Dear God,

Something I’ve never understood is how the same people who say that the Bible ought to be literally interpreted as the word of God can then turn around and say, when their religious claims don’t seem to make sense, that God works in mysterious ways. If you are truly mysterious in the way that you work, God, then why would you go around writing books that state literally and directly what your agenda is and what you want other people to do about it? That’s not very mysterious, is it?

So, which is it, God? Do you work in mysterious ways or literal ways?

- Dorian

Dorian,

The only honest response I can give you is this: Blueberry muffin.

I say that with the utmost sincerity.

- God

Dear God,

In your comments on the relationship between Jesus and Mithras, I couldn’t help notice that you spelled “quesStion” with two s’s. Is this some kind of ancient spelling or are you not as infallible as many people think?

- Atheist Jew

Atheist Jew,

I am as infallible as many people think, and that’s the problem. Many people think many different things about how infallible I am. It was one of my mistakes to allow free will to apply in the determination of such theological matters. That in itself indicates some degree of infallibility on my part, some might say. Others would merely note that I work in mysterious ways.

The truth, or one version of it, is that I meant to type quesstion instead of question. Why? It’s a divine mystery. It may appear, to those who are uninitiated in the complexities of theological discipline, to be an accidental slip of a cosmic keyboard, but, given that I am the divine creator of the entire universe, those in the priestly know understand that the extra S was there for a reason. The religious studies department at Stanford University will be holding a conference on the matter next year.

Besides, your question uses an apostrophe to attempt to indicate a plural, when in fact, such punctuation is meant to refer to a possession. Take the mistaken punctuation out of your own eye before attempting to pluck an apparent typographical error out of the all-seeing eye of the Lord Thy God!

- 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,

I just read that last piece of advice that you gave, claiming that a man named Paul Quadriches is the registered owner of AdviceFromGod.com, and impersonates you with your permission as a body double at the address of 17 Little Tree Lane in South Waterloo, New Jersey. Well, I looked it up on MapQuest, and ther is no such address. There isn’t even any such town as South Waterloo, New Jersey.

How am I supposed to give any credit to any advice that you give, when you give such obviously false information as this?

- Clarice

Clarice,

Whether you give credit to the advice I give is entirely up to you. Of course, there are consequences, such as eternal damnation, if you make the wrong choice.

I wonder what makes you think that it’s so obvious that I have given out false information by saying that Paul Quadriche lives at 17 Little Tree Lane, South Waterloo, New Jersey. It’s true that South Waterloo cannot be found on MapQuest, but does that mean that it does not exist? It just so happens that I have used my infinite power to hide South Waterloo from MapQuest.

You’re really not much of a believer, are you? Here I am, God himself, telling you that there is a town in New Jersey named South Waterloo. On the other hand, MapQuest tells you that there is no such place as South Waterloo, New Jersey. You choose to believe the word of MapQuest over the word of God? Where is your faith?

- God

Dear God,

You say that you’re God, and that you write this advice column in the name of the highest divine forced in the universe. Yet, when I check to see who has registered AdviceFromGod.com, the domain name upon which this column is hosted, I see the name Paul Quadriche of 17 Little Tree Lane, South Waterloo, New Jersey.

Is Mr. Quadriche your professional prophetic agent, a new messianic incarnation of you on Earth, or an unauthorized imposter?

- Lattimore

Lattimore,

Paul Quadriche is what I like to call an authorized imposter. You know how Saddam Hussein had a double who would trouble around Iraq, so as to confuse assassins? Well, Paul Quadriche does the same thing for me, impersonating me with my permission. Now that you mention it, though, Saddam Hussein has been hanged, hasn’t he? Maybe I ought to give Paul a call, and tell him to lie low for a while, just in case.

- God

Dear God,

You are present in everything in the Universe, and that includes all people. So, you’re in Pope Benedict, but you’re also in Paris Hilton and in Madonna.

So, if God is in Madonna, what was the big deal about that show Madonna had in Europe during which she got up on a crucifix while singing? The Catholic priests were all up in arms about it, but if you are in Madonna, God, what’s the big deal?

God, you were crucified in Jesus, so why can’t you be crucified in Madonna? Where is the blasphemy?

- Lucianne

Lucianne,

Well, the implication was that I am my own mother. Madonna is supposed to be the Mother of God, not God himself, and if you start thinking about it that way, that God was the mother of God, then I would be giving birth to myself and then crucifying my own mother while committing suicide, which is absurd.

Above all else, God must not be absurd. It is to protect myself against the internal absurdity of myself that I declare the crucifixion of Madonna to be blasphemy.

- God

Dear God,

You are supposed to be all powerful and present throughout the entire universe. So, if you can do anything and go anywhere, you ought to be able to go on vacation.

On the other hand, if you are present everywhere at once, you would then be at work at the same time that you were on vacation, and therefore, would not really be on vacation from work at all.

How can you be omnipresent and all powerful and go on vacation? Is this another one of those mysterious ways things?

- Kenneth

Kenneth,

As a matter of fact, it is one of those mysterious ways things. I like to spend my vacations on the Mysterious Ways Cruise Lines.

This is one of those questions that you’re just not supposed to ask, Kenneth. It’s like the question, Who is God’s great grandfather?

What I’ve done, rather than resolve the conundrum, is to issue an edict that this question you’ve asked cannot be asked. Therefore, I never have to deal with it.

Oh, wait a minute. You’ve asked it anyway. Another conundrum! Aaaugh! Lemon juice on my cosmic paper cut! Ow! Ow! Ow!

- God

Dear God,

Today, I read a study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research that concludes that only one percent of the world’s people control 40 percent of the world’s wealth, and that 90 percent of the world’s people are forced to share just one percent of the world’s wealth.

This seems outrageously unjust to me. They say that you are omnibenevolent, purely good. If that’s true, how can you allow such injustice to continue in the world?

- Pierre

Pierre,

This system of distribution of wealth seems unjust to you only because you don’t know all the facts. What you didn’t know is that that big 90 percent chunk of economically poor people around the world in fact have much better representation in other areas of human life.

Did you know, for example, that the 90 percent of the world that is so much financially poorer than everybody else in fact has a much higher representation of their folk music on Putamayo albums of world music? It’s true.

Also, those poor people you seem so concerned about require much less medication for depression. Why, the percentage of people in that bottom 90 percent who take Prozac every day is much lower than the number of people in the most wealthy one percent who take Prozac every day.

Also, people in the 90 percent that is more poor are documented to have fewer instances of mechanical problems with their second cars.

See? If you take the time to look at the details, you’ll find that this supposed injustice all comes out in the wash. The world truly is just, as I have ordained it to be.

- God

Dear God,

They say that you are both all-knowing and all-powerful.

So, if that’s true, why couldn’t you just use your power to filter out all those nasty email spam messages that I get about phentermine and disney toon porn and all that kind of stuff.

Surely, it’s in your power to do so, so what gives?

- Harried Harry

Harry,

There’s a simple answer for why I don’t use my omniscience and omnipotence to stop these email messages. Spam is the spawn of Satan.

If you’re intelligent, you’ll now be following up with another question: Why don’t I just get rid of Satan?

The answer is that Satan’s evil is for your own good. I once eliminated Satan and all his works a long time ago, and people got really pissy about it. They complained and complained that they didn’t have anything to do, or any reason to do anything at all. They would just lay around in bed all day, drooling.

It seems that people need to have things in their life that they believe to be evil, just as a motivational technique. So, I had to reinstate Satan, and as a compensation for his earlier destruction, give Satan’s hordes all a year’s supply of jelly beans. Demons really love jelly beans, so I was quite put out.

Spam, as you call it, helps you to appreciate the personal emails that you do get. Think of those pesky emails as my way of keeping you appreciative.

- God

Dear God,

How does getting Yourself killed help You forgive people for stuff they didn’t do?

- Joe

Joe,

What you have to understand is that when that whole crucifixion thing happened, Jesus was kind of going through an acting out stage in his life. Any father will know what I’m talking about. Kids get self-obsessed, and desperate for attention, and sometimes they even think that if they just commit suicide, that everyone will love them and finally understand their pain.

The trouble with Jesus is that it actually took place. Let’s be frank about this: Jesus had a martyr complex. He really thought that he held all the bad actions of all humanity ever on his shoulders, and if he could just pay for it all, then everything would turn out all right in the end.

Look around you, and ask yourself: Did everything turn out all right in the end? No. These people who call Jesus the savior of the Earth are missing the obvious fact that the Earth has not been saved. Funny that.

As Jesus’s father, it really bugs me that people glorify what was really a twisted suicide pact that he and Pontius Pilate cooked up. It’s time to stop rewarding this kind of negative behavior.

Just ignore Jesus. He wanted the attention, and that’s why he misbehaved and threw away a perfectly good career in faith healing tent show revivals.

As for forgiveness for ancient sins, honestly, I lost track of all that a long time ago. I may be omniscient, but that doesn’t mean I don’t mislay a moral ledger every now and then. I honestly couldn’t care less about that whole apple from the forbidden tree thing. I’m over it, so why can’t people just let it drop?

- God

Dear God,

Are you really God?

Aren’t you really just a person writing this blog?

- Doubting Douglass

Douglass,

How can you doubt that I am God. I am God.

There, you see? As you can see from the above paragraph, it has been written that I am God. That makes it scripture. Therefore, it must be true.

Right?

- God

Dear God,

A few days ago, a reader of yours asked a question about the Interlaken Reformed Church in Interlaken, New York. I was wondering what the church in Interlaken did that caused it to need reform. Was it a Ted Haggard evangelical sort of thing, with church leaders hiring prostitutes and buying methamphetamines? Did the church leaders have to go to reform school, perhaps?

- Clarice

Clarice,

No, the leaders of the Interlaken Reformed Church were not required to go to reform school. Neither was there any sex scandal, or allegation of the purchase of illegal drugs by church leaders.

Rather, the original theological teachings of the Interlaken Church forbade the running of footraces through the surrounding countryside. The church leaders taught that races of this sort were the work of Satan.

The problem was that the Interlaken Church wasn’t bringing in much money, because it was missing out on the vital local enthusiasm for running over hill and dale. The rummage sales and pancake breakfasts weren’t bringing in the crowds that they used to.

So, one day, a church elder stood up from the pews and declared that he believed that there was no Biblical scripture on running footraces, and that the Interlaken Church’s teaching on the sinfulness of steeple chases was based on false prophecy from Satan himself.

There was quite a tumult that day, I can tell you, and the rumors are that more than one flower pot was broken. The result was, however, that by the next Sunday, the Interlaken Church decided to reform itself from its past Satanic anti-footrace past. Thereafter, the church was known as the Interlaken Reformed Church.

- God