God

"Welcome to Heaven. I hope you like Cobblestones."

"Cobblestones? I don't believe it!"

"Believe it, kiddo."

God Has a younger brother, who is kind of analogous to Billy Carter. God resents him, because he still calls Him "Tibbles" once in a while, even though He abandoned that name long before the existence of our galaxy.

If God is feeling particularly depressed, though, and His brother pops in with a big, "Hey, Tibbles! Great to see you, bro!" He may find Himself smiling, in spite of Himself.

"My halo sucks."

"I can't believe you! You've spent your entire life near the border of good and evil, you die saving somebody's life, landing you in heaven by a hair, and you are complaining? You should be thankful to even be here. You are very, very lucky."

"I know, but my halo still sucks."

God writes with a quill pen, made from a feather of the Siminee, a creature that no longer exists today, but is occasionally seen by the virtuous and the dying. The silver ink is made from dreams of laughing women. If you dream of a woman with an exceptionally sincere sparkling laugh, your dream may become part of His ink when you are done with it. He dots His 'i's by shaking the pen slightly, causing perfect drops of ink to fly from the tip to the right places.

In this day and age, you can blaspheme all you want to. Shout "God! God! God!" all day if you like, and nobody's going to hurt you for it. But if I were you, I would really avoid calling Him "Tibbles."

That is why the True Name of God is such a secret. If you were He, would you want your creations to know you used to be called "Tibbles?" The Tree of Knowledge is so called because, high in the trunk, there is an ancient carving that says, "Tibbles was here."

The fruit thing was just misdirection. If God Had said, "Don't read the trunk of the tree, whatever you do," there would have been a real chance that Adam or Eve might have done precisely that. So He just said, "Stay away from the tree, and leave the fruit alone." If they obeyed, then fine. If not (as it turned out), He could find out they were untrustworthy, and give them the boot without them having discovered His former graffito.

"Why hello! I haven't seen you since your first day here. I'll bet you've been around some, eh? Met some fascinating people, saw amazing sights. Tell me, what do you think you've learned these past few years?"

"All halos suck."

Long ago, God created the first hydrogen atom. He sat back, silently contemplating it. His brother walked in, glanced at it, and said, "That must have been difficult," sarcastically.

An angel once advised Noah that saying or writing "Tibbles" was really not a healthy thing to do. This advice was passed down through the generations, eventually distorted to the form, "It is a sin to say or write God's name." Thousands of years later, my Hebrew school teacher told me never to say or write "God." Until today, I never have.

God occasionally sends angels to Earth, in disguise, to go on Entenmann banana cake runs.

He does not Have a VCR, but Has access to one if He ever needs to watch something.

He once accidentally bumped a comet, immediately destroying the dinosaurs. "Good one, Tibbles," said God's brother.

A gifted prophet once found his consciousness in Heaven. He overheard God complaining to His favorite angel. "Why does he always have to call me... call me... the name?"

The prophet, Abraham, spread the word. "There is one supreme being. He is called, 'The Name.' " By the time this story got into the Bible, it was corrupted. It became something like: "Abraham went up the mountain. God came down. 'Hi, I'm your God.' 'What do I call you?' 'I am called The Name.'"

God put a lot more care into the creation of the Earth than He did into the creation of the Earth's pesky little brother, the Moon.

Some time later, Cain killed his younger brother, Abel. Did God kill Cain as punishment? No! He put a mark on him and said, "Hey! Listen up! Nobody hurt this guy." Why would God want to protect Cain? Because God understands why someone would want to kill their pesky little brother.

"Hey, you look especially happy today! What happened, did you finally get a halo that you like?"

"No, nothing like that. You wouldn't believe who I just had lunch with."

"Try me."

"None other than God's younger brother!"

"No! That's incredible! What was he like?"

"He was really nice. I can't remember having laughed so hard. And he picked up the check, too."

"Wow. Are you going to see him again?"

"I doubt it. It's probably for the best. I enjoyed his company and all, but he can get a little ... intense."

The previous two characters, of course, had the wrong idea of how one gets into heaven. You don't get into heaven by doing more good deeds than bad ones. All you have to do is sincerely and truly in your heart forgive God for all He has done against you during your life. During your time on Earth, you can practice by forgiving your neighbors for their comparatively lesser transgressions against you.

This fact, also, was corrupted by the time it got into the Bible.

© 1996 by the Reverend Douglas James.  All rights reserved.
Images © Laurel Palmer 1996


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