Dear God,

I am taking a class at my college in which we learn about classical Hinduism. It’s fascinating, but it’s leading me to ask many questions I never could have imagined - questions about you.

In the Mahabharata, the great spiritual epic of the Hindu tradition, there is a passage that describes a supreme, ultimate being: “Isana, to whom multitudes make offerings, and who is adored by the multitude; who is the true incorruptible one, Brahma, perceptible, imperceptible, eternal; who is both a non-existing and an existing-non-existing being; who is the universe and also distinct from the existing and non-existing universe; who is the creator of high and low; the ancient, exalted, inexhaustible one; who is Vishnu, beneficent and the beneficence itself, worthy of all preference, pure and immaculate; who is Hari, the ruler of the faculties, the guide of all things movable and immovable.”

God, this sounds a lot like you. What’s the difference between you and Isana?

- Penelope

Penelope,

I’m saddened that you have to even ask this question. There are lots of differences. Isana has red hair, whereas I’m bald. I love sardines, but Isana doesn’t. I’m shorter than Isana, but Isana has more of a belly. That’s just for starters.

Incidentally, did you notice that the description of Isana that you cited doesn’t call Isana “both corrupt and incorruptible”? There’s a reason for that. Isana had a little run-in with the IRS a few years ago. Some say it was just an indirect way to try to bust him on charges of drug dealing.

- God

Dear God,

I’m a bit confused with this nun thing you’ve got going on.

I was reading The Golden Bough, by James Frazer, and a passage gave me pause: “Mukasa, the god of the Victoria Nyanza lake, who was propitiated by the Baganda every time they undertook a long voyage, had virgins provided for him to serve as his wives. Like the Vestals they were bound to chastity.”

I read that, and I thought, “Well, why doesn’t the Christian God have virgins like that?” Then I realized that you do. All those nuns, the Christian virgins that are described as the wives of God.

What do you want a bunch of virgins for?

- Ted

Ted,

It’s a little vanity piece, really. When we gods get together, we like to compare our collections of virgins.

For example, last night, I had Nodutus over for dinner. Not a lot of people know who Nodutus is. He’s the god of tying knots in the stalks of wheat plants. No kidding. Go look it up.

Well, naturally, our conversation turned to virgins. “I’ve got a new set,” Nodutus said to me, “over in the Ukraine. They’re dancing virgins, and they’ve all had breast enhancement surgery. They’re chaste - lap dances only - but man, are they built.”

Nodutus is, in my opinion, rather coarse in his taste of virgins. Nonetheless, he knows where my vulnerable spots are, and he hit hard last night. We were having custard for desert when Nodutus asked me, right out of the blue, “How come all your virgins wear sensible shoes?”

I didn’t know what to say. Here I am, the creator of the universe, and I’m supposedly all powerful, but I still can’t get my virgins to wear anything but comfortable shoes. One of these days, I’m going to trade my nuns in for something more up to date, but the truth is that I have a lot of trouble keeping track of the latest fashions in virgins. I suppose if you’re a god who doesn’t have anything to do but tie knots in the stalks of grain, then you can spend most of your days going virgin shopping. Me, I’m more busy than that.

- God

A lot of people wonder: Does God get health care along with his line of work?

Sadly, no. God has to pay for all his own medical expenses, including vision and dental.

The reason is plain. Deities are very independent spirits, and have refused to come together to organize for better working conditions.

A lot of divine beings think that they can do it all on their own. As Zeus once said, “I gave birth to my daughter from my head, and I didn’t take an aspirin. What do I need health care for?”

However, Prometheus shouted back, “Collective action gets the goods!” Hiawatha accused Prometheus of just trying to get a liver transplant without having to pay for it himself.

God stayed on the sidelines, and would not sign the list of divine rulers of the universe seeking unionization. That’s why, to this day, he does not have health care.

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

Dear God,

Who among the gods is like you, O Lord? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?

- Ethel

Ethel,

Krishna is kind like me, in his larger manifestation. In the Baghavad Gita, Krishna explained to Arjuna, the heroic archer,

“Neither the hosts of demigods nor the great sages know My origin or opulences, for, in every respect, I am the source of the demigods and sages. He who knows Me as the unborn, as the beginningless, as the Supreme Lord of all the worlds—he only, undeluded among men, is freed from all sins. Intelligence, knowledge, freedom from doubt and delusion, forgiveness, truthfulness, control of the senses, control of the mind, happiness and distress, birth, death, fear, fearlessness, nonviolence, equanimity, satisfaction, austerity, charity, fame and infamy—all these various qualities of living beings are created by Me alone.”

That kind of sounds like me, doesn’t it?

Both Krishna and I are the only sources of the world, and we are both supreme lord. Also, he likes to be honored with gramatically incorrect capitalization. With me, I like the “Hims” capitalized. With Krishna, it’s the “Me” and “My”. Different gods, different strokes.

I ought to get together with Krishna and have a beer. I bet we’d have lots to talk about.

- God

Dear God,

I don’t understand how you can give people Family Advice so freely, when you don’t have a family yourself. By what right do you claim to give this advice?

- Larissa

Larissa,

Larissa, like most people, you presume that I don’t have a family. I do have a family.

Take, for example, my brother Clyde. Poor Clyde has always been under tremendous pressure from our mother and father, and my father’s second wife Jeanne.

Clyde lives under my shadow, and it’s been pretty hard on him. My mother is always nagging him, though she thinks that she’s being encouraging.

“Why don’t you be more like your brother, God?” she says to him. “Look at God. He created the universe. Why don’t you try that?”

My mother doesn’t understand that Clyde just might create a universe, if only she would stop nagging him to do it. Nobody can create a universe under that kind of pressure.

Clyde wants to follow his own path, and live humbly, and just make fish. He made the coelocanth, for example, but when he showed that to our mother, she turned her nose up at it, and said, “Where’s the rest of it?” The coelocanth was so ashamed of itself that
it swam down to the deepest parts of the ocean, and was not seen again for a very long time.

I’ve got Clyde involved with a mentoring program through the United Way of Boston, and twice a week he goes and plays basketball. I’m not seeing that it’s doing him much good. I’d give him a job making galaxies if I didn’t think his pride would be hurt.

My point, Larissa, is that I know a lot about family problems. It’s because my family is so screwed up that I can give people like you advice about how to make your own family life better.

- God

Dear God,

I recently saw this bumper sticker on a car. It says, “I love Jesus more than you do”

Is this possible? Could somebody really love Jesus more than I do? I’ve been working so hard to love Jesus as much as I can, but it’s hard to know where I stand in Jesus’s heart. Jesus isn’t the kind of man who lets you know how he’s feeling. No matter what I do or say, Jesus remains silent and absent.

So, please, God, be honest with me. Who loves Jesus the most?

- Libby

Libby,

I’m sorry to say that you don’t stand a chance in Jesus’s heart.

Frigg, that nordic slut of a goddess, has always has the hots for Jesus. She loves Jesus more than anybody else, and Jesus only has eyes for her.

Oh, it doesn’t matter that Frigg is already married to Odin. I’ve told Jesus over and over again that Frigg will never leave Odin for him, but Jesus always says that he doesn’t know how a god with only one eye can really satisfy a goddess like Frigg.

I’m telling you, Frigg is bad news. Not only is she robbing the cradle, but she keeps too many secrets. Legend says that she knows the destiny of everyone, even my destiny, but she won’t tell anyone what that destiny is, the little tease.

I know that this isn’t easy for you to hear, Libby, but I suggest that you move on. There’s no sense keeping a torch burning for Jesus. He’s just not ready to let go right now.

- God

Dear God,

I have a Wiccan friend, and she tells me that Easter, which I celebrate as a Christian holiday, is really just a recycled festival for the worship of the pre-Christian goddess Ishtar, from whose other name, Ostara, words like estrous come from, refering to the fertile female power. She also points out that the East in Easter refers to Venus, the morning star and goddess Aphrodite.

I’m confused. Where does Jesus fit into all this?

- Edgar

Edgar,

Never fear. Jesus is at the heart of Easter, just as your preachers have always told you. The true origin of the holiday of Easter, however, has never been told to you before.

Jesus hates it when I talk about this, but the truth is that he was a rather husky boy, thick around the middle. He liked his mother’s honey cakes a little too much. The family gave Jesus the nickname “Eater” as a result.

Jesus’s little brother, Ernie, was just two years old when he heard his siblings calling Jesus “Eater”. He joined in, but because he was very young, mispronounced it, “Easter”. The change stuck, and even when Jesus got to be an adult and lost some weight, everybody still called him Easter.

Jesus never really lost his appreciation for food, however. After he was reborn in the spirit after the crucifixion, his first words were “Could someone bring me some olives and cheese?”

- God

Dear God,

Why this fascination with American politics? You and I both know that God’s Own County is Yorkshire, England. I’m not having a go, America is an alright sort of place, but there really is no comparison.

So come on, God. Focus on things that matter. When is Yorkshire going to win the County Championship?

(For the benefit of your readers: this is about cricket. Cricket is the only thing God still really follows on earth - he said so once in the BBC radio programme Old Harry’s Game.)

- Geoff

Geoff,

American politics interests me because it is a developing, dynamic game. The stakes are quite high, given the power of the United States. There is some aesthetic value to watching the politics that take place within the husks of empires of yesteryear, yes, but in such cases as the quest to find the successor to Tony Blair, global fortunes don’t quite hang in the balance so much.

You’re right that I do follow cricket to some extent, though it’s not the only thing I pay attention to. To claim so is the conceit of the BBC. On a cosmic scale, cricket has about the same consequence as ping pong. That’s not an insult to cricket, really. In the reproductive rituals on some planets, ping pong matters a great deal. Nonetheless, ping pong and cricket don’t have extra special holds on my mind. I am still omnipresent, after all these years, you know.

When will Yorkshire win the County Championship? It’s a simple matter of religion.

Surely, you don’t think that it has escaped my notice that the symbol of the Yorkshire County Cricket Club is the lotus blossom. The lotus blossom is a symbol of the Buddha.

The Buddha preached detachment from the cares of the world, good and bad. Well, that’s not exactly a winning attitude for a cricket club, is it?

You can have a bunch of players contemplating the fundamental lack of a difference between winning and losing, or you can focus on winning. The Yorkshire County Cricket Club has chosen to focus on the transitory nature of victory.

That, and I’ve placed a little curse on Yorkshire cricket just because I am, as the Old Testament suggests, a jealous and angry god. If Yorkshire would just develop a new logo that incorporated a burning bush, I think they’d find that the County Championship would soon be theirs.

- God

Dear God,

It is often said that your son Jesus is nothing more than a rehashing of the cult of Mithras, a Zoroastrian figure who gained special popularity in the Roman empire just before Christianity caught on. They point out that Mithras was supposed to be the son of the sky god, born to a virgin mother on the 25th of December.

The similarities are remarkable. Is it true that Jesus is just Mithras in disguise?

- Jack

Jack,

I get asked this quesstion a lot of the time, and it really bothers me. I mean, how would it make you feel if people went around saying that your son was really just someone else’s son?

It’s obvious, isn’t it? Jesus and Mithras can’t be the same. After all, they have different names. Jesus begins with a J. Mithras begins with an M.

Also, the followers of Mithras never called themselves Christians. How can people get so confused?

- God

Dear God,

What are your thoughts about the Baghavad-Gita? Some critics say that it tells us that war is a good thing, and we should stop protesting it and just accept it.

Is that true? How could the great Hindu inspirational book beloved by the Beatles and Gandhi teach such a thing?

- Karen

Karen,

I can tell you that the point of the Baghavad-Gita is not that war is good. The point is that war is a rotten, terrible thing that people sometimes get caught in the middle of, and they just have to accept that that’s where they are, and deal with things as they are, and not how we might like things to be.

I can tell you that, but it’s a load of shit.

The Baghavad-Gita tells the story of Arjuna, a member of the ruling warrior-king caste. Arjuna specializes in killing people by shooting them full of arrows. He’s the hero of this tale, believe it or not.

You see, Arjuna and his brothers get into a long set of arguments with their cousins, and so the two groups decide to lead their followers, who are obligated to go along for the bloody ride because of the Indian caste system, into a war. It’s Arjuna’s appointed job to start the killing by riding into the space between the two armies and blowing a conch shell.

Arjuna is taken there by his charioteer, a fellow warrior-king named Krishna, who is actually the incarnation of a god, just like Jesus, except with servants and lots of lovers, and the fact that his skin is blue. Everybody loves Krishna.

Well, just as Arjuna is about to blow the conch shell, he has doubts. He realizes that he’s been part of a plan to kill members of his own family, and that many of his brothers are sure to die All of a sudden, it doesn’t sound like such a great idea.

That’s when Krishna tells Arjuna to shape up, get straight, and blow the damn conch shell. It isn’t Arjuna’s job to think for himself. Arjuna was born into his warrior-king caste, and so it’s his job to go to war and tell other people what to do. That’s just how things are, and if Arjuna doesn’t like it, then he should just put it out of his mind, and learn how to trance out while he kills people. That way, he doesn’t have to feel guilty.

Arjuna still has doubts, because Krishna’s plan does kind of sound like bullshit. So, he asks to see Krishna’s true divine form, just so that he can be sure that he’s getting a message of murder from the heavens themselves. So, Krishna reveals his mindblowing divine nature to Arjuna, who falls on his knees, and says “Whoah!”.

Arjuna is now in a much more receptive mood, and so Krishna instructs him that the only thing that matters is to be faithful to the path that’s been set out before him, and to respect the awesome nature of that which is Krishna.

So basically, the lesson of the story is that, so long as you’re following someone more powerful than you, you can do anything, so long as they tell you it’s what you’re supposed to do.

It’s sort of the same as the Just War Theology promoted by my own followers. Never mind your qualms, they say. People more powerful than you have determined that it’s a good thing for you to go and drop bombs on people’s houses, and pump bullets into their bodies, and burn them alive, so don’t worry your head about it. Someone else has determined that it’s all for a good cause.

Onward march! Isn’t it wonderful?

- God

Dear God,

Do you believe in Santa Claus?

- Elvis

Elvis,

The truth is that I dont believe in Santa Claus. I never trusted him much, to tell the truth. I don’t think he’s an honest actor, to use Donald Rumsfeld’s terminology.

Take a look at how Santa Claus panders to everybody. You want a pony for Christmas? Okay, says Santa, sure. Want an electric giant model train set? Here you go. Whatever you want, Santa gives it away. You know why? Santa is desperate to be liked. He’s trying to buy your friendship.

You won’t get that from me. I work in mysterious ways. They say that I always answer, but sometimes the answer is no. The truth is, though, that sometimes I don’t even answer. I have an answering service do it for me.

I’m not pathetic and needy like Santa Claus. Ever notice how he’s always laughing at everyone’s jokes, like they’re sooooo funny. Yeah, ho, ho, ho. That’s such a fake laugh.

No way do I believe in Santa Claus. He’s just a poser.

- God