If you were to describe what God is and what belief in him entails without using the actual word “God”, people would think you’re completely insane, and maybe you are.
I was watching some old George Carlin skits, and he has one about taking a description of God out of context. It’s hilarious, but it really does get one to thinking. If you took a description of God and faith that never uses the word “God”, and compare it to the things “crazy” people say, the similarities would be frightening. It makes you wonder if maybe the crazy people are sane, or maybe the religious people are crazy.
Let’s break the whole thing down…
There is a big invisible man in the sky. He tells you what to do, what not to do, and you always do what he tells you to. You love him, but you’re afraid of him too, and that’s the way he likes it. When the voice of the invisible being speaks to you, you’re supposed to pay attention, and it always tells the truth. But wait! There’s also an invisible evil red man with horns and a tail and when he talks to you you’re supposed to ignore him because he always lies.
This invisible man in the sky knows everything that everyone does, sees everything that everyone does, understands everything, and has ultimate power over everything that ever was or will be. Kinda like Santa, he sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good, and you’ll burn in the eternal fires of a really bad alternate world if you mess up. Way worse than coal, trust me
There’s this great invisible being that wants you to love it and obey it without question, it will punish you if you don’t do what it wants, and you’re supposed to love it even after it’s done horrible things to you for getting out of line. Sounds perfectly sane, right? When it does bad things to good people, that’s just because it works in mysterious ways. But when good things happen to bad people, it’s that evil red guy at work again.
Let’s not forget, this amazing invisible being who wants you to love it has a list of things you’re not allowed to do. If you disobey the list, you go to a place of torture and pain and suffering for all eternity. If you obey the list, there is a different place you go where there is light and love and joy for all eternity. Right. And people think rooms lined with tin foil are crazy!
An amazing invisible man in the sky up and decided to say “Poof! There it is!” and all the trees and people and animals and pretty little things of the world came into being. All that ever was or ever will be was there all at once. All the scientific proof of the billions of years of life on Earth is a lie, and fossils were planted by an evil red man with a tail and horns who likes to make people do bad things and hates the invisible man in the sky. Yup, sure.
Even though I can’t see the invisible man in the sky, and you can’t, and no one can, he really is there. Really! He’s there every minute of every day, and with every single person on the planet, except for the ones that talk to the red man with the tail and horns. But they’re supposed to love him too and follow the rules so that they can get to the beautiful happy place in the sky.
The invisible man in the sky is all-powerful, and yet for some reason he can’t defeat the invisible evil red guy with the horns. They’re always going at it. They both talk to you and try to get you to do stuff. They both want you to think they have all the answers and all the power. They can never agree on anything. They sound a lot like a typical married couple.
If you’re good, and you follow the invisible man’s rules, you can go to a pretty building on the last day of the week and make requests, and the invisible man, if he’s in a good mood, will give you what you want. Sometimes he doesn’t listen, but you’re supposed to be okay with that. He is listening to billions of people simultaneously after all, he’s gotta be busy.
As you can see, this whole God and Satan thing is pretty crazy when you really look at it. So, are crazy people really just religious without the pomp and circumstance, or are religious people as crazy as those cardboard box dwellers that we shy away from when we see them on the sidewalk?
