Earth ol' Stan just couldn't stay out of it.

But Number Two Son, Stan's worst enemy (he thinks), said he wanted to fix what was broken with that little dysfunctional family down there in Asia Minor . He said sumpthin' about "Pottery Barn Rules". Frankly, I think he's taken this humility thing a bit far. He can't blame himself for their problems. He volunteered to be their Messiah, knowing all the build up and prophesies he'd hafta fulfill and the kinda death he'd undergo during that time in history. Frankly, I was ready to hand my Chosen People off to someone else.

Course, he has spent real time with 'em and I was only here when I had to get away from the day to day grunt work. I have to admit there are things I coulda' done different but hey, you only create a universe once and frankly the want's n' needs of a fickle few on that otherwise idyllic planet... It's Stan's work packaged as Jesus'.

ARTY> So. You're saying that the battle that rages here on Earth involving your Chosen People is really just the result of a sibling rivalry.

GOD> Well, yes and no. Remember Jesus thought small. Do you remember when he told people to put themselves last? Well, the day came when he had to walk the walk and put himself up for execution by torture to save someone else. Barabbas was the man who walked away because Jesus committed suicide by police that day to free him. So it all came down to puttin' up or shuttin' up. He knew it goin' in, as Michael, before he ever made the transition to Human. Yet he did it anyway. It had to be done that day to save Barabbas and he picked the one way that was sure to do it. He attacked the profiteers in the Temple. I can still picture him summoning all that power with a whip in 'is hand.

Oh, I do like fireworks! That was quite a show! The hated profiteers n' their partners the priestly class got what for that day! That was the only time he ever had a temper tantrum like that, and when he did he picked on the one thing that, as a peasant kid growin' up then an' there, annoyed him most.

But he had to go. He couldn't bust up a racket like that, even though everyone knew it was a scam. I mean, by the time Mike, as Jesus made his move Passover was in full swing. There was a long line to get the required sacrifice at the Temple and it had long been common knowledge that the same animals were sold for sacrifice over and over. The temple currency was undervalued and you had to pay for that required sacrifice at highly inflated rates. "Money changers!" Ha! Nowadays you call the ones with their hands extended, palms up, evangelists. Pharisee means "bookmen". Mike had no time for 'em. Everyone knows that. Mike reminded that tattered little remnant of Solomon's great nation that my relationship with them was a freebie and to be cashing in on it was not just a sin but it really, shall we say, pisses him off. And they do it in my name, no less! No, they're workin' for Stan.

ARTY> Jesus has given up?

GOD> No. He's older and wiser now. That was a joke. He doesn't change. He replaced my casual, on again, off again approach to human herding with a pure hands on, retail compassion as he likes to call it. Since it's no longer possible to prove that someone's a direct descendent of Abraham any more he treats everyone as if they are. He's like the really good officer in the Civil War who moved his men toward the sound of firing. He still thinks small, still feels he has to put up or shut up. Now you can find him in soup kitchens and shelters. For some reason he's bound to help humans, who, if you look at it from a cosmic perspective, are like a virus that has infested my favorite planet with an infection that has already caused a great extinction. I mean, I know that little platypus fellow wasn't much in the pig picture but I liked him. I'd like to know his offspring are still alive next time I stop in for a visit.

I want to say something else about Michael while I'm here. He is what he is because of things that happened eons ago. For him to watch pharisees and eva.... There is a strain of humanity that wraps itself in little bits of him and demands to be paid well for what they received as a gift. Can you imagine him hanging on that cross, every breath an agony, thinking "Boy, this is going to sell a lot of T shirts someday."

ARTY> Well God, I won't take anymore of your time. I want to thank you on behalf of all white Americans for making us your new Chosen People.

GOD> Wait a minute, pal, Your pointy hat must be covering a pointy head. You'll have to schedule another interview to deal with that issue and a few others we haven't even gotten to yet. Meanwhile, I gotta go see a certain platypus.

4. Holy Wars

CAUTION: SMOKING MAY BE HARMFUL TO YOUR HEALTH

Meerschaum Pipe w/coral snake Made in early '80s
©2010

That pipe was made for an old fishing buddy in Wisconsin. He lived in a small town and he was angry about the people who drove too fast down his street. Well, I'd been listening to him for years and his answer to most problems ended with "Shoot the Bastards!" He had convinced town hall to hire him as a constable. I wondered how he was gonna do but he surprised me. He had to be certified and he took what he learned in the process very seriously. And his opinions changed. I did two more pipes for him to give to his police buddies.

IT ALWAYS AMAZES ME
How little respect Christians have for their Gods.

First these Christians pretend to be afraid of God. At the same time if they see any sort of slight of their God they rush to his defense. They take it as a given that it is their job to protect the creator of the universe from people who don't believe in him. If God really cared he'd do what he did at the Passover. Kill the bastards. He hasn't done it since, though. Humans have done his dirty work since the Exodus. When I was a young man I was sent off to Vietnam to "kill a commie for Christ." Well, it seems to me that if He could kill all the first born in Egypt, He could kill all the commies in Nam if He really wanted them dead. It was us who wanted God to outsource the job to us.

I remember graduating from high school in the mid '60s with Vietnam staring me in the face. No big deal. I had family in the military back to the Civil War at least. It was my turn. My dad was in the navy during WWII and he didn't have anything bad to say about it. Now it was my turn. I was a believer. Commies were atheists. They had to die. If we didn't kill 'em over there we'd hafta fight 'em over here. That's what it was like.

We're still fighting 'em , for jobs. The Vietnamese refugees who made it here are smart and hardworking, tough competition for lazy white union raised narcissists who didn't pay attention in school, us boomers. The Vietnamese refugees knew from experience with our military that there was lots of money being thrown away around here and they wanted some of it.

I still remember a bumper sticker from that era. "My Country Right or Wrong". I also remember the first time I saw that motto. It was written in German in wrought iron above the gate of a Nazi concentration camp. My favorite bumper sticker from those days was "Grumpy hippies smoke crab grass." But I digress.

I weighed my options. I had a connection in the local reserve band and I might have gotten into that but I decided a two year draftee life was better than the six years you had to do as a reservist. I checked out enlisting in the army band but that was a four year enlistment and I figured two years was plenty. I'd take my chances with the infantry. As it happened, the army at that time was about 90% support troops. I was a clerk in a place called Long Binh, the largest military installation in the world at that time. About a half hour drive from Saigon, the place had acres of just beer.

For more detail click A REMF IN NAM up top of the page.

It took me about two months to come to the conclusion that we weren't the good guys. Remember, us boomers grew up with The Lone Ranger. He shot silver bullets and never to kill, only disarm. We grew up with Victory. We were the good guys. I had come of age in The Golden Age of America.

'Course, I had also read CATCH 22 so I knew about a guy named Milo Minderbinder. (If you don't, google him). I knew he wasn't a good guy, yet there I was in Nam surrounded by vast herds of Milo Minderbinder clones. Apparently after WWII he had opened a business school.

Well, dammit, free enterprise shouldn't be free! If you drove around Saigon the streets were lined with vendors just like the midway at a county fair, all selling items from our supply depots. They weren't stolen by the vendors. They were stolen by American soldiers and sold to them. There were American officers playing the currency black market even though everyone knew Charlie ran that market to help them pay for the war. In late 1969 the Sergeant Major Of The Army and his cronies were busted for graft. That just scratched the surface of the tip of an iceberg of corruption. I'm convinced we played an active, supporting role in our own defeat.

Yet we were doing it all for God. We hated commies because they were atheists. Before I went to Nam my church handed us Vietnam bound boys steel jacketed New Testaments. We were going off to a holy war. If we put those little books near our hearts God would look after us. That is, if we looked after him by killing people who don't believe in him, plus a lot of people who just happened to be in the neighborhood. Collateral damage. Couldn't be helped. Charlie hid among them.

God knows all. Time means nothing to him. He has 20/20 hindsight AND foresight. He knows ahead of time how things will work. He wrote the RULES for cryin' out loud. He knows that the real money was being made by the contractors. We planted that country with more ordnance than was dropped in all of WWII. Flying over it you saw craters to the horizon in all directions. That and mini guns that fired dense streams of bullets from cargo planes. At night you would see them intermittently from a distance, a long glowing, undulating snake that went from the ground to a point in space, followed by a long high pitched note. It could put a bullet in every square foot of a football field in seconds.

That's what we did for God, yet he still lost. By the time I'd been home for a couple of years my old church, along with many others, had changed it's mind and was now saying that Vietnam was an immoral war. Whoa! God is never wrong! Well, the churches just never admitted that they'd changed their minds. The truth is, there were so many church members against the war that they were afraid of losing $$. With friends like Christians, God doesn't need enemies.

Speaking of enemies, the people who can't live with the thought that their ancestry might include some chimpanzee like critters. You're saying that the rest of God's creation is somehow second rate, a minor league to a human major league? Yet you also insist that all humans are sinners, the only species of which that can be said. So, it a truly significant way we are BENEATH all the other fauna of planet Earth. Quite frankly, a puddle filled with algae is if more benefit to the planet than a lot of the people I've worked with over a lifetime. As for divine creation, I don't think the universe was created by someone in order to coerce a single species from a single planet to kiss his ass.

No. Belief in god requires a core belief that coercion is divine. It's more of a hardwired personality disorder, a symptom of paranoia. After spending millions of years clawing our way up from the middle of the food chain it's no wonder we're scared of the dark.

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