God is
COFFEE ROOM?
While I was assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency, my group had its own "coffee room." Sink,
fridg, stove, and a large coffee pot. Every day someone different made coffee according to their personal likes and whims,
and their own idea of what the Ideal Pot of Coffee would be. Above the pot was a large sign, which read:
If it looks like coffee,
Tastes like coffee,
Smells like coffee,
You didn't
get it here.
In this same line, I have enjoyed the "God is .." discussions. Always
with a wry smile. It is delightful that we define God and give Him human characteristics - as though we create God in our
image. The Jealous God, for example - if I were all powerful and all knowing, jealousy
would not be an issue. Jose, I think you come closer to having it right - you don't mention
it. Then again, I don't claim to know more about God than anyone else; so it is just one more ignorant view.
I think back to the famous "man of God" Oral Roberts and his 1987 announcement that if people didn't
raise enough money for a new church, then God was going to take Oral "home." This was great. A world-renowned preacher attributing
to God the same characterists as we might assign to a Mafia capo. "Send money or Oral dies." SNL's response dovetailed nicely
with the theme, "Spokesmen for God say He has never heard of Oral Roberts."
Anyway, keep the discussion going. Spokesmen for God are always needed to clear things up.
Larry
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Larry also writes, Re: EMPTY COFFEE
A few years back I spent about a month traveling around Thailand. There I gained a great deal of respect for
Buddhism. I was amazed in downtown Bangkok to find the homes of the very wealthy side by side with cardboard box shacks. The
haves and the have-nots seem to be equally happy about there place in life. They were social equals (though far from being
financial equals). I have been in at least 50 countries, but only in a Buddhist society did the rich and poor mix/interact
so completely.
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Larry -
The Coffee Room sign is terrific. Like Hugh Longacre in Yonkerdu, I once worked in a frame shop.
Its motto was posted on the wall: In by Nine, Out by October.
Before Hockaday, Mark Twain used "I the Lord your God am a jealous God" to question folks'
attributing perfection to the Almighty - in the posthumously published Letters from the Earth. I don't know if Don
was alluding to Twain deliberately, or whether great minds just work alike. In regard to the God made in man's own image:
An early Greek philosopher said if horses have a god, he must look like a horse.
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Larry responds -
Tom, re your quote about (more or less): If horses had gods, they would look like horses.
I have a favorite theory about what God looks like. (In the spirit of election year campaigners - this theory is based upon
no facts whatsoever.) Instead of being an old man, white beard, beautiful robes; I think God will appear to the individual
as the latter's worst enemy. This will take the Christians to the heart of their religion - if you want forgiveness you must
forgive. Can you love your enemy? Can you reconcile earthly values? You can see that I like to bring people face-to-face with
their hang-ups, as well as stories with an ironic twist.
GOD, THE UNIVERSE, AND COFFEE
Aboard the most advanced spacecraft in the galaxy, the ship's computer "invariably produced a plastic
cup filled with a liquid which was almost, but not quite exactly, unlike tea," inevitably followed by the encouraging words,
"Share and Enjoy." (Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe")
Don Hockaday writes, RE: SUNDAY COFFEE
"You
are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when
you eat of it you will surely die."
Sorry - been busy. I haven't been keeping up for a week or so. You people
talk too fast and quite copiously. I tuned in tonight while the tub is filling with too-hot water and see - Is that me - saying
something bout God owning up to being a jealous God is in the news. Jealousy is one of many faults passed on through
divine inspiration. He hadn't invented the Miranda Act yet.
I don't know how I got to be the apologist for God. I don't
even believe in him (as a "Him") in the first place.
Give the guy a break. He is trying to run the whole universe,
get the divine inspiration word out, and people are picking at him about not stacking trash in the dumpster in a military
manner. He can be God, but he apparently has no hope of wining an election for J.P. He is only superhuman.
We
meet for coffee occasionally as schedules permit. I will try to bring the subject up.
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Don,
The fellow
trying to get tea aboard the most advanced spacecraft in the galaxy, call it the Free Radical, was Arthur Dent, a refugee
from the recently destroyed planet called Earth. Unfortunate that it was destroyed, as it was designed, not by God but
by an advanced compurter on another planet to provide the question to the answer "42."
That advanced civilization (which
manifests in our space-time continuum as white lab mice) had designed a mega-computer, Deep Thought, to "Answer the question
of Life the Universe, and Everything," which, after several millennia, it did: 42.
The computer programmers'
distant descendants told Deep Thought that its answer was almost, but not quite, exactly unlike the sort of answer their ancestors
and they had expected. After a couple of years, Deep Thought told them he'd concluded that the question must have been
flawed.
But to present the question properly, Deep Thought would have to design a meta-mega computer to determine what
precisely it was human beings wanted to know about God the Universe and Everything. That computer was Earth. Before
the Vogons destroyed it.
But then, thanks to time travel and the planet-crafter Slartiblartfast, the Earth is restored.
No one on earth except Arthur Dent's pal Ford Prefect can see Slartiblartfast's spacecraft, cleverly disguised as an Italian
restaurant standing on one end, because of S.E.P.
For my money, S.E.P. is the most useful of many useful concepts in
all five volumes of Adams' "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy" trilogy. It is even more enlightening than Adams'
explanation that time travel cannot cause historical anomalies because, whenever one is, history will have already happened.
It is even more consoling than God's Last Words to His Creation:
WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.
The
S.E.P. field was invented when it was discovered that making an object, such as a mountain, invisible was prohibitive - less
expensive to repackage the mountain and put it into orbit as an extra moon.
A spaceship generating an S.E.P. field
will not be truly invisible. Rather the observer will look straight at the upended Italian restaurant, and his brain
will automatically register it as...
Somebody Else's Problem.
Share and
Enjoy.
***
