"I am quitting" said God

“I am quitting, with immediate effect.” said God.

I was hit by the suddenness of it. God appearing to you can be quite a shock.

“Quitting .. What?” I blurted out.

“Quitting from the position of God” He was looking sad, weighed down by something.

A fraction of a moment later, the realization of what He had said and the implication that the world was coming to an end dawned on me. I felt as if I have been thrown over a steep cliff into a bottomless abyss.  I stammered, “What? You can’t do that!”

“Why on earth not? I am the master of my freewill. Are you telling me I am not?” God retorted.

“I mean..  I mean, the world would come to an end.. Where would we go? What would we do? Oh, no. Would we survive? I don’t want to die.” I pleaded.

“Don’t be melodramatic. Nothing is going to happen to your world.” God dismissed my pleadings.

“Nothing will happen? How would world survive without you?” I persisted, still pleading.

“Don’t act dumb. I gave you intelligence & logical thinking faculties, use them.  The world is on autopilot and will keep operating like it is doing till you wreck it. I did approve the basic principles, balancing mechanisms, final designs and different cycles of life, weather etc. but since then, I have had nothing much to do with running of the universe. I have been just sitting there, twiddling my thumbs and watching the spectacle.”

Relieved at the elimination of immediate existential threat, I regained my composure. My coherence, lucidity, logic and articulation started coming back. “You said you have nothing much to do as the world runs by itself, why would you want to quit then? Are you bored of sitting idle?”

The angry expression of God was similar to a religious leader staring at a blasphemer and I cringed in fear. But He regained control & chided with me. “I know that I have nothing to do, now you do too, but your race refuses to believe that.”

As He saw that I was none the wiser by his cryptic comment, He continued, “Your race believes that I run everything around here; I make the sun rise every morning, I signal wind to change direction, I direct rain to fall. They believe I control everything that happens to their lives. Every occurrence, good or bad, happy or sad, expected or unexpected is attributed to me as ‘the will of God’. Heck! Some people even believe I am the cause of bigamy!”

“Then they want me to intervene, change the natural course of things. They want me to grant them wishes, realize their unfulfilled dreams and untangle their problems. They want prosperity, possessions, good health and everything else they can’t get by themselves, retrieve something they have lost, either by their own mistakes or someone else’s, or just by being at a wrong place at a particular time. “

“And they don’t understand that I can’t do any of these.“

I was stunned. Gods were the supposed to be Omnipotent. And here was One saying that He can’t do anything! He owns the universe, dammit!  I was about to stammer into incoherence again.

He read my thoughts and continued, “Not that I can’t do. Just that I won’t do because the rules governing the world won’t allow me to do things humans keep asking for.”

“But you made the rules, didn’t you?” like a petulant child, I butted in.

“Oh, I did. But If I begin breaking them, how do I expect everyone else to follow them?”

I should have been feeling like an Arjuna in presence of Krishna witnessing the unraveling of secrets of universe but instead was witness to the self deprecating God making lame excuses for His inability to achieve his Key Result Areas. He was sounding more like an under achiever who had flunked his grades and His excuses were sounding like governmental red tape. Blame the rules or standard operating procedure when you can’t deliver!

He read my thoughts again and said, “Don’t try to be over smart, kid. It is a classic case of fish being judged for its tree climbing skills. You would have heard of this saying humans use quite often. It goes like this. ‘If you judge fishes by their ability to climb trees, they would believe themselves to be under performers, forever.’ Consider me a fish being judged on my tree climbing skills.”

“Let me explain further. I have given to the man, traits like ingenuity, initiative, creativity, resourcefulness, industriousness, physical strength to work hard, mental strength to face adversity, a logical thinking faculty to make things work, a discerning mind to appreciate beauty etc., then topped it up with an untrammeled, uncontrolled freewill but I am not judged by all this. Instead, in your world, I am assessed by those deliverables which are not mine, to begin with.”    

“To use another expression you humans use, I can only put you in a situation where you can catch the fish. I can give you natural habitats where there is plenty of fish, intelligence to understand how to catch it, logical mind to help you make implements to improve your haul, fire to cook it when you catch it, commonsense to know that bones need to be discarded but I won’t give you a fish.  You have to catch it yourself using your initiative, ingenuity, resourcefulness and hard work.”

“And you have to pay for anything you use. You would need to replenish the habitat, taking care not to overuse it.  There are no subsidies, freebies or doles in my world. If you don’t pay it today, you end up paying more in the long run. Those are the rules.”

“Despite that, humans (most of them, at least) keep asking for something I can’t, or rather, won’t provide.”

Two questions sprang to my mind but I too was getting adept at the game. I did not voice them and they were replied, “Yes. I don’t consider such requests at all. I don’t manipulate the lottery machines to favor anyone. I don’t influence employer’s minds on who is the right candidate. I don’t spread or allocate diseases nor do I cure them. I don’t cause famines or earthquakes. Two reasons why I reject such requests; firstly, I have no wish to upset the delicately balanced, working mechanisms of the universe and secondly I would hate to see my favorite species i.e. humans converted to beggars.”

“As to your second question, well, the answer is in affirmative again. Your world would not miss me much. In fact, it may not come to know about my absence at all. It re-emphasizes the feeling of being unwanted and un-loved, further strengthening my resolve to quit.”

I was still trying to keep up with the roller coaster of lessons in physics, philosophy and economics, suddenly, a bell started ringing. Before I could react to it, the image of God began dissolving in a cloud of fog. I lost my bearings as the fog enveloped me.

As the foggy darkness cleared, I woke up to a start, jolted to real world. It was my morning alarm which was ringing. Another manic Monday had begun.

Disclaimer: Author cannot validate that the figure which appeared in the dream was God though he did look like the figures represented in pictures of deities. Nor can he provide any proof that such an dream sequence actually happened.