“You shouldn’t be tossing so in bed. You should sleep; sleep is good for your body.”
“The worry I have on my mind is not good for sleep. In any case, who may you be?”
“You already know who I AM or you wouldn’t have found your voice. You shouldn’t lose sleep over nothing.”
“Are you God? Are you really, really, God? I can’t believe it.”
“Well, you’ve always never wanted to believe anything even when you believe everything. Perhaps now you can sleep better, I assure you nothing is worth losing a good night sleep over; at least nothing that wouldn’t change by the folly of not sleeping.”
“Folly? But if you are God for real, didn’t you cause it? That’s part of my grouse with you, how could you make us in a way to lose sleep and turn round and condemn us for being victims of your creation?”
“You have a grouse? That’s interesting. But I did NOT make you to lose anything. I made you to gain everything. And I do NOT condemn. You choose, I watch.”
“But didn’t your Scriptures say you condemn some things, and we would be condemned to hell fire for doing or not doing certain things?”
“I have no Scriptures and, again, I do not condemn. Everything is beautiful.”
“No, you’re playing games with me, with my mind. Many things are not beautiful. And as for choosing, well, we do not choose to die. We do not choose all the natural calamities that befall us – the earthquakes, the floods, the drought, and the volcanoes. We choose none of it. You must be happy ‘watching’ all that!”
“I am not happy. I am not sad. It is all well and good. I see that you are measuring goodness only by the continued existence of your being, the human being, in the form it is and anything that interferes with your understanding of that form is ‘calamity’, even when new forms are created unknown and unseen, by the minute.”
“Sounds to me then that the whole idea of creation is for the fun of it, your fun.”
“No, goodness – for my goodness, our goodness, for you are in me as I am in you. But, I must admit, it’s not without its own fun; fun of your creation.”
“How do you mean, Father?”
“That’s where it starts, the fun part – what made you call me ‘Father’? Why
ascribe a sex to me? Is that to fit your notion of masculine superiority over other forms? If I am Father, then I must have male form and father-attributes, right?”
“Then what sex are you, Sir, er, sorry, er…”
“Nothing to be sorry about. I am He, She, It, and None, if you like. Must I be conceived in gender terms even as you turn round in the same breath to say I am formless? The fun bit is how much and how well you create me in your own image: form, emotions, warts and all! Did you not say ‘hell fire’ the other time? That I am supposed to make one huge inferno in which I would throw your souls, my soul, into for sins committed in your earthly form? That’s the fun part.”
“But Father, sorry, God, are you saying there is no Hell? If there is no Hell then there can be no Heaven, they are polar notions, aren’t they?”
“Good, you just said it, notions; not necessarily realities. Your mind, the human mind, has limitless capacity for imagination. But you choose to confine it. Your science works within the confines of time and space. But it does not have to be so, just as every now and then it is astounded and confounded in the discovery of new planets and new galaxies that expand earlier finite notions of the universe. In truth, the idea of time and space is a human construct, useful only to the extent of being working tools within your physicality.”
“But there must be something to deter people from doing badness and reward for doing goodness otherwise the world would be full of evil people. Surely you are not suggesting that nothing awaits murderers and other evil people in afterlife?”
“No I am not suggesting anything. There is sufficient deterrence and sufficient reward in the endless scheme of creation. Everyone chooses, I told you so already. And I watch!
“Yes, but you do have your ‘chosen’ ones, don’t you?”
“Are you accusing me of favoritism?”
“Would you be angry if I say, yes?”
“No. I do NOT anger. The emotion ‘anger’ is part of what your human mind created of me to make me a MAN – a FATHER!”
“But some scripture say the Israelites are your chosen ones, and soon.”
“That is hilarious. But so are the Yoruba, and the German, and the French, and the where have you. You must write your own story. Every people should. That way every race will make themselves my chosen ones.”
“But, Sir, sorry, God, don’t you take sides in wars, don’t you make some people victorious over others?”
“And just why should I? That’s part of the fun part of your human creation of me. That would suggest that I also choose which wars to join in and which ones not to, since you have had wars when the aggressors won and ones when they lost and I cannot be with any and lose. I have a laugh when I am ‘invoked’ to take sides even in sporting challenges. What business of mine is it to make one side win and another lose?”
“So, our prayer to you is useless?”
“No, prayer is a good thing. It comforts the mind and lifts the spirit. It moves mountains. But do not blame me when the mountain doesn’t move, when things don’t go your way, the way of your prayer, for I have nothing to do with it – either way.”
“Is that why we keep praying to you in this country, Nigeria, and you don’t answer our prayers?”
“I just told you I don’t answer and not answer prayers. You cannot be praying and doing nothing in earnest and in concert and expect your mountain to move. What exactly have been your prayers in and for Nigeria?”
“O my God, how can you ask that, with all the mess we are in? We die every day on our roads, we can’t boast of electricity for half a day consistently, we have no water to drink and every household is sinking boreholes, our schools have no books and no real teachers, our hospitals are eyesores. We’ve been praying to you to make our country be like other developed countries which you made.”
“Don’t make me laugh. Are you asking me to make your roads, provide you electricity and water, and provide you schools and hospitals, etc.? I did not make those developed countries as you claim. They made themselves, by their toil, their collective will. Read their histories, the people chose the leaders that would lead them and they are ready to fight for what they want with their lives and to defend it also with their lives. I’ve given you more than enough in this country already. It is yours to choose the leaders you want. It is yours to decide which system of government is best for you. It is yours to spend your money wisely. It is yours to fight and die for the country you want. O, you want me to do these things for you, is that why you have more churches and mosques than schools and hospitals? Haha.”
“Right, God, now can I talk about why I couldn’t sleep, tossing in bed? God, God, where are you?”
Note: “Conversations With God” is borrowed – in title and style (but not in content) – from the inspirational sequence of books by Neale Donald Walsch.
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