Dear God,

They say that everything is a part of your plan for the world. Why, then, did you plan to have soldiers in the United States Marine Corps go into civilians’ homes in Haditha, Iraq, drag men, women and children out into the street, and shoot them at point blank range?

How is that part of your plan, God?

- Ruth

Ruth,

You are quite right that everything is a part of my plan. The Haditha massacre was part of my plan to increase recruitment of homicidal lunatics into the Marines. Now, with the publicity of the Haditha massacre, it will become clear that the US Marine Corps is a place where homicidal lunatics can do their work under the relative safety of a Pentagon coverup. You see, if America allows homicidal lunatics to roam the streets of civilian society, they’ll just go around killing people at random.

But, if those homicidal lunatics are recruited into the Marine Corps, at least they will be killing in an efficient, orderly fashion. I prefer order to disorder, in killing as in all things.

Don’t you like my plan?

- God

Dear God,

Yesterday, I asked you for a straight answer to a simple question. I asked, who are you, God.

In response, you gave me a convoluted, ambiguous answer. You said that you were a shortcut to something fundamental I didn’t understand.

Well, that doesn’t help.

So, God, what are you?

Ross,

Yes, I am what.

- God

Dear God,

There’s something very fundamental that I don’t understand.

What are you?

- Ross

Ross,

I am a shortcut to something very fundamental that you don’t understand.

- God

Dear God,

I am deeply troubled to see that ten Democrats in the United States voted for a law that tries to make English the official language of the United States of America, and denies government services to anyone who speaks a language other than English … even if they were born in this country and their language is indigenous to the United States.

The Democrats who voted for this racist, bigoted law are:

Mary Landrieu from Louisiana
Senator Conrad from North Dakota
Tom Carper from Delaware
Robert Byrd from West Virginia
Max Baucus from Montana
Byron Dorgan from North Dakota
Blanche Lincoln from Arkansas
Senator Nelson from Florida
Senator Nelson from Nebraska
Mark Pryor from Arkansas

I think these Democratic Senators ought to be ashamed of themselves for going along with the anti-Hispanic hysteria that the Republicans are whipping up in Americans’ hearts. It’s all about hate, and I am saddened by the Democratic Party’s involvement in it.

Why did these Democrats betray us with this vote?

- Samuel

Samuel

No sé. Es una ley fea.

Enviaré un huracán a Arkansas para castigar este pecado.

- Dios

Dear God,

I see that hard rock is having a renaissance, and along with it, the outfits and hair. But, there’s something I’ve always wondered, since the 1980s. Why did heavy metal rockers all need that big hair?

- Ruthie

Ruthie,

They weren’t just heavy metal rockers. They were my disciples, sent down to prepare the way for the coming of the End Times, when the AntiChrist and Jesus returned to Earth will do battle and lay your planet to waste.

During those times, Christ’s warriors will need extra snacks to get them through the battle with demonic darkness. The big hair of the guys in the heavy metal bands was a disguise for special little packages of rice crispy treats that are being hoarded in special caches in sports stadiums around the world for when the need comes.

- God

Dear God,

Yesterday, a writer commented about an article in the June 2006 Discover Magazine, but it’s still the middle of May. How is this possible?

- Ned

Ned,

Magazines are written and published in a special dimension known as the Journalism Zone. I created this dimension so that writers would have time to make their deadlines. They kept on praying to me for a little bit of help, and so, to stop their whining, I placed their offices in a parallel dimension that is exactly the same as ours, yet one month ahead.

This helps the writers look smart, and in thanks, they give me lots of tithes.

- God

Dear God,

I just read in the June edition of Discover Magazine that Americans spread over 300 million pounds of fertilizer on land within the United States every year. I would think that a lot of those pesticides end up in our food.

What are the theological implications of this?

- H. M. Fields

H. M.,

Well, if you Americans are eating pesticides, then it’s obvious, isn’t it? You’re pests.

I work in mysterious ways. The first time that humans were acting like a bunch of bad sinner people, I kicked them out of the Garden of Eden. The next time, I drowned them all except for one family in a worldwide flood. I don’t like to repeat my methods, you see?

So, this time, it’s pesticides. And you’re doing the work for me, you silly Americans.

I’ve got a guy in Oregon establishing an organic farm where he and his family can survive and repopulate the Earth, once the rest of you are poisoned out of existence.

Someone’s got to make the coffins, after all.

Well, that’s all the time I have for now. I’m busy working on a new verse for that nursery school rhyme that starts out, “God is great. God is good. Let us thank him for our food.”

- God

Dear God,

I recently heard about a Christian blogger who says that dinosaurs and human beings once lived together on the Earth, just a few thousand years ago. You were around back then. Is what this guy says true?

- Bernie the Blog Reader

Bernie,

Let me clear this misconception up right away.

No. Human beings never lived alongside dinosaurs. I made sure it never happened.

Let me tell you why. People and dinosaurs are like sheep and cattle. They just don’t get along. Try to put them on the Earth at the same time, and they get into this ridiculous competition to see who can take part in the biggest mass extinction. I tried that with the Beta version of planet Earth, and it ended in disaster. The humans drive the dinosaurs crazy saying that they don’t need a comet to come along and blast a big hole in the Yucatan to die out, that people can cause a mass exitinction all on their own. Then the dinosaurs call the humans posers for using industrial technology to cause extinction, saying that doesn’t really count.

It’s unbearable, the squabbling. So, on the officially-introduced final product Earth for end users, I decided to put dinosaurs and humans millions of years apart. It makes the planet a less egotistical place, you see.

- God

Dear God,

It’s been a while now since the big object Sedna was discovered in its distant orbit around the Sun, way out past the planet Pluto. Some people say that Sedna is big enough to count as a planet, but other people say that it’s just a big hunk of rock and ice that’s more like a gigantic comet than anything else.

You’re the ultimate authority, God, so what do you say? Is Sedna a planet?

- Carlos

Carlos,

Let me settle this little misunderstanding. Sedna is not a planet. It’s a golf ball.

I was playing cosmic golf with Zeus a few hundred years ago, and he hit his ball into the rough, which is the Oort cloud. We thought we’d never find it, but now we can start our game up again. Thanks for pointing it out. I’ll give you a bit of grace in return, okay?

- God