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Sep. 12th, 2014 01:35 amBelieve it or not I invented God in order to blame someone for what had gone wrong with my life. And He caught on. Insulting His craftsmanship became wildly popular.
The notion that He could hear these insults, even the unvoiced ones, didn't become widespread until years later, when the conception had long since left my control. At first this made insulting Him more appetizing, and the young competed to get the litany of errors just right, to make Him abject with perfect eloquence.
I think the problem crept in with the fleshing out of the metaphor. My son-in-law, my right hand man at the time, introduced Him to the mountain provinces as a sort of blacksmith, complete with hammer. How unlucky He was with His hammer became a theme of mirthful song.
But then they started drawing Him with that hammer. Political cartoons, at first, where He smashed up His work area or breakfast due to drink or hamhandedness. But one artist, a good one, depicted the mountains He had forged. There the completed ones were on His table. We were to laugh at their asymmetry, I think, but they had been placed next to His hammer. Probably we did laugh. But later we dreamed of such a hammer looming above us in the river valley. What its shadow must be like. What else might be done with it, and to whom.
That was the last year one heard Him insulted. It was also the year we started capitalizing Him.
Be careful about shaming. Where shameful behavior is brought to light improvement either occurs at once or is resisted firmly, where the choice to hate the shamer is seen as less costly than admitting fault. The mountain people didn't believe an excuse could be found for what had gone wrong already. All had been fine until His attention was directed to his own incompetence, but what could He do now but turn against the right and the good? But replace them with His own power and agency, and compel us to do likewise?
I assured them He didn't exist but they burned down my house and exiled me downriver. They sent me a letter explaining that that had probably saved my life: the best that could be hoped for was to placate Him by doing wicked-seeming acts on His behalf that were not quite as bad as those He would surely do Himself once stirred up, knowing Him. They said mere nonexistence wouldn't stop Him. They'd made some calculations to prove this to me, but the hand these were inscribed in was illegible from tremor.
His other purported attributes can't be blamed on me, and to my thinking were much worse innovations. The monster in the night who sees us all. Who is everywhere. Who lives forever and will never let us die.
But what power would any of these have if we didn't accept the basic psychology of the failure full of fury at being blamed? And how could we doubt that, once the idea was implanted, part of Him would see that we could not help blaming him forever, given the scope of that failure, no matter how hard we tried to suppress or deny it? He would need infinite reassurances from us, since neither He nor we would ever believe them.
The notion that He could hear these insults, even the unvoiced ones, didn't become widespread until years later, when the conception had long since left my control. At first this made insulting Him more appetizing, and the young competed to get the litany of errors just right, to make Him abject with perfect eloquence.
I think the problem crept in with the fleshing out of the metaphor. My son-in-law, my right hand man at the time, introduced Him to the mountain provinces as a sort of blacksmith, complete with hammer. How unlucky He was with His hammer became a theme of mirthful song.
But then they started drawing Him with that hammer. Political cartoons, at first, where He smashed up His work area or breakfast due to drink or hamhandedness. But one artist, a good one, depicted the mountains He had forged. There the completed ones were on His table. We were to laugh at their asymmetry, I think, but they had been placed next to His hammer. Probably we did laugh. But later we dreamed of such a hammer looming above us in the river valley. What its shadow must be like. What else might be done with it, and to whom.
That was the last year one heard Him insulted. It was also the year we started capitalizing Him.
Be careful about shaming. Where shameful behavior is brought to light improvement either occurs at once or is resisted firmly, where the choice to hate the shamer is seen as less costly than admitting fault. The mountain people didn't believe an excuse could be found for what had gone wrong already. All had been fine until His attention was directed to his own incompetence, but what could He do now but turn against the right and the good? But replace them with His own power and agency, and compel us to do likewise?
I assured them He didn't exist but they burned down my house and exiled me downriver. They sent me a letter explaining that that had probably saved my life: the best that could be hoped for was to placate Him by doing wicked-seeming acts on His behalf that were not quite as bad as those He would surely do Himself once stirred up, knowing Him. They said mere nonexistence wouldn't stop Him. They'd made some calculations to prove this to me, but the hand these were inscribed in was illegible from tremor.
His other purported attributes can't be blamed on me, and to my thinking were much worse innovations. The monster in the night who sees us all. Who is everywhere. Who lives forever and will never let us die.
But what power would any of these have if we didn't accept the basic psychology of the failure full of fury at being blamed? And how could we doubt that, once the idea was implanted, part of Him would see that we could not help blaming him forever, given the scope of that failure, no matter how hard we tried to suppress or deny it? He would need infinite reassurances from us, since neither He nor we would ever believe them.
