Advice From God

Dear God,

I am deeply concerned about global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels. I fear that if we don’t change course quickly, the damage to your creation will be grave and irreparable. It seems to me that this is among the paramount ethical issues of our time. I also know that the Bible is the single source of moral authority available to us on earth. So why doesn’t the Bible say anything about the burning of fossil fuels?

Sincerely,

- Sidney

Sidney,

Good question. As a matter of fact, the Bible used to contain a very specific injunction against the burning of fossil fuels. It was number twelve of the Twenty Commandments Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. I realize it’s not in the edition of the Bible you have, so I thought I’d pass it along. While I’m at it, I’ll throw in numbers eleven and thirteen too, since they’re pretty much directed at the people of your age:

Commandment Eleven: “When thou hast harnessed the power of lightning, craftest thou not thereby images of the trite and banal for the distraction of thy children.”

Commandment Twelve: “Defilest thou not the sacred tombs of primeval groves, nor burn thou the contents thereof.”

Commandment Thirteen: “If thou takest multiple lovers, gird thee thy loins in the vulcanized sap of a tropical tree.”

There are seven more, but I don’t think they’d interest you. They’re for people in the distant future-dos and don’ts of building massive gamma wave sinks to cloak radiation emanating from the solar system in order to fend of interstellar attack, stuff like that.

Sorry those three didn’t make it down to you. Now that I think about it, they could have helped you out with some of those problems you’ve been having down there lately. It’s not really my fault, though. It was those darn medieval exegetes who edited the last ten commandments out, because they didn’t see the relevance to them. I came to them in visions and tried to explain, “Look, guys, it’s not all about you. The Bible is my word to mankind for all time, including the distant future. You don’t have to understand the whole thing, just translate it the best you can and pass it along.” Unfortunately, every time I appeared to them they just took to flagellating themselves all the harder, so I eventually gave up.

I explained the whole thing to the medieval exegetes when they got to heaven, and we all had a good laugh. It’s funny, in the grand scale of things. You may not be able to see the humor in it now, but you will after you die-trust me.

See you then,

- God

Dear God,

I was reading this web site called Christian Odyssey, and they had a web page about how to tell if a person has really been genuinely called by you to go do missionary work. One of the things that they said was that, “One of the reasons we crave to do something ‘great’ for God is that we are unsure of how we stand with him, and we hope that if we do something ‘great’ like move to a faraway corner of the earth and be a missionary, God will like us more and we can feel better about our relationship with him.”

Is it true, God? Do you really like people just fine as they are, or do you like us better if we do something ‘great’ and move to a faraway corner of the earth?

- Stan

Stan,

Yes. I admit it. I would like you more if you would go away, Stan.

- God