UNSPOKEN:

I never got to finish what I wanted to say. Or maybe I just chose not to finish it. We were talking about this unjust universe and whether or not “God” is to blame. You seemed to get the idea that I literally blamed God for the human condition, as if I viewed him as the quintessential absentee landlord, with apologies to Al Pacino.

The conversation, as I recall, began with me lamenting the fact that we live in a world where my mother, a woman virtually free of bigotry and hate, suffered horribly and died 5 days before her 55th birthday while others live on to healthy old age. By “others,” I meant evil old monsters in human form.

Your viewpoint, valid insofar as it cannot be disproved, was that everything happens for a reason and we are all allotted a specific amount of time on this mud-ball. Everyone has a purpose, you said, and we only have a so much time to fulfill it.

I said people only tell themselves that to justify a world that has no justice in it. My use of the word “justice” confused you, so I broke it down by describing the mentality as desperately seeking reasons for things that already have less spectacular causes, i.e. childhood Diabetes is a disease that is genetic, not a curse from the gods. I went on to say that the idea that all that happens is God’s will is BS, and if true, God is insane and Buddha was correct when he said God is even more deluded than we are.

This prompted you to reply with the tried ‘n true “You have the right to your beliefs & so do I” comment. My reply: “We all do. And we are both probably wrong.”

You seemed to think I blamed God for what happened to my mother. I don’t blame God, I told you. I blame childhood Diabetes. I am disgusted that certain evil people get to live while my mother did not. The God stuff was just a metaphor. I’d have to believe in him for it to be more than that.

Ultimately, you agreed with me that those who are most evil seem to survive into old age. Your theory was that they become that way because they have to live in a decaying shell. Mine was that old age returns us to our natural state sans all the political correctness and veneer of civilization. Maybe we are both right.

But there was something else. Something I didn’t tell you. Something I didn’t feel comfortable adding because I would have been embarrassed.

The real reason I can’t believe in a grand design or a just and righteous creator-deity is because I refuse to accept that it would torment me by causing me to meet you and not be able to go any further than that.

See why I didn’t say it?