Renouncement

The first time I overdramatically renounced God was a little over a year ago. I’d just gotten out of my favorite DVD/CD/computer/appliance store, having purchased a DVD I knew would become the focal point for needless and frustrating and embarrassing obsession in the weeks to come (looking for scratches, sound problems, and whatnot) when I somehow miscalculated the distance between my car door and my head as I was plopping into the driver’s seat. The head injury (bump) was insubstantial, but it still conspicuously pissed me off.
 
It was when I started the car and looked out the windshield, though, that I knew something was wrong. Everything was blurry, out of focus. I felt a little dizzy as well. Holy shit. Fucking brain damage. It could happen; I knew this. It’s possible to get your head slammed through a drywall into concrete and be all right, but the flip side of that is you could just kinda “bump” your head on, oh, say, a car door and suffer serious head trauma and effing brain damage. This caused the type of panic that always makes me take off my glasses and clean the lenses with my shirt (even though that action could lead to small scratches and whatnot on said lenses).
           
My left lens was fine, but the right one was gone.
           
“Godmotherfuckingdammit,” I pointlessly and excessively swore to myself. Only after I said stuff like this did I hope that no one could hear me.
           
I hunched over out my car door and began searching for the popped lens on the parking lot blacktop. After a moment I found it and straightened backward up into the car… knocking the back of my head on the door this time.
           
That is when I decided that God didn’t exist. Or if He, fuck that-- “he” did, he hated me with a passion and had created me only to be tortured very subtly, driving me insane in tiny, tiny increments. All of this would lead, as God no doubt knew (because God is supposed to know everything), to me renouncing him and his existence. This, of course, meant that I would go to Hell on the off chance that God did in fact exist. I think, and quite rightfully so, that it is an extremely fucked-up system.
 
Why would an all-knowing, all-loving creator create some creations for the sole purpose of them not believing in him and going to burn eternally for doing exactly what they were created for? No. My thoughts are not original. But the fact that God and everything still affects millions of people’s lives, some for better, some for worse, shows to me that apparently there’s still a need to ponder this shit. There probably always will be. But I digress…
 
God’s apparent mind (or soul) games go back farther than us humans, though, right? According to the Good Book, God was hanging with a bunch of angels. One of them, Lucifer, started thinking maybe he should be top dog or disagreeing with God, so he tries to start some shit. God kicks his ass, makes Hell, sends him there to watch over it. So… did he know Lucifer (often described as one the most beautiful and majestic of angels) was going to make this ruckus? He must’ve, because, again, he knows EVERYTHING.
 
What. The. Fuck.
 
Then he makes earth, Adam and Eve. They’re in the Garden of Eden. Tons of fruit to eat. But there’s this one tree with tasty apples all over it, the dreaded Tree of Knowledge (like knowledge is a bad thing). And God says, “Eat everything but the ripe, delicious fruit from this here tree, ‘kay? Now I’m gonna go take a nap or something.” Then Lucifer, now the Devil, disguised as a snake is all, “Hey, why the hell not eat ‘em? Them apples looks da’ good.” And Eve likes apples, I guess. God made her that way. And Adam will do whatever the hell Eve says because he’s under pussy voodoo. He takes a bite of the apple. BAM! Sin.
 
WHY’D GOD PUT THE TREE THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE??? Are humans a science experiment??? Are we like rats running through a damn maze?!
 
Then there’s all the stuff with him knocking up an earthly virgin with his only begotten son, and thanks to Mel Gibson we all know Jesus went through some terrible, gory, wretched crap. Why, God, why? Why’d you do this? TO YOUR OWN ONLY BEGOTTEN SON NO LESS! Surely there had to be a less painful way to save people from the sins of the world that YOU made! It makes no SENSE. Heck with “mysterious ways”, this is downright nutty.
 
So, yeah, bumping my head twice and knocking a lens out of my glasses makes me think of this shit. It’s the little things. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, I couldn’t get my lens to stay in, so I had to drive near blind to the drug store to get one of those little screwdrivers for the little screws in eyeglasses. I’d been meaning to get one of those anyway. Maybe this was just the impetus I needed. A little push. Maybe that was God’s plan all along. Damn, Hell is scary. Maybe I’d over-reacted with my renouncement of him. Or,.. Him? It’s all so goddamn frustrating.

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D.J. Kirkbride is a writer and philosopher for the footnote. He also likes throwing kittens at little kids, because hey -- he's already going to hell, isn't he?