God Is A Stern Whore They always told me: God is good. God is all-merciful. Ask and ye shall receive. Seek and ye shall find. It shall be granted unto you. God gives it to you gratis. All you have to do is ask, and ye shall inherit the earth. And I know now that they had God confused with Santa Claus. They say that God has given me my life for free. I tell them that this is not so, for life is expensive. Solely on a monetary basis, one can see that every choice ends with the exchange of cash, or goods, or services. I, for example, chose college. Thirty-five grand a year. Law school after that, easily a hundred grand. Gotta pay off those student loans six months after graduation. Some of my friends chose marriage. The melding of incomes may ameliorate some financial worries, but a nice wedding these days costs as much as a year of college. And then some of my friends chose to drop out and prematurely enter the workforce. They tell me they'll pay for it later, when I'm working at some consulate or some firm and I make enough to pay for New York University ten times over and they're struggling to get the phone bill paid. And then there are kids. Medical and dental plans, rent, housing payments, car loans. Sometime, somehow, someone will eventually have to cough up the cash or the blood for it. They will have to forfeit some part of what they have earned. Something for something else; it's the American way. But they tell me not to worry because if I were to just pray, to just believe, God will guide me, God will provide. But no choice we make, whether we profess that we have made it in the name of God or not, can be made without exchange. Nothing we have been given by God has been given without the eventual price of grief and misery. They say that this is the day the Lord has made. God has given this day unto us. Another day that children starve, mothers mourn their lost babies, and lovelorn youths yearn for love their parents never gave and their beloved cannot provide. God has given us this day at the price of our tears. They say that life is a gift form God. But a "gift" is something that is freely granted. They say that in exchange for my life, God wants my soul. My prayers and my salvation and my eternal faithfulness. He wants my exultations as I sing his praises on my knees and proclaim him my Lord and Savior. Only then will he bless me. Only then will I attain true joy. Like a Wall Street employer, God works on the spoils system: my prayers have become currency; my soul, barter for the sliver of a promise of happiness. And sometimes I think that death would be less expensive than life. Certainly, this is not so; were I to die tomorrow, there would be the funeral expenses to think about, and there would still be the college loans for my parents to pay off. The price tag that accompanies death is just as formidable as the one that was required of me in life. But they assure me that salvation is another gift from God. Salvation, however, is only a gift from God if you traded his love for your soul during your time on Earth. The right amount of prayers pays your passage into heaven, just as the right amount of cash pays for your airfare to Paris. They often speak of those who sign away their souls to Satan. They deplore the exchange of one's mortal soul for power. They cannot see the difference as they themselves exchange their souls for what they wish to have. They tell me that those who do not work hard enough for God shall pay their due by being cast into the pit of eternal flame. That sounds eerily like something I was told at my last job. Yes, we all know what that means: God must be my former boss. God gives nothing for free. I know that now. I believe in a higher power, more so now than ever. But the idea of an all-generous, ever-giving deity is exactly that: an idea. A human construct. We, as humans, cannot comprehend the idea of granting something for nothing, no matter how much we desire it. And this construct of God is merely a reflection of the capitalist system. The quest to salvation is like the American workforce, where allegiance buys favors, where lives are signed away and damnation is gained with one misstep, where the entity that has control of the universe does not work pro bono, but quid pro quo. Whatsoever ye shall ask of God comes with the price tag that we weak-willed humans put with it. But what the hell do I know? I'm just a lapsed Catholic, after all. back to thoughts home