Oh, God!

by Avery Corman

“I’m there for everything—prayers, weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, funerals, baptisms—you name it. ‘The Pledge of Allegiance’ to the flag with that under God thing in it—I’m there. A fella stubs his toe and says ‘goddammit’—I’m there. Kate Smith sings ‘God Bless America’—I’m there.” “For everything? Everywhere on earth, any time anyone invokes the name of God …?” “I’m there. I got to cover a lot of territory in my work.” “That’s an incredible concept. That’s something Man has wanted to know for centuries. Are prayers heard? Does God listen?” “Who says I listen? I only said I’m there. After a while, who can listen?” “Then God doesn’t care.” “I care. I care plenty. But what can I do?” “But you’re God!” “Only for The Big Picture.” “What?” “I don’t get into details.” “Why?” “It’s better that I shouldn’t meddle. What am I going to do—get into favorites? So I come up with the concepts, the big ideas—the details can take care of themselves.” “Then the way things happen on earth …” “They happen. Don’t look at me.” “And there’s no plan, no scheme that controls our destinies?” “A lot of it is luck. Luck and who you know.”

“So you’ve decided to just let us stumble along, and never do a thing to help?” “You got to understand, I went through my manipulative, controlling stage. You know what I mean from manipulative? It was back in the Ten Commandments days. Now I had it in mind there should be about five thousand commandments, to cover every eventuality. Things like: Thou Shalt Pick Up the Trash from the Picnic Areas. Thou Shalt Help Old Ladies to Cross the Road, Unless You’re an Old Lady, in Which Case You Should Watch Good. Like that. Then I changed my mind and did a rewrite. I got it down to about eight hundred commandments. But even that was a little cumbersome. So I rewrote again and got it down to a hundred. Then all the way down to fifteen. Only Moses told me, ‘They’ll never sit still for fifteen commandments, make it eight.’ And I said twelve. And he said nine. And I said ten. And he said sold. But he was wrong anyway. They don’t even sit still for ten.” “Well, you may think we’ve disappointed you, but you’ve disappointed us.” Imagine me coming on to Him that way, but somehow I found the nerve and I had to say it. “How can you permit the suffering that goes on in the world?” “I don’t. You do,” He said.

Now write this down, word for word, so nobody else should miss it. The thing is—to use the expression—God lives! This is important. If God was dead or never was, then you should be plenty worried because you wouldn’t know if what you got can even work. But God is here and He’s giving you a guarantee. I’m telling you that I set all this up for you and made it so it can work. Only the deal is you have to work at it and you shouldn’t look to me to do it for you.