Friday, May 27, 2011

When crapping your pants and prayer go together

While beseeching the Lord is not best done whilst
crapping one's pants, sometimes it can't be helped.
If lightning hits your plane (or car, or balls...) frantic prayers are understandable.  Even the ardent atheist switches teams for a minute or two in such circumstances.  Can you blame them?  It's hard to have the courage of your convictions if they're running down your leg at the time.  But that's not what this post is about.  It's about the other 99.9% non-life threatening appeals to heaven.  So-

Stop annoying HIM already!

“Rain falls on the just and unjust alike.”  True.  The flip side of that is that the sun shines on the just and unjust alike also.  Just because your plane landed safely after some turbulent weather doesn’t mean God was looking out for you.  Maybe that little girl with the runny nose three rows up is slated to be the grandmother of that dedicated intern a few decades from now who runs extra tests at the lab on her own time and ‘accidently’ discovers the gene that turns off cancer.  You can’t know any of that at the time, but your low intervention worthiness may become clearer the next day when you electrocute yourself trying to pry your toast out of the toaster with a metal butter knife.  For the third time.  (Then again it may never seem clear to you.)

The point is, don’t assume divine intervention for the ordinary ups and downs of everyday life.  Everybody has lost keys.  Everybody has found keys.  Even if you’re muttering “Please God, please” the entire time you’re looking and you finally find them it doesn’t make the eternal overlord of all creation your personal fucking key-finder.  If you left your keys in the side pocket of your ‘fat’ jeans after you waddled back from the all-you-can-eat buffet last night, and you finally think to check that pocket again and they’re still there, it’s not the hand of God.  It’s the dumb of man.  Those keys would have stayed there until you got around to checking that particular pocket no matter how long it took you. 

The common impulse is to thank Him, of course.  But don’t.  It would be bad enough if it were just you alternately whining and thanking all day long.  But there’s something like seven billion of us now.  And in the age of mandatory seat belt laws and ubiquitous warning labels the helpful and herd-thinning rule of survival of the smartest no longer applies.  The dumbest strata of the population now makes it well into breeding age, -the only area where they really ‘shine’.   Statistically it has to mean the ‘help me’ prayers and ‘thank yous’ for everyday bullshit have increased geometrically.  (That means more than just ‘metrically’, it means ‘a lot’ which is two words, if you didn’t already know)  If He really did hear all our prayers at one time the cacophony of drivel must have coalesced into an easily ignorable hum years ago.

You’re the reason He doesn’t pay attention to us anymore, even for important prayers like ‘please end the NFL lockout.’  Now we’re going to have a strike shortened season, if we get one at all.  No intervention there because He’s not listening anymore.  Thanks a lot, mumbles.

You’re so lucky I’m NOT god.  Bother ME for lost keys?  Not after I make them materialize in your rectum.  You'd buy a new car before you'd ask Me again!  Your incessant self important myopia would have driven Me to My smote cannon a long time ago.  And I’d be firing up that mo-fo all day long.  At you?  Depends.  Lost your keys lately?

As always, If I Were God appreciates comments, ad-clicks and sharing of His articles. 
He sees all; disappoint Him not.

8 comments:

  1. SO, you're thinking that god wasn't sending me a message about over-praying to find my car keys when he struck my house with lightning and burned it down??? I thought I was being singled out!

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  2. I know, right? You have these numb skulls praying day and night for this and that which takes up all the band width. Fucking lost keys, lost dogs, lost virginity! Give me a break! As you know, I am not particularly prayerful. But if I was I wouldn't be bothering god about stupid stuff. Maybe about letting the Giants win the World Series again, but that makes total sense.

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  3. Wait a sec. Does my daily morning prayer of "Please God, let me get through this day without killing anyone" count as clutter? Because I kinda see it as necessary and important to not kill anyone. Just 'cause you know I'm so gonna get shanked within my first hour in prison.

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  4. Nicky, I'm sure you'd get something in your first hour in prison, but I doubt it would be shanked.

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  5. This is why I simply offer praise. And thanksgiving now and then. My highest praise is the word "Wow!" I hear a cardinal or an oriole and I go "Wow!" And I really mean it.

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  6. I once kicked someone out of my bed for speaking to God during sex.

    First, it was distracting.

    Second, I deserved both the begging and the thanking, not some mythical bearded guy in the clouds.

    I just wasn't happy with second billing.

    - B x

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  7. Outstanding points, NG. "The Dumb of Man." Brilliant.

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  8. Honestly, do people thing God counts up the number of prayers each team gets and then decides?

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