God: Certainly.

G: Knock yourself out.

G: Ugh… I should have seen that one coming! Look, you humans have to be right all of the time, don’t you? Well, Stop It! The point of faith is love. What you call me, what you ask of me, what language you pray in… None of that matters. Love each other, respect me and, in the immortal words of Bill N’ Ted, “Be Excellent To Each Other.” After all, I created every religion.

G: Can you imagine how boring that would be? Do you know how many prayers I have to listen to every day? How many places of worship I have to be present at for weddings, coming of age rituals, funerals… If they all looked and sounded the same, I wouldn’t be able to get through the week! However, the amount of crap that’s carried out in my name, sometimes makes me wish I had just created one faith.

G: Exactly! Those are the actions of men, not ME. For centuries, men have been so cruel to each other and they dared to use my name and words. That’s why they all die horrible deaths and their dreams are never fore filled. By the way, what faith are you again?

G: Ah, yes… Lapsed Christian, influenced by Buddhism, Martin Luther, Science and… JEDI?!

G: And you want a light sabre? What about the JedI mind trick?

G: Don’t worry, I’ve heard of worse concepts. Like you say, it has some good ideas. They aren’t new ideas, but they are good ones.

G: Wellll… True. But like I said, love is the most important thing, but I want some respect. Do you know how long I spent creating all of you? FOREVER! That’s how long. Is it so much to ask that you don’t take my name in vane, or that you occasionally show me some gratitude? That’s all I ask.

G: Smitten.

G: Mmm-hmm.

G: Of course! Back in the old days it was thunderbolts and plagues, floods and famines. But it got a bit boring, and people started asking questions about my motives for creating the universe. But, those who questioned usually ended up as a smouldering hole in the floor. These days, I just visit misfortune. What’s the point of such severe punishments, if the sinner cannot repent? It’s like the death penalty. It serves no-one. Misfortune on the other hand, brilliant. People don’t like suffering, so they change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but it’s always the people who suffer who end up praying more.

G: Yep. Sometimes I even give them a positive response. But punishment tends to fit the crime. Forgiveness is something to be earned.

G: Well aren’t you the little activist! Well, quite simply, those people go to Hell. It’s the old Faustian thing. If you have everything here on earth and give nothing to those who need it, you’ll burn for all eternity. It’s not a question of being communist or capitalist. It’s about being humanitarian. If you’re good to others, I’ll be good to you. Selfishness, greed and the like are some of the greatest offences in my books and my books include The Bible, The Torah, The Koran, The Aryan Texts,… well, you get the picture. When people start putting their mortal bodies over their immortal souls, they deserve nothing from me.

G: Not really. Part of being a human-being is being generous, kind and compassionate to every other human being. No-one should bankrupt themselves, but like you said, to someone who makes Ten Million a year, what’s a hundred thousand? It’s 1%! Quite literally, next to nothing. But the same runs down the scale. If you make $10,000 a year, something like a $100 of that, though it’s more important, would be welcomed (though I should stress that I wouldn’t punish anyone who suffered hardships and couldn’t share their wealth. Look after yourself first, but what you can give, you should give).

G: I did.

G: Because I didn’t see them coming.

G. Why do you presume that Humans are equipped to understand God? What I’m telling you here, I’m having to think several thousand levels beneath my usual plane. It would be like you talking to an amoeba! Perfect is a difficult term to understand. For instance, perfect means flawless, so if I’m perfect, I must be able to do everything without fault. But everything includes negatives. I must be just as bad at things, as I am good. I am everything and nothing, the best and the worst, the most and the least. There is nothing that I can’t do, and everything that I can do. Are you with me?

G: Well put. Can we move on. All this simplification gets rather testing. Instead of trying to understand everything about my work, people should just enjoy my labours and pay me my dues. Surely there must be more pressing questions.

G: No.

G: Hello, I’m God, have we met? I know everything, I’ve lived forever, which means that I have lived through the future and the past and reading your miniscule, misused human brains is not rocket science. In fact, rocket science took considerably longer to work out! So I know what you want to ask. You want to ask THAT question.

G: That’s the one… (sigh)… would it help if I said 42?

G: Well, it’s only your natural human inquisitiveness, I suppose. You really want to know the meaning of life?

G: Knowing the meaning of life will take all of the fun away from living life. In fact, it will probably kill you. That’s how most people take it.

G: I’ve never explained the meaning of life to a mortal. Not once. The truth of the matter is that most people figure it out. They stumble across it sooner or later. Some people figure it out when they’re seven minutes old. Others take seventy years, even longer. But when you know it, there’s no point in living any more. It’s like finishing a video game with 100% goals and levels. The actual living becomes obsolete. There’s nothing left to play for.

G: Sort of. When you find it, you’ll probably die, but you’ll die a happy man. Well, you might have just been hit by a truck or shot in the face so happiness might be a stretch. But you will be content and relaxed.

G: Not every time, but most. I did bestow some element of my perfection unto human beings. Urgo, there is no such thing as a mistake, as some of your most gifted psychologists and psychiatrists have stipulated. Every breath you take, every blink you take, every bite you chew is purposeful and controlled by some element of your consciousness. When you start chasing the right thread which will lead you to the meaning of life, your body and mind react, leading you to a set of circumstances that will endanger your life. The timing system I installed is quite fantastic with a 99.99999999994 accuracy and when you reach that situation where you teeter on the edge of the eternal void you will realise the meaning of life. At that point, you need the slightest push and you will die. Really, it’s a mercy. You won’t have to suffer the bleakness of a life without any purpose.

JA: On the one hand, you might be right. I never installed an AOG override loop in the system. Oh, AOG stands for Act Of God by the way. On the other hand of course, you are talking to a Being that can obliterate you with a thought, and just because I don’t throw lightning bolts like I used to, doesn’t mean that my arm is any less accurate. Therefore by testing my will in an effort to prove me wrong and not die having learnt the meaning of life, you would anger me and die anyway. Perhaps you’d like to help me test this theory?

G: The devil? Should we use Christian metaphor as it’s what you’re used to?

G: I would prefer it if we stuck to “The Devil.” The Morning Star was a name given to him when he was… a loyal friend. Since his rebellion, that name is dead to me.

G: The Devil is a necessary inconvenience. Hell needs a general manager and that beast makes for a more than suitable one. I banished him, and since then we have spoken a few times and only when it was unavoidable. I suppose I could call him “The Dark Side” but that would give him more credit and romance than he deserves. As I said, his wretchedness makes Hell what it is and there is no way, even with simplified human words, to describe the terror and horror of that place.

G: Every religion has its villains and I put them there for a reason. None of them bring me happy memories. But, to reiterate, pain makes pleasure sweeter, therefore, Hell makes Heaven even greater.

G: You mean in films like Dogma or by people like Marilyn Manson.

G: Well, yes. But you only knew that word because of that sort of translation. You speak modern English, why not translate the work into modern English. And every other language of course. If it would help people get the message, it should be done. The same goes for the other holy books and texts. Most of the fear of other religions comes from a people’s lack of understanding. So if a religious community doesn’t want to be feared or misunderstood, they should update and translate the texts. I didn’t give you all logic, for you lot not to use it. As for media representations of me, my work and faith in general, they are, for the most part, fine. Obviously Hell awaits those who defy me and blaspheme beyond my good humour, but satires are fine.

G: (laughing) I loved it. Well, I enjoyed it anyway. If it had been about Jesus, I would have been upset and various Pythons would have ended up in very bad ways, heaped in misfortune. But it was about Brian, not me, and therefore, it was fine. I know what it was like back then. With the bland and contractual religion preferred by the Romans and the issues surrounding some peoples’ concept of Judaism, everyone was looking for a new religion. If Brian had been real, he probably would have had a following!

G: Oh, yes. Not the only one of my earthly incarnations, but it was me alright.

G: Of course! You can’t guess it?

G: Please do.

G: (laughing) You got it! What else?!

G: Very well.

G: The Earth? The Universe? That is up to you. At the moment, Humanity is the foremost species in the Universe and you are getting to a point where you’ll have to do something with that honour. The galaxies are long and broad and there are billions of planets, stars and moons. You lot have barely touched your own satellite. I didn’t do all this work for my own pleasure.

G: The world is now a very small place, and before too long it will be too small. It might take some effort and money, but living on the moon, or even Mars should be almost routine. I put Mars there because it’s easily transformable and with nano-technology, super-fuels and the basic sciences all coming along nicely, you should be able to make a serious attempt to land there very soon, but you should already be putting up bricks and mortar on the moon! The Earth is struggling now, even though technology is at a stage that if it were put into mass production, the problems could be solved. With two planets, you might all be ok. Throw in a couple of satellites, and you’ll be set. And by the time that’s done, you should have the technology to go even farther.

G. It does. But you read some science-fiction from fifty years ago, and you’ll see that a lot of what was predicted back then has become true. Ok, you don’t have rocket packs yet, but things like MP3s, Microwaves, cloning, robots… the list goes on. Keep searching and you’ll find the answers. If you don’t, I’ll have to start again.

G: What? You think that YOU were the first try? Remember the omelettes. Anyway, that’s about it I think.

G: I suppose so. To all of you reading this: Be good to each other, respect me and remember that you are one people, and that you should be united. For those of you who fail such simple tasks, you will have to answer to me, and I am as vengeful as I am kind.