Page 19 - Unlikely Stories 3

Deus Inspiratori

The One and Only continued. Inattention was not an alternative.
“Do I permit pain, suffering and injustice? Do I create these
torments and corruptions, out of love for my people to advance their
beatitude? Or was I unable to prevent their occurrence? Are they an
illusion, a concomitant of metabolizing incarnation? Did I skirt
responsibility for these evils by setting up You-Know-Who as a
necessary testing device for blind faith? Or just let it happen?”
“No!” cried some. Others: “Yes!” All wondered which question
they had so fervently answered, and all subsided upon reflection that
Monogod’s oratory was rhetorical—just as their own so often was.
“Where there is no answer, there can be no question.” Monogod
was definitive. “My point is that mystery is total, or not at all. Once
you start looking for explanations of the inconsistencies in my
behavior, you have strayed from the path of true belief and ordained
righteousness. Your followers may come to you and ask why I had to
drown every living creature save one breeding pair, thus creating
recessive genetic traits, the curse of all succeeding generations, when
only mankind deserved that miserable fate. Or why I set your species
up in the first place to take over the planet if I knew you were going
to make a mess of it. Or why I followed a divide-and-conquer
strategy at Babel, setting up the latest catastrophe-cum-opportunity I
now present you. And, bless your saintly hides, you always have the
non-answers ready to transform the wavering faithful’s inquiries into
non-questions!”
The great spiritual leaders were bathed in awe, not of Monogod’s
casuistry, but of being blessed without beseechment. What an honor,
an elevation to the highest level possible for mere mortals in the
Great Chain of Being!
“Now we come to the matter at hand. I’ve brought you here to
give you a heads-up on the coming cataclysm: this time you elders
will be part of the problem AND the solution! That’s because it is
happening in relatively slow motion, compared to past resets. Your
services will be in demand to make it all go easier. Remember: no
atheists in foxholes! Prophecy will not fail! Business will be good.”
They had to admit it: Monogod was the best motivational speaker
ever. Eagerly they awaited their marching orders.

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