I used to be a ‘believer’. I had ‘faith’. But then we lost at Chelsea…

I also used to be a believer in that other thing, the God thing. Possibly til I was almost 9, maybe only 8 and then it all just got a bit illogical, a bit of a cop-out, a bit ‘out there’ for a young mind trying to make sense of a universe which was becoming ever more complex in a really wonderful way. And, with space travel, with massive scientific advancements, a world becoming more and more understood as an autonomous, living organism.

It seemed just too easy to attribute anything you didn’t know or couldn’t control to an unknown, unseen imaginary character. And then spend time actually praying into the unknown, when you could be kicking a football. Me and God parted ways at that point. Because there seemed no quid pro quo. You have to invest time and energy and effort into prayer and in return… your grandad died when he was 54. You learned of atrocities in war. Of the holocaust. Basically, shit happened. Loads of shit. And thus my proto-definition of ‘ominipotent and omniscient’ was the same as that of ‘total indifference’. I couldn’t see the point of having a God who could do ANYTHING!!! but chose to do nothing. Well, not so much ‘having’ a God like that, we don’t get to choose nor vote, but more, bothering with Him. Or Her.

And then Covid happened. In case you missed that. Epidemic? This year?? Like, all of it? Shitstorm?? Anyway, it happened. And once again, all the praying in the world produced less of a positive result than a £2.99 bottle of hand sanitiser. In fact, praying proved to be a massive problem. As the ‘true believers’, confident that they would be protected, by the same God who ‘protected’ them during the Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition, the partition of India, Vietnam… that God, would protect them now. So they gathered, in the face of instruction, advice and finally directives, not to. And guess what? They got ill in disproportionate numbers, they died in droves, they suffered almost worst than the rest of us.

Leaving me with only one possible conclusion. God actually hates us.

The God I once believed in had a long white beard. And a yarmulke. Even though humans have to wear such a thing ‘in the presence of God’, so I can see the problem there. But ‘my’ God was old and he was Jewish. Spoke Yiddish. With a Polish accent. Like my grandmother. Was wise. And funny. He was actually Jackie Mason with a stick-on beard. Because that God ‘created us in his own image’. But which one of us? Was this God, like LGBTQIA (yeah, its been extended along with Tier 4 restrictions), or just, like, men and women? Men AND women?

And as atheists are fairly boring, particularly the Richard Hawkins type, evangelical ones, my new year’s resolution is to join a devil-worship cult and see what they have to say. See if they can get me a vaccination more quickly. Might take Joey and Lila with too.

Happy New Year to one and all,

May your test results remain negative and your masks stop fogging up your fucking specs.

A xxxx