Dear Diary:
Finally, I'm going to win. God might have won with Job but this is the one that counts. We're playing for the world and I'm going to prevail.
No doubt God was right about Job. Barely right, I might add. Job did everything but come right out and curse the Big Guy in the Sky. For the most part, Job might as well have been an angst-ridden existentialist. Naturally, I pointed out to God at the conclusion of Job's little ordeals that the best the Creator had on earth had come within a spiritual hair of turning atheist.
I demanded a rematch. Double or nothing, I said. But God merely shook his head. Then I tried triple or nothing and so it went until I made my final offer. I boasted that I could get humans to kill each other off like flies, trash the planet and do it all in the name of the Almighty. And I could do it all without having any physical power or substance myself. All I asked was to be to have access to their beliefs. Based upon my analysis of humans, I didn't need to commit any physical acts myself. I knew that humans would gladly do my bidding, especially in the name of God. What I couldn't get them to do out of pure greed I could get them to do after justifying it by saying it was what their Maker wanted.
Just look at what happened with Adam and Eve. God said that they would bliss out, do good, and love one another. After all, they would have everything they could possibly want or need. And it was all free of charge. God didn't even ask Adam and Eve to say a prayer of thanks. He didn't even ask them to sing one hymn or tithe a single apple. He didn't even take the opportunity to inform them of heaven and hell, or give them the 10 Commandments. God didn't even tell them to run get a fig leaf for they were naked and should be ashamed. No, that was I who introduced shame and modesty. Without me, humans would have no clothes. Nor would mullahs and preachers have a job if not for the guilt with which I acquainted them. God is such a radical, free-spirited natural soul that he made humans like they were lilies or sparrows in paradise. But let me tell you, love doesn't make the world go around.
All that love one another and turn the other cheek lovey-dovey hippie talk was all fine and good on paper, I told God, but it wasn't in the least realistic. I said that he needed to get his head out of the clouds and come down to earth ever now and then. Humans might do all right when everything was going their way but as soon as there was a snake in the grass that they would freak out and blame God. The first time something goes wrong, I told God, they will act as if you have abandoned them and they will pass on their guilt to their offspring. I said that what he had made wholesome and good that I could turn vile and noxious.
Besides that, I pointed out, humans are so flawed in design that you could put them in pure paradise and that wouldn't be good enough for them. No, they simply couldn't enjoy paradise but would have to understand how it works. They had to take Eden apart to see if they could put it back together. As could have been easily predicted with Adam and Eve, (and was, I might add, by you know who) they screwed it up. Of course, they had a little help, but it was all within the scope of my duties.
Even after Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Noah and the flood, God was still so liberally optimistic as to believe everything would turn out all right with humans no matter how bad things looked. I mean look how long it took before it even occurred to God that he might need to give humans some laws like the Ten Commandments. Even then, it wasn't until Jesus that heaven and hell got properly introduced.
Jesus was absolutely accurate in using the parable of the Prodigal Son to describe God as amazingly indulgent, patient, tolerant and forgiving. In other words, God was and is a bleeding-heart sap who needed to be taught a lesson for his own good. Unconditional love is simply pie-in-the-sky idealism. Knowing God needed a good dose of reality is what lead me to enticing him into making the wagers about Job and then about humanity and the world. Just read the first chapter of the book of Job. It tells about all this and lists me as having come in with the Sons of God. Just think of me as Big Brother.
And, now, the way things are, I don't care how optimistic God might be. I'm going to win and it is just that simple. If humans don't slaughter each other in the name of religion then they are going to commit mass suicide breathing the polluted smoke of their offerings and sacrifices to me, Mammon. I understand humans. Greed, fear/anger and ignorance are the emotions which govern mortals.
Just look at America, the once great hope. No longer does the United States of America exist. Now it is the United State of Mammon. They just don't know it yet. But already they worship and advance Mammon's values as if they were defending God. In America, the fundamentalists and Mammonites have joined forces to impose one government, religion and economy on the world. In the middle east, greedy Muslim fundamentalists want the same. And they both teach that Jesus is on their side and coming back for one final fight to massacre their enemies! Thank you, very much, religious fundamentalists, greedy corporations and the great mass of apathy known as humanity. I can promise you, dear diary, I am going to brag in subsequent entries about how I have been able to turn the Prince of Peace into the Avenger of Armageddon.
Religious violence is not the only thing I have got humans to do in the name of God. Hell, I've been getting mortals to murder each other since the beginning in the name of the Almighty. Damn if there has been a war where I haven't been able to get somebody invoke religious beliefs. But if humans don't butcher each other as blood sacrifices to God then global warming has about reached the no-return point and there is no chance in hell that humans are ever going to let saving themselves and the planet ever get in the way of making a buck. It's the good old Mammonite way. Except of course I have them call it the American way. They can't openly use my name yet.
But all that is going to soon change. When the unholy trinity of big business, big government, and big religion soon dominate all the world then I can claim victory. Then it can finally be revealed whom mankind has really served all this time.
After the final battle in which billions are killed in the name of God, and the lights go down low, then the spotlight will shine on the center stage and I will come forth and in my best Mick Jagger strut will start to sing:
Please allow me to introduce myself
Im a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith
And I was round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
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