Among Us
Perhaps it’s because I work for a Christian television station and have to transcribe weekly religious sermons, but I find myself thinking more and more about religion in general and Christianity in particular. I come from a position that is foreign to most of my peers here at the station and certainly different from those of the pastors who have devoted their lives to their faith. Being an atheist surrounded by the faithful is an interesting conundrum. Being exposed to the vicissitudes of God’s relationship to mankind causes me to reflect on my own beliefs and just why, so many years ago, I abandoned my Catholic upbringing to become a cynic.
Let me please elaborate on my position as a nonbeliever. I in no way hate God. I’d have to believe in a god to hate it, of course. I in no way harbor any sort of resentment towards the religious or their multitudes of beliefs. In fact, I ardently respect those people who are steadfast in their faith. That respect, however, vanishes entirely when those people attempt to convert me. To “show me the light” so to speak. This offends me to the very core of my being. The notion that they are better than I am because their beliefs are the “right” ones and my lack of belief is “wrong” is fundamentally abhorrent to me. To each his own. I believe that passionately. And let me also say that being an atheist does not preclude one from being spiritual. Atheist means exactly what it sounds like. A- no. Theist- God. No god. One can still have spiritual or supernatural beliefs without believing in a god. Buddhists, for example, are atheists.
This brings me to my next point, which is another thorn in my blasphemous side: the notion that belief in a supreme being brings morality while atheism breeds chaos and “sin.” Think of a small child with militant parents. Imagine that child desperately wants to steal his best friend’s toy dinosaur but doesn’t for fear of angering his parents and receiving punishment for his bad deed. Now imagine another child who also has the desire for a toy dinosaur but knows that if he steals it from his friend, the other little boy will be very sad. Both children are “good” in that they don’t commit an offense, but their reasoning is fundamentally different. The first child is good for fear of punishment while the second is good because he knows it’s the right thing to do. He has empathy and respect for his fellow human beings without needing mommy or daddy to waggle their fingers at him. Now tell me, which do you think is more noble: morality for fear of punishment or morality for morality’s sake? I thought so.
One of the pastors who gave a sermon on our show said something that intrigued me. He was talking about the immense capacity of god to love his children and how that love was so great, and God himself so immeasurable, that we as humans could never truly know him or understand him. Fine, I’ve heard that before. What he said next caused a chain reaction in my brain. “I need to know that God is unknowable. The day I understand God is the day that he becomes too small and I’d need to find another.” This was said by a pastor. A man who has devoted his life in service to his Lord and savior. The moment he said that I thought: but what if God isn’t unknowable? What if he expended all of his power and knowledge just to create us and is nearly powerless now, seeking only the love of his children to sustain him? Would the billions of people around the world who claim to love him simply turn away? Can we not love a God who is feeble and meek? If the answer is no then I say that that is not love at all. And thus this story was born. I’m sure a small niche will find it offensive somehow, though I can’t for the life of me see why.
Among Us
The book trembled in his hands. Clouded eyes squinted hard over half-moon spectacles at the words on the page. They seemed to him like tiny, dancing droplets of ink swaying to and fro with each tremor of age that rocked his frail body. His cheeks were unseemly rosy, as if infused with the joys of holiday festivities and lifetimes of reverie. The deep, splintering wrinkles that creased his face echoed the laughter of ages. This man read with a purpose. He spoke the words aloud and each syllable fell from his lips like morning dew from a blade of grass. In the cadence of his speech swarmed hives of stinging things, rolling thunder, and soft breezes through dandelion petals. The tympanic throbbing of his ancient heart kept time, marking the sonorous timber of his voice.
His audience was enthralled. Pairs of eyes peered into his, always searching their depths for an ending and finding only infinity. In a circle around him they stood. To the casual passerby, the scene might prove alarming. Here sat this elderly thing with brittle bones and craggy countenance, dwarfed by innumerable shadowy titans. Their unholy visages leering languidly at this embodiment of debility. But prudence reveals wonders. In each gawking face is reflected an awe and reverence unmatched in the mortal world. Beyond the human ploy of morbid fascination or pure existential terror, these faces expressed the most pure of emotions in existence: immeasurable, unconditional love. No fear. No expectation. No punishment. No reward.
The most diminutive of these shadow beasts held the most sought-after position, directly in front of the lector. This small but imposing figure seemed to coil in on himself endlessly. His lidless eyes gaped, flashing like a guttering flame in the gloom. He inched forward, the others glancing at him, questioning. When he approached the old man’s knobby feet his reading stopped. The words hung in the air for a moment before descending like ashes into the darkness.
“What would you like to know, son?” The old man smiled and closed the book. It rested in his lap, apparently exhausted from being read one too many times.
Leviathan, the diminutive one, placed his pale hands in the lap of his father and joined palms with him. “I have asked and you have answered. Yet I ask again: why must you walk among them and not before them? Why trail the clamor of progress rather than lead it?”
“For that, my son, I have you. Your brothers and sisters are my hands in this world. They are my feet, my eyes, my ears.” The aged one leaned back in his chair, shrinking into the wood with fatigue, the weight of eternity resting on his chest. “I am content.”
“Must we leave again? Can’t we stay by your side?” It was a plea made more pitiful by the monstrousness of its messenger.
But the old man sighed. “There is much to be done. You are young. You are more powerful than I. You must go.”
Leviathan turned to his siblings, sweeping his serpentine gaze across the lot of them. The great beasts sighed their disappointment. “I tried.” Leviathan said as he led them away.
Alone in the dim now, the elderly man clutched his book to his breast and began to recite its story from memory. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth…”
It was good. The great vastness before him was now pocketed with creation. Molecules buzzed past, ferociously filling the newness, binding together and bursting apart. Everything expanding and contracting, silence and pandemonium. He was the apex. The universe fled from him and begged him to follow. Each breadth of distance too far from the center clamoring to get back. It breathed, this hollow place, it lived. He had made it live. It expanded to accommodate his greatness, its life a consequence of his.
Through the glorious, spiraling chaos, a small thing floated past him. A small speck of a thing, round and ridiculous and intriguing. He plucked it out of the air and rested it in his palm. It felt warm to the touch. Not the warmth of combustion, but the warmth of a new life waiting to be born. There was light on this thing as it circled its sun, and darkness too. There were oceans and valleys and forests. There were peacocks and pillbugs and poppy seeds. This small thing in his hands made him dizzy with possibilities. What if there was an answer in this little zygote of a world? With care and caution he summoned forth a creature out of the clay. Its body was yet formless but it’s mind was razor sharp. He poured into it all of his questions, all of his longings. He gave it all of himself and his greatness, and asked it to give him form. The creature writhed. It pulled and shook and screamed from a lipless face and a lungless chest until finally it lay panting on the ground. Sweat-soaked and shivering it quivered in the mud. And he stood beside it, thrilled and horrified at what he had done.
There were round orbs through which he could see and long limbs from which dangled appendages made to grasp and claw and create. He blinked, newborn, at everything around him, once so small and now massive and enveloping. There could be nothing beyond the horizon, nothing above the clouds. And yet he knew there was. A groan from behind him drew his attention to the creature who had given him form just as he had given it life. As he looked into the mirror image of himself, the man-child fell to its knees. He regarded its crude genuflections for a moment before saying “stop.” The word vibrated up through his throat, tickling his tongue as it exited his mouth.
The new man balked. “Are you not my master?”
“You are my child.” He held open his arms and waited for an embrace that never came.
“I am no child.” The man spat. “There is power running through me. Can you control that power?”
He shook his head, marveling at the courage and arrogance his creation emanated.
“Then you are useless to me.”
Adam turned abruptly and left him standing alone in the mud.
He watched Adam for weeks, hiding in the shade of trees or under the cover of night. Always from a distance. The man tore through the world with brute strength and bent its creatures to his will. One the second day, Adam found a fawn nosing at a patch of sparse grass on the plains. It welcomed him openly to share in its find. He snapped its neck and dragged it, bleeding, into the woods. On the fifteenth day he came across a tree whose fruit had over ripened and fallen to the ground. Rather than pick through the rotting vegetation, Adam eyed the last fruit that still clung to the tallest branch. The tree bent the branch towards him, creaking happily. After he had plucked the fruit, he tore the branch from the tree and fashioned a spear.
Each night as Adam lay in sleep, he whined and screamed and tore at his flesh with dirty fingernails. He was in agony. On one such night, He crept into the firelight’s glow and touched the ground beside Adam’s head. The last of His strength was sapped as a new figure emerged from the earth, softer and smaller that before. She lay, in sleep as Adam did. Her breathing soft and rhythmic. There was a calm about her and yet, He felt, the same stirring of chaos grew in her as it had in Adam.
In the morning when they woke to find kindred flesh, they wrested and writhed with each other, relishing in the union of their bodies. Together they moved over the earth violently. He was overwhelmed. What could be done? Why did these beings crave conflict so?
And that's all I've got so far. Any suggestions are appreciated.