I

t is perhaps a very good thing that I am not God.  For if I were, there would be some serious changes here on earth.  I am afraid that there would be a sharp decline in the population, at least momentarily, until people got their act together about some things.  No, I would not impose the agenda of the religious right.  Indeed, it is far from obvious to me that the religious right is the best representative of God’s will.  In fact, if I were God my very problem would be that I would find the religious right a tad too sanctimonious. 

For instance, it seems to me that the doom-and-gloom approach to religion just has to be offensive to a God of righteousness, as this effectively turns God into little more than a coercive monster: “Do this and that or I will kick you ass”.  Just as this is surely no way to be a good parent, it seems to me that this is no way to be a God of righteousness. 

Not only that, the gloom-and-doom approach is rather self-defeating.  To be sure, fear is a very powerful motivating force.  But the idea is supposed to be that righteousness is one extraordinary counterbalance.  Constant talk about gloom and doom gets in the way of seeing God in this way.  If I were God, I most certainly would not not want these moral idiots representing me.  They are a mockery of all that is constitutive of righteousness.  And I would regard their abiding arrogance as a clear impediment to their realization of this truth.  Their hell would be a perpetual reading of the story of Job.

Then there is the issue of perspective.  Even if it is true that, as God, I do not consider homosexuality be ideal (I have my reasons, as parents often say), it is just so much nonsense to carry on as if it is the worse possible sin.  Let’s see: murder, rape, vicious betrayal, and homosexuality.  With whom do we have greater problem?  The one who is a homosexual or the one who is a murderer, rapist, or vicious betrayer?  If I were God, my view would be that if I have to tell you, then you are part of the problem.

So if I were God, I would rid the earth of all those self-righteous bastards who, in the name of speaking for me, are doing more harm than good.  I would have no patience with them, since their moral posture is odds with common sense, let alone righteousness. 

Let’s see: suicide bombings versus homosexuality.  Just how plausible is it to think that killing innocent people and killing two 16-year old homosexuals both count as righteous behavior that honors God? 

So when I say that there would be some serious changes if I were God, I trust that you can see what I mean. 

But my real wrath, if I were God, would be visited upon those who neglect the most innocent of all, namely children.  Parental love that neglects children is surely an oxymoron.  Parents who see their children as an opportunity to bring to fruition unfinished business are most disconcerting, as are parents who somehow think that love in absentia is virtuous. 

Parents want the undying love of their children.  But it seems to me that increasingly parents do not want to pay the price that comes with obtaining that love. 

Suppose that I bring you into the world, and then get on with my career.  So I will be absent for some of the most important learning moments in your life.  Indeed, I will not be there to aid you through some of the most important learning moments in your life.  So, then, tell me: Why exactly do you owe me your undying love?  Simply because I brought you into the world?  I think not ! ! !

Yet, it has become fashionable for parents to hold precisely this view.  To some extent, this works with marriages.  But children are not spouses.  And it is simply not enough to talk about the material benefits that the child receives.  After all, we do not suppose, at least ideally, that rich people get married in order to enhance their material well-being.  Rather, we suppose that there is a spiritual richness they seek in joining their lives together that has nothing whatsoever to do with increasing their material well-being.  Needless to say, to suppose otherwise for children is abominable. 

The child never gets to live those years again.  One can marry again and get it right the second or perhaps the third time around.  But one can never be a child again. 

Then there is the child sexual abuse, which for me is perhaps the very epitome of evil on an isolated basis—to be contrasted with institutional evil such as American Slavery or the Holocaust, where legal norms were in place to underwrite the evil.  The damage that systematic sexual abuse does to a child warrants nothing short of something on the order of castration.  And it pains me enormously that we live in a culture that can find a way to see the child abuser as a victim of some affliction or disorder. 

Child sexual abusers are generally masterful in their ways of capturing their human prey—and that is precisely the word for what is going on.  Not only that, these abusers exhibit remarkable self-restraint along the way.  I am not sure if anyone has ever heard of a child sexual abuser uncontrollably attempting to have sex child with a child in public square.  Murder can be a matter of blind rage.  Child sexual abuse is never that. 

The act of child sexual abuse is masterfully deliberate and intentional.  This, in turn, tells me something quite important, namely that every child abuser could have acted otherwise.  If I were God, I would perhaps not kill such individuals, but I can assure you that unthinkable impotence would be the order of the day for a lot of people.

Finally, if I were God, there is one profession that I would completely redefine; and that is the profession of being a lawyer. 

I am, of course, well aware that lawyers of done much good.  But there is this truth: lawyers have taught us how to lie entirely without compunction and to take advantage of every loophole possible without the least bit of contrition. 

More than other profession, lawyers have turned not owing up to one’s wrongdoing into an art form.  Indeed, a test of a lawyer’s prowess seems to be a function of his ability to get a not-guilty verdict for an obviously guilty person—the more obviously guilty, the better.  This is not trivial when one considers the influence of this profession upon society. 

I understand that not every lawyer is this way.  There are many respectable lawyers out there.  One of my dearest friends is one such person.  But glitter and glamour does not follow him around. 

Johnny Cochran, for instance, became a celebrity for having gotten a non-guilty verdict for O. J. Simpson—a man whom just about all the world regards as guilty.  No doubt, Cochran had a successful career before this.  But winning that non-guilty verdict for Simpson made Cochran an icon. 

Who became an icon?  The man who won a non-guilty verdict for a man whom a great many people regard as manifestly guilty.  What a model for our children in society.  If Cochran is a good lawyer in the instrumental sense of being able to win a non-guilty verdict for an guilty person, then it follows, all too painfully, that a bad lawyer is one who cannot do that. 

So if I were God, lawyers would be sworn to acknowledging the evidence; and anyone who was found tampering with or hiding the evidence in order to win a guilty non-guilty verdict would be automatically disbarred.  The idea in the beginning was never that a good lawyer was supposed to circumvent the evidence.  Rather, she or he was supposed to make sure that prosecution actually provided the jury with sound evidence.  What we have now is, in practice, a very long ways from that.

To state the obvious, though: I most certainly am not God.  One thought is that the moral morass that continues to unfold is but proof par excellence that there is no God.  I very much appreciate the force of that point.  Fortunately, there is another possibility, namely that it might very well take something like an all-loving, omni benevolent, and omnipotent God to see all this moral morass unfolding and not do a great deal of harm to us mere mortals.  On this alternative, then, the obvious is merely resoundingly re-affirmed: I am not good enough to be God ! ! !   But, of course, you knew that.