Sometimes I pray to God
like if I don’t I’m going to die.
My lungs will cease to breathe,
my heart will fail to beat,
my skeleton will collapse.
I pray to God like he’s my lifeline.
But sometimes
I don’t believe in God.
Sometimes I don’t believe in anything.
Sometimes I’m absolutely convinced
that no God is out there because,
after all,
deities are made
of mist and hope,
fear and smoke
and mirrors.
God
exists in a book of fairy tales
and windows that have more life
in them than some of God’s children.
I don’t believe in God,
some days,
because then I’d have to believe
he’s a monster.
I spent 15 years
on my knees begging forgiveness
for crimes I didn’t understand.
Begging him to absolve me
of being a person.
I was 15
when I was taught about the Jewish
who spent years in prisons wondering
why
no God
had ever come.
Wondering what they had done
to deserve to be tortured
and starved
and hated
and murdered in cold blood.
No God ever came for them.
No God has ever come for anyone.
There has been massacre
after
massacre
after massacre in his name
and he’s still
anywhere but here.
Perhaps he could not hear
their prayers.
But surely he must have heard their
screams.
Maybe instead he was listening to the man
ordering the slaughter,
and requesting God’s help.
Where is this so-called
omniscient
omnipotent
being, our holy moral authority?
What does it say about him
that he sits idly by in the face of
inhuman cruelty?
I suppose it doesn’t matter,
because all that matters is that
He’s never shown up.
Not when it counts.
He doesn’t ease
suffering.
Man, I was taught,
was created in his image.
I shudder to think
of the face of a God
that was the inspiration
for a mass murderer.
The face of a rapist.
The face of a pedophile.
Sometimes all three
at once.
Sometimes I don’t believe in God
even when I really
really
want to, because if I do
then that means I have to believe
God isn’t as kind as I think he is.
He’s not as loving.
Or he’s not as powerful
as we think.
Because he can’t be both, can he?
He cannot be good
and kind
and forgiving
and still know all,
still know the way every
single
life will unfold
and eventually end.
He cannot know everything and still love us.
He cannot love us all
and know that one of us will
singlehandedly
destroy
another several million.
The cost for believing otherwise
is too high.
The cost is the lives of our brothers
and sisters
and the grief of their mothers
and the tears of their fathers.
What does it say about God
that man has such a capacity
to inflict pain
and enjoy it?
And believe it is warranted?
I suppose it doesn’t matter.
It only matters that we do.
I have no faith
in any
all-powerful,
all-loving God.
Maybe that means I’m wicked.
Maybe it doesn’t matter.
Because I am his daughter.
I was created in his image.
I wear his face.