Interviews with God

God has always existed and so has had a serious personal problem with boredom. This explains a lot of what has happened subsequently.

Creation of the world

God assumed the form of an echidna on a Friday in June in the year 4004. The following day, he created the world. As a joke, he inserted the Hubble constant and the fossil record into the universe to give the impression that it was 19 billion years old. Darwin now in heaven, says: “To appreciate God’s sense of humour you have to like practical jokes.” One of the most serious design flaws in God’s creation was the repetitive nature of washing up. God said on one occasion: “If I were to do it all over again, I would make washing up something you do only once and that’s it.”

Economic rationalism

It wasn’t until 1946, when John Maynard Keynes went to heaven, that God became a thoroughgoing economic rationalist. Prior to that time, there had been a lot of cross subsidisation and virtually no attempt to allocate head office and other overheads to operating Departments. For example purgatory received all its data processing and cleaning services as a free good. According to God, Heaven now compares favourably with Singapore in management of its economy- although this has been disputed by Lee Kwan Yew who believes there is still too much celestial reliance on handouts and not enough self discipline among the cherubim and the seraphim.

Immutability

According to Aristotle, God never changes as that would imply a lack of perfection and the idea of God is the idea of the most perfect being. God says: “Isn’t that just typical of an academic- take a basically sound idea and then push it too far.” God says He is not going to disagree that He is perfect but that doesn’t mean for a minute that he doesn’t change. “Of course I change, it’s just that I do so slowly. The important thing for someone in my position who- lets face it- is going to be around for a helluva long time, is to strike the right balance between being a flibbertigibbet and a stick in the mud. Quite frankly, I think I have made a pretty fair fist of it, certainly if you compare me with the Greek pantheon and the Hindu Gods, some of whom were absolute shockers.

God and the Pope

The Popes pride themselves on being infallible but, according to God, they make quite a lot of mistakes and have no more privileged access to Him than, say, the CEO of IBM. “Quite frankly” God says, “I hardly ever listen to the present Pope- far too guttural.”

The Popes were in their heyday during the renaissance, possessing both spiritual and temporal power. On the other hand, their personal lives were pretty sordid but, God says, “I didn’t mind that, somehow it made them more human. It’s the holy Joes who give me a pain in the bum- or would if I had a bum.”

Asked to nominate His favourite Pope, God says He would exclude all the one called Pius and probably the Innocents as well. “Giving yourself a name like that is a dead give away. Frankly, the Innocents were some of the worst Popes and I’m in a position to know. Probably the one I liked the best was John XXIII, who was also the crowd favourite. He played down the infallible angle and joked a lot and for somebody like me, very prone to boredom, that’s important.”

The one true God

For most of history, God’s pre-eminent status has been contested. The Greeks, the Romans and the Hindus recognised lots of Gods. The Jews were the first to say there was only one God and this was picked up by the Christians and the Moslems. “The Jewish decision to recognise me alone was very flattering and a great honour” says God. “Up to that time there was general agreement in heaven that I was top dog but there were quite a few deities who thought they could knock me off my perch. When the news came through that the Jews wouldn’t acknowledge anyone but me as God, I saw at once that the time was ripe to move on some of these lesser so called Gods, in particular the Devil who was getting very uppity. The ensuing conflict resulted in the Devil being cast into Hell. “Don’t imagine that I feel sorry for him because I don’t” God says. “The Devil was a troublemaker from the beginning and deserved everything he got. In my view I was perfectly justified in referring to him as the Evil One and taking very strong measures against him.” God admits that recent developments on earth are a concern. “Until several centuries ago what you had were kings, emperors, tyrants and dictators all of whom were absolute rulers. This reinforced my position in the heavenly sphere as the one true God. However with the advent of democracy on earth, it is accepted that a country’s leader is only there for a fixed term and this has tended to undermine my role. I suppose if the worst comes to the worst I could accept being President for life but I won’ t pretend that I’ll like it.”

Is God a woman?

According to God this is one of those questions where both feminists and traditionalists could do with a dose of common sense. Part of the trouble, God says, is that thinking on this issue has been very much in terms of human sexuality where you have a male-female polarity. If you look at things on a broader canvas you find there are some species that are all the one sex, such as snails whereas others don’t really have a sex at all, such as amoebas. So God’s gender is not just a question of male or female, in fact its not an either/or issue at all. God agrees that it’s silly to depict Her as old man with a beard but just as wrongheaded to imagine Him as some frumpish mother earth figure. “The fact is that I combine in myself the best elements of both sexes. I am a jolly attractive being with tremendous personal magnetism, very well built, witty, have a great sense of fun, and am a homemaker.” God won’t be drawn on whether He has ever had a relationship. She points out that one of the reasons the Greek gods went into a decline was that they were undisciplined in their private lives. On the other hand, His is a very lonely position and She is certainly not going to rule out the possibility of finding personal happiness if the right being comes along.

The trinity

God admits that the trinity imbroglio is partly His own fault but to understand what happened you have to appreciate the background. As God recollects, it was around about the fourth century. Christianity had really got a roll on, the pagans had been put to the sword, the church was acquiring some very nice real estate and a new crop of young blokes were coming on with some exciting ideas about what the church could get into in the future. “Which was all well and good” says God “except that I was having a terrible time in heaven with the Devil who was suddenly into practical jokes, mostly involving farting. At the same time there was an upsurge in prayer- the downside of Christianity’s success- and so I was being driven mad with demands to find lost bracelets, make it rain, straighten little Aurelius’s squint and all the rest of it.” The upshot was that for a time God completely lost it- in earthly terms He suffered a nervous breakdown. “One of the symptoms was this feeling I’d get that I was splitting into two or three different persons. This was not all that serious a problem in itself and disappeared quite quickly. Where I made my mistake was in letting slip that I was having triple personality problems to one of new breed of theologians who were continually praying to me- St Augustine or St John Chrysostym, one of those. This of course was too big a temptation for a young man trying to make his mark and the whole trinity thing got launched.” God adds that while the trinity idea has obviously run completely out of control, He is nevertheless quite a complex being with many dimensions to His personality.

More on creation

“The bible correctly records that I created the universe in six days and on the seventh, a Sunday, I rested” says God. “To be absolutely honest I also took the Wednesday afternoon off. Also, I sometimes failed to keep my mind on the job. Imagine my amazement when I found out that I had created those monkeys with the bright red bums and the disgusting habits. On the other hand, don’t blame me for Ralph Harris. I might have created his forefathers, way back, but I certainly didn’t create him.” God confesses bemusement at having made 20,000 species of spiders. “I thought I’d created a couple of hundred, tops. My apologies to the arachnophobes.” “I realise I’m a bit absent minded” says God “but you have to allow some latitude to a creative person. Anyway, I think its only fair that my creatures fix up any slight flaws in my handiwork arising from oversight. Shaving is an obvious example. Obviously, I didn’t intend men to have hair all over their faces, the idea is ridiculous. I’m pleased to see that most of them have the sense to shave it off and I can only sympathise with people who have to kiss the others.” God says that, contrary to a common preconception, He still does quite a lot of creative work. “I write poetry.” He says shyly. “Most of it is experimental. My latest work is an epic poem which only utilises the letters ‘p’,’z’, and ‘q’. Most poets would find that too technically difficult but, being God, I found it no trouble at all. I have never sought in my writing to pander to popular tastes but most of the people in heaven to whom I have shown my work think that it is very good.” God says that his next project is a novel, which He proposes to model on Jeffrey Archer’s work. “It will be a big sprawling broth of a book about a person who for years and years is completely alone and immerses himself in his work.” Does he eventually meet someone and find personal happiness? “I haven’t decided yet,” says God.

Omnipotence

God’s omnipotence is not a problem in itself but only when taken in conjunction with His benevolence. As several academics have pointed out, if God is both all-powerful and all loving, how come there are widows, orphans, wars, cancer etc., “I agree it’s a conundrum” says God “but in that respect it is by no means unique. For example there is Bertrand Russell’s paradox about the Cretan who said all Cretans were liars: if it’s true it’s false; and if it’s false it’s true. Along similar lines, Groucho Marx said he wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have him as a member.” God says that the problem has received the attention of some of the best minds in heaven. One suggestion is that He could avoid most of the problem if He surrendered a bit of His power so that while He was still extremely powerful He was not all-powerful. “No way.” says God “That’s just the kind of opportunity that the Devil wants. Let me make it perfectly clear, I’m not interested in power for it’s own sake. Frankly, I would much rather put my feet up and enjoy life-after all, its been a gruelling couple of millennia. But I have responsibilities to the heavenly hosts, to say nothing about my following on earth. So I’m very much afraid that I will be holding on to all my power until the Devil and all his minions have been completely eliminated and that won’t be in the near future.” It’s been put to God that if that is His attitude the only other option is for Him to stop being all loving. “Well,” says God “my job is all about making the tough decisions. If the only way to avoid the paradox is for me to indulge in occasional bouts of non-loving behaviour, then that’s what I’ll do. I should add that the new policy will be administered sensitively. Higher income groups will bear the brunt of any pain etc that I am compelled to inflict in the future. Disadvantaged sectors of the population will hardly be affected.”

Prayer

God says that when the concept of prayer was first mooted He was quite attracted to it. The basic thinking was that there should be an informal means of communicating with Him that was available to all. Up to that time ordinary people could not talk direct to the God of their choice but had to go through a priestly caste of some sort. “Essentially” God says, “prayer was a marketing ploy. We were looking for something which would have mass appeal and swing the vast majority of mankind behind Me as the one true God. Prayer was what we came up with. The key to it was the offer of 24-hour availability. The way we saw it, most of the priestly castes would be too slow on their feet to come up with a counter offer and we were right.” Prayer turned out to be a tremendous success and is generally acknowledged to be one of the main reasons that the Greek pantheon, to name but one lot of Gods, went into a decline (though their bizarre sexual practices were no doubt also a factor). “Unfortunately” says God “we were too successful. I was deluged by a huge volume of entreaties and I began to appreciate why so many deities used priestly castes as a filtering device. It wasn’t so much the silliness of most of the prayers as the form in which they were offered. For several centuries most prayers began ‘I, a miserable worm, beg thee almighty and supreme being…’ Well, I ask you!” God says that the volume of prayer has not abated though most of it now comes from third world countries. “I have nothing against poor people but their prayers tend to be repetitive, with lots of request for bread and so on. Actually the best prayers I ever got were from the Viennese middle classes- lots of personal angst and that sort of thing. Of course that was before Freud came along.”