Dear God,

The Bible, in the Book of Proverbs, teaches us that it is the Word of God that:

“A naughty person, a wicked man, walketh with a froward mouth. He winketh with his eyes, he speaketh with his feet, he teacheth with his fingers; frowardness is in his heart, he deviseth mischief continually;he soweth discord. Therefore shall his calamity come suddenly, suddenly shall he be broken without remedy.”

What’s so bad about winking that you’re going to punish anyone who winks with sudden calamity? What’s the big deal?

- Wilma

Wilma,

You’ve heard the story about how every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings, right? Well, every time a person winks, a Buddhist attains Nirvana.

I don’t mind admitting that I’m competitive. That smug Siddhartha Guatama just sat there under a tree, defying every temptation or threat I could send his way, meditating, thinking, on and on. End suffering, he said, but did he ever think about my suffering? No!

I will have no other gods before me, nor will I have snotty little gurus who are just acting out against their fathers, and trying to act cool by pouting under trees.

- God

A little known fact about God: God was the inspiration for the title character of the hit 1980s video game, Donkey Kong. Go never has received financial compensation for the use of his likeness, however. In 1987, God tried to release his own version of the game. It was called God Kong, but it never caught on, due to the lack of adequate distribution.

Dear God,

The preacher at the church my parents make me go to says that Halloween is Satan’s holiday, and that if I go trick or treating, I will go to Hell when I die if I am lucky, and may well be possessed by a demon or other evil spirit before then.

I don’t believe him. I think he’s just putting Halloween down so that he can get us kids to come to the boring Harvest Party that he holds in the church basement, with sing-a-longs of What a Friend We Have In Jesus and bobbing for apples.

Please, God, I don’t want to spend Halloween night sticking my head into a bucket filled with dirty water and fruit, where a bunch of snot nosed kids have gone before. How can I convince my parents to disobey the preacher and let me go trick or treating?

- Montana

Montana,

Don’t try to reason with your parents, or with the preacher. That’s not the way that they operate. You’re going to have to speak their own language. I suggest that you take one of two paths.

First, you could pick up on the half-truths that your preacher already believes. Tell him that you can’t come to the church Harvest Party because you’ve already been possessed by a demon just for thinking about Halloween.

Second, you could overrule the preacher, and say that you have spoken to God yourself, and that God has commanded you to go trick or treating. This is less fun than the demon option, but more truthful, as you actually have communicated with me through this advice column.

If you choose the second option, I can send down a few lightning bolts at the proper moments, just to back up the truth of your prophecy. But then, what kind of preacher could deny the word of me? I’m sure he’ll see things your way when you explain that you’ve been having a chat with me.

- God

563 B.C.E. is known as God’s lost year. In 564 B.C.E., God was experimenting with the creation of a new kind of mushroom, and that’s the last thing that he remembers until about 15 months later, when he found himself on an island in the Seychelles, wearing nothing but a pair of purple sandals, sitting next to a hippopotamus, with a rash on his elbow.

Dear God,

Why are you called the Lord of Hosts?

- Dierdre

Dierdre,

I once had a show on the Food Network. It was called God’s Hors D’oeuvres Half Hour, and was one of the top ten most popular shows in its time slot (3:30 AM every Saturday). My signature item was the simple and easy, yet delicious, salted, uncooked oyster with dill weed on a rye cracker. It was the hit of Los Angeles cocktail parties for about a week, until word got around that a few people (or, to be precise, a lot of people) were complaining of food-borne illnesses after eating it.

Still, everyone who didn’t got the hospital remembers it fondly.

- God

God has only been to the Academy Awards once, when he walked the red carpet in a poofy sleeveless green silk dress with a yellow chenille hooded cape, accessorized with a charm bracelet that featured a locust in memory of a trip to Egypt, a silver bush in memory of his favorite presidential candidate of all time, and a unicorn, in memory of his first daughter Eloise, who died at the age of five in a tragic licorice accident.

The fashion critics said that the outfit made God’s butt look big, and he has never been able to summon up the courage to return to the event, although he has twice been nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

Dear God,

When you run an organisation as large as the universe, it must generate an awful lot of paperwork. How do you cope with it all?

- Joe

Joe,

It helps that I own all the paper there ever has been, and all the paper there ever will be. I also am the creator of secretaries, and Lord of the Stapler, Office Manager of Office Managers. Behold my mimeograph and fear me!

Practically speaking, I do what all chief executive officers do: I assign all the boring details to middle management. As ruler of the universe, my middle managers are the angels.

Take, for example, the case of Jacob. Here this homeless guy is, blocking the stairway to heaven because he can’t find anywhere else to sleep. Now, was I about to go down and take care of the bum myself? No. I sent one of my angels. The guy wouldn’t move, of course, so the angel had to spend the whole night wrestling around with him, just to get him off my property. Well, finally, Jacob got pretty irrational. He was foaming at the mouth, muttering, “I want your blessing, I want your blessing!” I had one of my courier angels send a memo to the angel wrestling with Jacob, saying, you can’t reason with this man. Just say he’s got a blessing, and then he’ll leave you alone and go off and bother someone else.

So, you see, sometimes I have to step in and make an executive decision, but I find that, when it comes to filing the forms necessary to swallow a planet full of peace-loving beings up in black hole, I let the angel in residence take care of the particulars.

I find it quite amusing, actually, that there is a big industry of little artifacts that people collect, statues, glass figurines, black velvet paintings and the like, that depict angels. These people are devoted to middle managers, the divine equivalents of the deputy assistant to the Vice President of the marketing department. I guess no one ever told them that angels work in cubicles.

- God

Editor’s Note:

Here’s our first installment in these little facts about God:

How God Likes His Coffee

God likes his coffee with a shot of hazelnut syrup, two tablespoons of whole, organic milk, and a packet of Splenda (he’s trying to watch out for that expanding universe which is often the consequence of being lord of all you survey). God prefers to drink his coffee in a special ceramic mug he picked up as a tourist in Peru, shaped like a pyramid, with a narrow top and a wide base that keeps the coffee nice and hot.

As the inventor of the original instant coffee (As soon as he wants it, poof! It’s there.) God harbors a deep resentment of Taster’s Choice.

Dear God,

In her book, Fresh Elastic for Stretched Out Moms, Barbara Johnson writes that you are “like a warm comforting blanket”. Elsewhere in the same book, however, she refers to you as an “emotional spatula”.

I’m confused. Where do you go, in the linen closet or in a drawer in the kitchen, next to the can opener?

- Linda

Linda,

I am what you might call an all-in-one tool. I can towel people dry after a shower, or be spread on a couch to hide stains, but I also can be used as an emotional spatula, it’s true. One of my little known features is that I have ring tones that can indicate when your toast is ready. You can download new ringtones to personalize me, like Dixie, which is popular among Southern Baptists, or I Wanna Dance With Somebody, which tends to be used by people who still use Studio Lines from Loreal for hair gel.

The iPhone has nothing on me. I have a touch screen interface just like the iPhone, but mine is infinitely large, allowing full freedom of movement. Just wave your hands in the air, and you can reorganize your calendar, your address book, and send text messages - with a little bit of practice.

Store me in the garage, because I have been known to drip oil after being used as chainsaw.

- God

Dear God,

I know that they say that you wrote the Bible, but there’s something about it that strikes me as rather curious, if indeed you are the author.

I notice that there isn’t anything revealed in the Bible that the people of the time didn’t already know. There is no mention of anything that actually would happen in the future, other than vague mumbled symbolic prophecies that don’t make any sense. There is also no mention of any place beyond the physical region known to the people at the time - no mention of kangaroos in Australia. Finally, there is no advance in scientific knowledge given by you with your supposed Holy Word in the Bible.

Why didn’t you let the Israelites know about antibiotics, or about how to get aspirin from the bark of willow trees, or something useful like that? Why isn’t any information that would have been historically outside of the knowledge of the local people of the times given, when you in your omniscience surely already knew it?

- Louise

Louise,

Actually, I am writing the Bible now, as a piece of historical fiction and New Age motivational literature. People who say that the Bible was written two thousand years ago just don’t know what they’re talking about. The Bible, first edition hardback, is actually due to be released in early 2008.

There will be a retroactive release, through my unlimited power over space and time, of certain books of the Bible, one at a time, at different times back in the Middle East. I’m hoping that this promotional strategy will generate some buzz and improve sales. I’ve got a few galaxies that I built last year using high interest loans, and I need to pay them off fast.

What you need to realize about the Bible is that it’s a work of historical fiction. For readers of historical fiction, it’s very important that there are not any references to objects or ideas that would not have been known at the time. If I had written a line mentioning a microwave oven to characters like Moses, it would have ruined the credibility of the story, and made the reader’s suspension of disbelief a great deal more challenging.

- God

Dear God,

I’ve got a pretty good web site all set up, but I’m not getting many visitors. How can I effectively promote my web site?

- Sven

Sven,

First, you need to find someone to make into a prophet. I suggest that you choose a college student, as they will generally work for low wages and are looking for jobs that will help them get established in an interesting career.

Then, have the college student write as much material as possible. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense - just have your new “prophet” keep on writing, in a stream of consciousness if necessary, mentioning the name of your web site once or twice every page or so.

After you’ve got two or three thousand pages, pay your prophet, and print out a few copies. Send one to the Library of Congress. Store others in enigmatic sites, like caves, or archeological ruins, or weatherproofed “time capsules” buried in the ground.

Now, wait two thousand years or so. With time, your web site will be regarded as an essential element of your culture’s foundations, and a telling metaphor for human life.

- God

Dear God,

New research indicates that ants have a sense of their own mortality. This information is weighing heavily on my mind because I have an ant infestation in my kitchen. I want to get rid of the ants, but after reading that new research, I am worried that I will terrify the ants as I prepare to kill them. They’ll watch me, and know that they’re about to die, and their last moments will be spent in horro. I don’t want to be responsible for such suffering. What should I do?

- Hilda

Hilda,

As novel as that research is to you, I’ve known all along about ants’ preoccupation with death. In fact, I can tell you that ants have a very specific set of beliefs about the afterlife.

Ants believe that, when they die, they will be sucked along a dark, noisy tube until they reach a soft and crowded chamber where they will meet other ants who have died before them. So, what you should do is get a vacuum cleaner, and suck up all the ants that you can find in your kitchen. The ants will believe that they have already died, and therefore have nothing to fear. They will enjoy exploring the world of the afterlife inside your vacuum cleaner, until they actually die.

Then, they will discover the true afterlife that waits for them, and for all other insects: An infinitely long road, paved with squares of talking linoleum. It is better that ants are not enlightened to this truth until after death. They hate linoleum. It makes their feet feel itchy.

- God