The Dangers of Talking to God
Hope all is well on your patch of Earth, human (or whatever you are).
Early in the COVID pandemic, HIFI Press committed to help combat the virus by giving away our only commodity… laughs. Through our Spread Books Not Germs campaign we’ve given away thousands of copies of our comedy sci-fi ebooks and audiobooks to readers all over the world.
A wise human once said, “Laughter is the best medicine”. I’m not qualified to argue, although I’ll still cover all my bases by taking antibiotics the next time I get a sinus infection. What I will argue is this: after the past year we could all use a little healing. And the best part about laughter is that you don’t even need a prescription.
Shit’s been pretty whack here on Earth lately, right? Seems to be getting more whack by the day. And to make things worse, some of our fellow humans are succumbing to the relentless parade of stress by becoming “whacked out”. They’re becoming whackos.
I’m not writing to address any specific type of whack: the virus, or the economy, or the election — although all those things play into it. I’m writing to address another global crisis, one that underlies and perpetuates all the rest: the whacko problem.
Exactly who are whackos? How can you tell them apart from non-whacked-out humans? The short answer: Whackos are anyone who got tangled up in the whack and can’t seem to find their way out again.
Long answer: Whackos are people who, after being pummeled by wave after wave of stress, become paranoid and distrustful of virtually everything and everyone. Rather than accept the whack and deal with it, they attempt to escape the whack by ardently denying it. They bristle at anyone who brings it up, especially anyone suggesting official policy to address it. In their retreat from the whack, from reality, they slip away from society and stake claim out on the fringe—out beyond rational thought where ignorant ideologies, religious zealotry, and conspiracy theories thrive.
By the way, I’m old enough to remember when conspiracy theories could be fun. Back when I was younger, they involved alien abductions and super spy agencies and human-bat hybrid children. Now, sadly, they result in hundreds of thousands of people getting sick and dying from a disease that could’ve been preventable if only the whackos had kept their whack to themselves. That kind of conspiracy theory is not very fun at all. I miss Batboy.
Anyway, these whackos naturally divide up into some whacky varieties: flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, birthers, climate-deniers.
The variety of whacko I’d like to address today is a particularly sinister type—the “God Told Me So” whackos.
To claim that a government is lying about UFOs is one thing. But to claim that the Divine Creator of All Things, the single heavenly monarch upon which existence itself hinges, has entrusted you with Thy Holy Opinion on human affairs, especially a democratic election, is another.
I’ve known a few of these whackos myself. When I was a teenager, I had a Catholic friend whose parents went missing on a road trip in the mountains of northern Arizona. They should have been home by dinner, but they never arrived.
This was before cell phones, so no one could contact them and the search went slowly. Forest rangers and police did their best to search every dirt road along the highways, but Arizona is a big place and there was a lot of ground to cover.
After they’d been missing for more than 24 hours, a local prayer group assembled to console my friend and pray for her parents. I knew many of these particular Catholics personally, so I knew they believed in things like angelic intervention, visions of Mary, Jesus’ mother, and what they called gifts of the spirit, which was just a religiously acceptable way of saying superpowers. Prophecy, Speaking in Tongues, Visions, etc. So during the prayer session, when someone started babbling in tongues and someone else claimed to have had a divine vision, everyone was ready to accept the miracles without question.
I remember a few friends calling me up to tell me their account of that prayer session. They said that the vision was God’s way of telling everyone what had happened to our friend’s parents. When they described the vision, they all said the room grew cold and every jaw dropped to the floor. What God had shown them was that my friend’s parents were tied to chairs, in some dank basement, beaten and murdered.
Naturally, my friend was obliterated with grief. She really believed that God, in His Infinite Mercy, hadn’t wanted to harm her. He just wanted to let her know her parents were with Him now. The two dozen other witnesses to the miracle agreed without question. Not a single person questioned the legitimacy of the so-called vision, rather, they wore their own blind participation in the miraculous event like some kind of “faith badge”.
That was why, when my friend’s parents pulled up in the back of a taxi the following day, a little dehydrated and very hungry after spending a couple of nights inside their broken down station wagon, things got a bit awkward within the prayer group.
My friend was furious and confused and strangely still grateful toward God. Thinking her parents had been kidnapped and brutally murdered had caused her psyche real trauma. Then, a day later, proof that God had been somehow flat out wrong disturbed her even more.
Still, she ended up deciding that God must have just “had His wires crossed” that day. Or that there was some kind of hidden lesson within the experience that she was just too dense to learn. Like that time in the Old Testament when God pulled a nasty trick on poor Abraham and Isaac. (Dick move, God!)
A few people eased up on their prayer group attendance, but mostly they all just went on babbling in tongues and having visions without a second thought to the damage they’d caused. Talking to them was pointless. It always ended up being your word against the Word of God.
These days, the “God Told Me So” whackos are still doing some real damage—and on a global scale.
For instance, there were many Christians claiming that God had chosen Donald Trump to lead us into the end times. Even after he lost the election (by a landslide of 7+ million votes), they claimed that God would find some other way to make sure Trump remained POTUS for another 4 years.
Being a Supreme Monarch and all, it’s no surprise God had zero qualms about subverting democracy (but that’s besides the point).
In one of his routine prophetic broadcasts, Pat Robertson claimed not only that Trump was chosen by God to lead America through the end times, but also that “…the only thing that will fulfill the word of Jesus … is some kind of asteroid strike on the globe.’’
C’mon, man. You trying to freak us out? Everyone knows that a second term for Trump is waaaaay scarier than an asteroid strike (which, let’s be honest, would do a lot less damage than Donald Trump has done during his first term.)
Even after Trump lost a slew of legal challenges across the country, all the way up to the Supreme Court, the whackos kept on insisting that God had Trump’s back. They told everyone not to worry, that He’d use His godly powers to make it right. He had a plan—which apparently didn’t involve just using those godly powers to flip a few million votes, which should be a piece of cake for an almighty deity, right?.
On a side note, those security experts at Dominion deserve a raise for preventing God Himself from rigging an election!
Remember the “Angels are coming from Africa” lady? We couldn’t get enough of her over at my place.
So many questions came to mind to ask her: Don’t Africans and South Americans need those angels? Why would God direct them away from starving, war-torn people to help whiny, first-world Karens?
I guess his ways really are mysterious (and kind of racist).
To those two whackos, and to all the other whackos who claimed that God said he backed Trump in the 2020 election, I pose a simple question.
Now that Trump’s gone, only one of the following statements can be true. Either,
- You lied to us, or
- God lied to you.
So which was it?
Let’s start by giving God the benefit of the doubt by assuming He actually exists. He’s omnipotent and omniscient and eternal, just like the scriptures say He is. Then why would God tell multiple humans something that verifiably turned out to be untrue? Was God somehow wrong?
Maybe God just changed His mind? I suppose we should allow the most powerful being in the universe some leeway to change His mind every now and again. But wouldn’t He have known He’d change his mind, and thus resisted the urge to whisper false prophecy in peoples’ ears?
Maybe it wasn’t God whispering in the whackos ears after all! Maybe it was some kind of evil spirit pretending to be God! Maybe it was aliens! Or some kind of new Cuban mind control technology! If we entertain any of those possibilities, then can’t we all agree that strange voices appearing in our heads should not be taken at face value, and thus not claimed to be the Infallible Word of God?
So if it wasn’t God lying or changing his mind, and if it wasn’t the Devil or an alien impersonating God, that leaves the most likely explanation: that the televangelists, preachers, and zealots were lying.
They were demonstrably false prophets. They led fellow believers astray, and in some cases incited them to act violently in the name of God. Why? For personal gain and a few minutes in the limelight.
This is why HIFI Press is committed to promoting the Humanist perspective in every book we publish. Humans are not dependent upon supreme deities to do the right thing. We have as much innate capacity for intelligence and compassion as we do for ignorance and hate. Our destiny is not yet written. As individuals and as a species, we can find mutually beneficial solutions to all the whack thrown our way. We can create a living paradise on Earth for all beings, right here and now, instead of waiting around to see if we’re worthy of the one promised on the other side of the grave.
And that all starts the day we stop talking to God and begin listening to our common humanity.
So, the next time you hear a strange voice in your head, don’t panic! And definitely don’t engage it in conversation! Just chalk it up to sleep deprivation or that hit of LSD you took in your twenties. Turn on some music to drown it out if you have to. Then, go back to dealing with life one whack at a time, with your head held high, knowing that here on Earth you already have everything and everyone you need to get through it.
