Big God

“God shouldn’t pick winners and losers. It’s a perversion of our free prayer system.”

“But, if a supplicant is in need, shouldn’t he or she be able to appeal to a higher power and expect some help.”

“Supplicants must pray themselves up by their sandalstraps.”

“But if God doesn’t act, if God isn’t listening?”

“God is listening. God just doesn’t choose. God lets the invisible hand of free prayer determine who rises or falls. That’s the proper role of God.”

“Yet, if two prayers are contradictory doesn’t God have to choose? Or if one prayer is for the benefit of millions and another is centered on only one supplicant’s desires, mustn’t God serve the greater good?”

“Don’t try to steer this into an Occupy Heaven bog. Next, you’ll be complaining about the whole Too Big to Kneel fiasco. You just have to trust that God has a purpose and that purpose is clear to those who truly believe.”

“Why don’t I see that purpose? I pray. I believe.”

“Of course you pray. You pray that God will be there to bail you out in your hour of unrestricted need. You want a bigger and bigger God. One you can appeal to for justice, fairness and equality—at the expense of the true faith.”

“But we believe in the same God. We share the same faith."

“Seriously? Your ideas of Big God are blasphemous. A plague, a pox, an insidious virus that will infect the true meaning of God and mutate our congrenation into a many-armed monster promising a thousand handouts we can’t afford.”

“I’m a monotheist. Don’t play the polytheist card with me.”

“It has to be played because, at its core, Big God is polytheistic. Every supplicant’s need requiring its own bureaucratically minded deity. It becomes a drag on our motive force. Our theocracy can’t thrive in that environment. It tithes us to death. Small and large corprayations can’t be hamstrung by the self-serving greed and intrusiveness of Big God.”

“You are so out of touch. Most supplicants are hurting, yet it seems only a chosen few receive most of God’s favor. How is that just? How is that moral?”

“God favors those who favor themselves.”

“And Big God, as you see it, would favor too many? The minority majority.”

“Big God steals the bounty of the industrious rich and showers it upon the undeserving poor.”

“The poor are every bit as industrious as the rich. It’s just that the praying field is not level. It has been slanted against the meek. Is it so wrong to redistribute some of that devotional wealth their way? Isn’t it merciful?”

“Absolutely not! That kind of forced reallocation of mercy does not allow for free will. The rich must freely give to the poor. If the rich are compelled to give, they suffer a degradation of the soul. Only a smaller, less regulated God understands how the rich must carefully mete out their compassion so as not to corrupt—or kill—with kindness. Only a smaller, less regulated God understands that by allowing the rich to get richer, the soul of our congrenation becomes more generous to all, eventually lifting us to our heavenly reward.”

“Why can’t we bring this heaven to earth?”

“Heretic. You are invoking divine intervention. Which would lead to bigger and bigger God which would result in prayer control and a totaliprayerian regime that quashes freedom and initiative. Are you mad? Do you want us to become a pariah like the Middle Kingdom?”

“No. I want us all to share equally in the fruits of our prayer.”

“Serpent! Speak not of the forbidden fruit.”

“Knowledge! God is good. And a greater God better. Prayer to the people!”

“You leave me no choice. Again, I must find it within my constitution to cast the first and last stone. Amend.”