Being God is a good gig.

Suppose you control your company, down to the least employee. You have the absolute say on what's what and what's not. Now suppose that something goes wrong --an employee screws up and wreaks havoc. Maybe somebody is hurt or even dies. Who's to blame?

Well, you'd think it would be you, since you hired this employee and were supposed to be monitoring his or her progress and behavior. You messed up and are responsible, right?

Ordinarily yes, but not if you're God.

If you're God, you absolve Yourself of all responsibility.

How is it You get to cop that plea?

Simple: free will.

It's a great loophole You created for Yourself way back when. You create the people and set them loose in the world, but give them the ability -- sort of -- to make choices for themselves. "Sort of" because You don't make them all uniformly smart enough to make those choices. Some of Your creations You make stupider, some smarter, but You hold them all to the same standard. If they blow it, it's their fault entirely, none of Your own.

If that employee messed up, it was his own fault entirely. You had nothing to do with it. Fire him and be done with it. Hire somebody else, right? Only try to hire somebody smarter next time.
But wait -- that would be You doing the hiring. Hmm . . .

Let's back up. You are the Creator. You made everything, including all these humans. Aren't You, then, responsible for all their mistakes? What's missing here? A sense of fair play?

What's missing is our very human interpretation of God. We humans assume, at least some of us, that there is an all-powerful and all-knowing super-human who exists outside our own existence who made us all possible and laid down laws we were supposed to follow -- in the Bible, for instance, or the Koran or wherever -- but Who ducks out when things go bad. When the tidal wave hits, or the hurricane, or the tornado, He's 'm nowhere to be found.

It was God's will, the believers say. He lifts us up, he lets us down. Who are we to doubt?

But some of us humans question that kind of thinking. I mean, these big storms come of their own accord, sparing none. The homes of the righteous and the sinners are swept away alike.
Shouldn't the true believers be spared?

Well, no. Weather is weather, and if He ordained it, it was bound to happen, and woe to you if you didn't have flood insurance. He wasn't looking out for you and your family, and you need to get used to that fact. It may or may not be true that God created us, but it's highly unlikely that He considers each of us individually. Think of Santa Claus. Didn't you, at some point, realize that he couldn't possibly deliver gifts to all the Christian houses in the world in a single night? It was a great story, a shared myth, that we knew wasn't true, but we keep it alive for our kids because it keeps them innocent.

We want to believe in God for the same reasons: We want to think we're special and that if we've been good, He will reward us -- not with candy but with an afterlife -- and so we go through the same kinds of rituals in church every Sunday. But while we're thanking God for bringing us prosperity, we don't blame him for all the useless deaths in wars around the world or the suffering of so many people in countries we can't even point to on a map.

Why is that?

Very simple. We don't want to offend God. We don't want to accuse Him of allowing such misery. We're afraid that if we blame Him, in word or deed, He will smite us, as in the Old Testament, when He was a wrathful god, so much nastier than the one Jesus introduced us to. But we don't trust Jesus. He was a good guy, forgiving us for almost everything, but we still remember his Father, that irritable deity who slew whole tribes who didn't believe.

In the end, we really don't know what to think or what to believe. We're stranded here on Planet Earth with limited intelligence and just hopes to go on. Surely this isn't all, right? Surely this miserable life I've lived -- or a good life -- isn't the final meaning of existence?

Surely there's more.

Well, maybe. Time will tell.

In the meantime, if I had to pick a job for myself, it would be God.

All the credit, none of the blame.

A good gig.

None of this means that I don't think some extra-sensory intelligence is responsible for all that we see and experience: it's just that I don't claim to know what that might be. I welcome its existence! Reveal yourself to me, angel or demon or spirit -- or God!

Until you do, as Joni Mitchell sang in one of her songs, I'll be in the bar. Make it a double.