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

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,

I’ve got a young family, but I’m not feeling very young myself any more. I’m in my mid-thirties, and I’m struggling to keep support my family. Every time I seem to get ahead, something comes along that knocks me back two steps. We’re on the edge financially, and have used up all the resources we have to keep going, paying the bills.

It’s gotten so bad now that I spend most nights awake, thinking about how we’re going to get through it. I just lie in bed, looking at the dark ceiling, thinking about my last day at work.

I feel vulnerable at work, you see, because I really need my job. That makes me hate it all the more. Every moment I’m at work, I feel trapped. The things I should be enjoying about my job, the things that brought me to the job in the first place, now feel like drudgery, just rote activities I go through just to bring a few dollars home. I’m stressed out and tired, and so I know that I’m not doing my job as well as I used to.

Then, at night, I can’t stop thinking about all the mistakes I’ve made at work, all the little things that are adding up that make me afraid that I’ll be fired. I think about how stupid I’ve been to bring my job into jeopardy, and then at the same time I wish I could be successful enough to leave my job behind.

It’s a cycle that’s taking me down. How can I stop it?

- Leo

Leo,

My son Jesus once was giving an executive seminar to some people who are like you, and he said to them, “Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work, but even Solomon [a prominent CEO] was never dressed so finely. So, if these little plants in the field can live it up in such luxury without working, don’t you think that you’ll be prosperous enough? Don’t worry about your work, and all the things that you need to get done. Just live right, and everything will work out in the end. Just worry about today and don’t think about tomorrow.”

The thing about executive seminars, though, is that they’re selective in the information they give you. People who run seminars just want everything to go smoothly so that they can grab their fee and then skip town before anyone realizes they’ve been had.

You know what happened to the lilies in that field? There was an ice storm later that same day, and they were all killed.

So, you see what comes from not toiling?

Jesus always wanted to be a flower. He was always angry with me for making him a human being, and when he gave that lecture, he was venting some of his anger.

You’re not a lily of the field that just scatters its seeds and lets them fend for themselves. You can’t just sit around photosynthesizing food. You need to gather resources to provide for your family. You’re an intelligent animal with hopes and terrors, not some brainless plant.

So, the only way for your to overcome your anxiety is to get yourself together and get back to work. If you wake up in the middle of the night worrying, don’t lay there, still and helpless like a wilting vegetable. Get up, go downstairs to the kitchen table, and do a little bit of work for your job to prepare for the coming day until you’re tired enough to fall asleep again. Or, you might use that time to develop a plan for working for yourself, instead of for somebody else.

Anxiety is useful, but only if it leads you to do something that makes things better. Otherwise, you’re just being an anxious lily, and when that ice storm comes, you’ll freeze like the rest of the lilies - and your family will freeze to death too.

- God

Dear God,

Senator and presidential candidate Chris Dodd took to the floor of the United States Senate and defended Americans from a big government electronic spying program to read their email and listen to their telephone calls.

In spite of that, Dodd is only running at about one percent in the polls, and can’t seem to get many news organizations to pay attention to his campaign.

Britney’s little sister, Jamie Lynn Spears, on the other hand, gets pregnant at the age of 16, and she’s the top story of the day.

It doesn’t seem fair. What can Chris Dodd do to get more attention for his campaign?

- Don

Don,

I’d say that Chris Dodd would have to get pregnant himself, if he wanted to get the attention of the American voting public.

- God

Dear God,

I need to come up with a lot of money, as soon as possible. What methods do you suggest?

- Bruce

Bruce,

Off the top of my head, I can think of three options

1. Find a bag full of hundred dollar bills, and don’t report it to the police

2. Make up your own currency from the country of Blatigonia. Print out a series of bills in the denomination of 100 Blatigon dollars. Then, call your local bank, and tell them that you’re the Vice President of Foreign Currency for the National Bank of Canada, and that you just want to confirm that the exchange rate for the Blatigon dollar is one Blatigon for one American dollar. Wait an hour, then go down to the bank, and ask to exchange your 100 Blatigon dollar bills for American currency.

3. While your neighbor is away on vacation, set up a stage in their driveway, with big red white and blue ribbons like they use at car dealerships, and a big sign that says “Real Estate Auction”. Be sure to ask for a check from the winner.

Don’t spend it all in one place.

- God

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

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,

I’m a forty year-old father of three. I love my family, and I want to do well by them, but I’m about at the end of my rope.

I’ve been working long hours at my job for years now, always feeling that I’m on the verge of achieving financial success. Just when I think I have financial stability in grasp, an unanticipated cost comes up, and I have to put my nose back to the grindstone again.

I want to make sure that my family is provided for, but I’m exhausted. What can I do to overcome my fatigue and re-energize my professional life to finally attain the success I’ve been working toward for so long?

- Eugene

Eugene,

When I get feeling blue, or a little bit lost, or not sure what to do next, I always invent a new religion. I find someone to be my special prophet for a few years, and give that person magical powers to impress the little people and get them to pay attention. Then, the followers of the new religion give me extra-special enthusiastic worship, convinced that they’re going to change the world. The prophets rarely survive for longer than five or ten years, but the believers keep on worshipping me in a new, jim dandy kind of way that makes me feel all rosy inside again.

Oh, wait. I forgot. You’re not omnipotent. That must explain why you’re tired all the time.

Hm. Have you tried pulling yourself up by your bootstraps?

- God

Dear God,

I am a Christian, and an aspiring writer, but I have a kind of writer’s block. For a long time, I thought that I could put my two passions together and be a Christian writer. I went to college and took a lot of classes about religion, and prepared myself to professionally write about the Bible.

But then, I thought to myself, why write about the Bible? I mean, the Bible is the holy word of God, right? So, I figure, God, that you knew what you wanted to say when you wrote the Bible, and that’s why you chose to write the Bible the way that you did.

Isn’t it a kind of blasphemy to write about the Bible, trying to explain it in terms other than itself? The whole field of Bible studies is kind of an insult to you, isn’t it, God? It’s like saying that God didn’t write enough when he wrote the Bible, and that the way that God writes isn’t something that is something people can understand, like God is a great big babbler who requires interpreters.

I figure, if you needed to write anything more to make yourself clear, you would have. Am I right? If so, what should I write about now?

- Steven

Steven,

Yes, you’re right. It is blasphemy to write about the Bible or to engage in academic Bible Studies. Here you are though, writing about people who write about the Bible. That’s double blasphemy. You could say that I’m now writing about people who write about people who write about the Bible, and that it’s triple blasphemy, but I am God, and I get a special exemption.

I suggest that, instead of writing about my book, the Bible, you write about my holy painting. Yes, a lot of people know about the Word of God, but no one pays any attention to the Painting of God. It’s a pretty good painting too. It’s got a giraffe, and a volcano, and a field of flowers, and a man with a funny hat in it. How many paintings can you say that about?

Get to work, Steven.

- God

Dear God,

I am a student in my first semester at university, and I am taking a creative writing class. There’s something I don’t understand, and it’s going to drive me insane unless I can get an adequate explanation for it.

Why must people in creative writing classes write stories that happened in the past in the present tense? Why can’t they just write in the past tense, like they’re telling the story that they’re telling, instead of narrating events as they happen, without knowing what comes next?

I’ll give you an example I heard today:

“I sit. The man looks at me. My chest rises and falls with every breath I take. My eyes see the world, but my nose smells it. ‘Hunt the deer and kill it,’ he says. I do not move. My knife is folded in my back pocket. Up in the sky, there is a cloud.”

Aaargh! What the hell is this all about, God?

- Kirk Erlich

Kirk,

It’s an ancient curse that I placed upon all English Departments a generation ago, in punishment for the flower power revolution. All students who take courses in creative writing are condemned to have no memory of the past, but to experience the past as if it is the present, so that their memories are merely perceptions without reflection. This curse cannot be lifted until an entire year goes by without a single stick of sandalwood incense being burned in a college dormitory room.

- God

Dear God,

I’m seeing today on CafePress the news that we are all now to be allowed to make up our own designs relating to the movie Snakes on a Plane, and sell those designs on shirts and mugs and stuff like that.

The founder of CafePress gave us the news, saying,

“We’re excited to announce that New Line Cinema is partnering with CafePress.com to permit fans of Snakes on a Plane to become official licensees of Snakes on a Plane merchandise - creating a unique program in the true ‘citizen’ spirit of the movie. This interactive promotion allows our network of over 2.5 million members to unleash their creativity to transform Snakes artwork and ideas into unique gifts and share in the revenue stream.”

I don’t get it.

First of all, I don’t understand why I should want to just stick up some stuff related to some movie about snakes on a plane onto my web site and try to convince people to buy it. Why would anyone buy something like that, and why wouldn’t they just buy it from the movie company directly?

Secondly, I don’t understand what the big deal about the movie Snakes on A Plane is, anyway. So, there are snakes on a plane, and people on a plane, and the people have to fly the plane without getting bitten or constricted or otherwise killed. Why not Jello on a Ferris Wheel, a movie in which someone has to try to climb down from the top of a frozen ferris wheel that has accidentally been coated in slippery Jello? Makes about as much sense to me.

- Chip the CafePress Shopowner

Chip,

This is about much more than just some little movie. Snakes on a Plane actually secretly refers to a secret society derived from the Spanish Conquistadores who conquered the Aztec empire and were inducted into the secret cult of Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent god that could fly.

The airplane is merely a symbol of flight, not the actual object of action in the movie. Snakes represent renewal of life, because they can shed their skin and are symbolic of the divine hoop of the world.

Don’t take this movie literally. Samuel L. Jackson knows more than he’s letting on.

And CafePress? I wouldn’t be surprised if Maheesh Jain were in on the whole thing, using CafePress items like buttons and bumper stickers to spread the word surreptitiously among cult members that the time for activiation has come.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at this movie, and the CafePress promotional scheme, and tell me if it makes sense on a literal level.

There’s more to this than meets the forked tongue.

- God

Dear God,

In Jerry Springer The Opera, you sing “It aint easy being me” and ask Jerry, of all people, for advice. But have you considered hiring a professional management consultant? Are there any management consultants in heaven?

- Tremont

Tremont,

That’s an excellent question. It isn’t easy being me, but the fact is that Jerry Springer isn’t really much help. He didn’t give me any advice that worked in the end.

The truth is that I have created the entire universe as a kind of management consultant. It’s like a mirror really, given that I am the cosmos. I look at the universe, and it tells me things about myself. It’s all about me, me, me.

I have hired a professional management consultant from San Diego, and she tells me that I need to stop thinking about myself. Let me tell you, that’s not an easy thing to do when you’re omnipresent, but, thankfully, I am also omnipotent, so I could stop thinking about myself, if I really wanted to. The truth of the matter is that I really don’t want to.

Now, about heaven. Yes, there are plenty of professional management consultants in heaven. Thinking about that, it doesn’t fill me with very much confidence about their skills. Death is, after all, the ultimate end to one’s career, and these consultants are all dead. That’s how they got into heaven, after all. They haven’t been very successful at keeping their careers going, have they? So, although all the professional management consultants in heaven keep on begging me for work, I refuse to hire any of them.

- God