I bumped into one of our former neighbours the other day.
He liked a drink, did this chap. He liked a drink so much that after he had a drink he decided he would like a drink. Well, I think you can see the pattern.
Thing was, he was finally booze-bussed. Busted for driving while drunk and unlicensed because he had been busted for driving while drunk so many times before. His car was impounded by the sheriff's office because there were so many fines outstanding. This meant that he lost his job because he was a traveller for some mob what makes custom-fitted aluminium framed windows and doors.
Because he lost his job and couldn’t manage on the dole unless he stopped drinking, he missed a few mortgage payments and at the mortgagee auction the bank was happy to sell up for just enough to recover the amount currently owed. His wife didn’t even get a chance to kick him out. She couldn’t find a place to rent anywhere, so took their teenage kids home to live with her parents in Upper Congupna Downs.
When I bumped into him, he had a filthy great hurty looking black eye, so I asked him what happened.
He said he knew he couldn’t sink any further when he woke up one morning in a gutter. After he managed to stand up and get his balance he looked around, wondering where he could get a drink, and realised he was on the corner of a busy intersection where there is a church. There was a big sign outside the church that said “Jesus Loves You”. It ticked him off.
He went inside the church and started bellowing at the Big Boss.
“You love me do you, you bastard. Call yourself a God? What sort of God are you? You reckon you love me? I lost me licence, I lost me car, I lost me job, I lost me house… apart from taking my wife and kids away, what have you ever done for me? Tell me, why me? WHY ME?”
That was when he got the shiner. There was a rush of wind inside the roof of the church and a big fist came down and just when it smote him he heard a booming voice say “YOU SHIT ME, THAT’S WHY!”
I call that self imposed poverty because he's got no one else to blame but himself.
ReplyDeleteTrue or partly true story?
ReplyDeleteWould you settle for a grain of truth?
DeleteJust exercising my imagination muscles.... after Dina mentioned people who are excessively nice/happy I was reminded of a Born Again Christian who was trying to tell a man with schizophrenia that he would be fine if he just took God into his heart. Loopy rather than callous, but probably dismissive.
If you have things it's because you are good, if you don;t it's because you are bad, god loves everyone... profound? Or just profoundly silly?
If there is a God....
DeleteMaybe rewards aren't about love. Maybe they're about a lack of faith (On God's part) "I didn't think you could handle any big problems."
OR it could be like your story...where the God just gets really fed up.
That's an idea I've heard somewhere in reverse... that God doesn't send us anything we can't handle, but sometimes he just has too much confidence in us.
DeleteWhen people talk of a god that is genuinely interested in everything about each of billions of individuals, I suspect either god is warped or they are.
Why is my desire to get a nice pair of shoes on special [or something equally important to world peace] going to be important to a god who could step in and stop innocent children starving in a famine [or something equally horrific]?
If there is a god is he really that shallow? Does he really have the power to change things, or is life a series of random events, our reactions and then the inevitable consequences of those reactions?
If nothing is random and everything is subject to the whims of a god, then what is the point of life?
Which is to say, if I were a god [as opposed to the goddess that I am] I would probably turn Jimi Hendrix up really loud on my ipod to drown out the sound of all the whingeing, whining and pettiness. It would all pretty much give me the irrits.
I agree.
DeleteI personally don't believe in a personal God.
At most....I believe in a higher power. Maybe kind of like "The Force" in Star Wars.
But if I'm wrong and there is a God who cares about us as individuals....then I can imagine him handing out situations based on what he thinks we can handle. And yeah. He'd probably have too much confidence in us sometimes. And maybe sometimes...not enough.
Isn't it bizarre how many western Christians are upper middle class? But did this status come before or after they took God into their hearts??!!
ReplyDeleteMost of them are still waiting for the status, I suspect. It astonishes me how many televangelists are mil/billionaires ... and what enormous crowds they attract with their pseudo religious promises of success. Not all of those in the congregations can be as rich as la Gina, could they?
DeleteIt's a delicious irony that the well off embrace an organisational construct within which they meet to exhort their god to 'help the starving children'? OR is that just me?!
DeleteAnd don't many of these organisational constructs exist primarily for the purpose of passing the buck?
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