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4. And the Lord said unto Moses,

"This is the land I promised you,

but you shall not enter. Psych."

5. And Moses died.

DEUTERONOMY

Please, Almighty, don't kill me.

1. When I was a child, my parents and teachers told me about a man who was very strong. They told me he could destroy the whole world. They told me he could lift mountains. They told me he could part the sea. It was important to keep the man happy. When we obeyed what the man had commanded, the man liked us. He liked us so much that he killed anyone who didn't like us. But when we didn't obey what he had commanded, he didn't like us. He hated us. Some days he hated us so much, he killed us; other days, he let other people kill us. We call these days "holidays." On Purim, we remembered how the Persians tried to kill us. On Passover, we remembered how the Egyptians tried to kill us. On Chanukah, we remembered how the Greeks tried to kill us.

—Blessed is He, we prayed.

• Buddhism and the God-Idea (PDF)
• My religious education in brief: First Christianity (all of the Abrahamic faiths) tells us, "This is sin, that is sin, and all that over there is sin. Don't do any of those! You're free to go, have fun, but remember: If you do do any them, you had better feel afraid and guilty because, you just wait, you're going to get it! Welcome to Earth. That's just the way it is. Merry Christmas, motherf----r!"

Thou shalt fear, read this book, and obey it!

As bad as these punishments could be, they were nothing compared to the punishments meted out to us by the man himself. Then there would be famines. Then there would be floods. Then there would be furious vengeance. Hitler might have killed the Jews, but this man drowned the world. This was the song we sang about him in kindergarten: "God is here, God is there, God is truly everywhere!."

 

Then snacks, and a fitful nap.

 

I was raised like a veal in the Orthodox Jewish town of Monsey, New York, where it was forbidden to eat veal together with dairy. Having eaten veal, one was forbidden to eat dairy for six hours; having eaten dairy, one was forbidden to eat veal for three hours. One was forbidden to eat pig forever, or at least until the Messiah arrived; it was then, Rabbi Napier had taught us in the fourth grade, that the wicked would be punished, the dead would be resurrected, and pigs would become kosher.

 

—Yay! I said, high-fiving my best friend, Dov.

 

—You should be so excited, said Rabbi Napier, peering with disgust over the top of his thick horn-rimmed glasses, —on the Day of God's Judgment.

 

Cut it, or you're not kosher. (GR)

The people of Monsey were terrified of God, and they taught me to be terrified of Him, too — they taught me about a woman named Sarah who would giggle, so He made her barren; about a man named Job who was sad and asked, —Why?, so God came down to the Earth, grabbed Job by the collar, and howled, —Who the f*ck do you think you are?; about a man named Moses, who escaped from Egypt, and who roamed through the desert for forty years in search of a Promised Land, and whom God killed just before he reached it—face-plant on the one-yard line—because Moses had sinned, once, forty years earlier. His crime? Hitting a rock. And so, in early autumn, when the leaves choked, turned colors, and fell to their deaths, the people of Monsey gathered together in synagogues across the town and wondered, aloud and in unison, how God was going to kill them: —Who will live and who will die, they prayed, —

• who at his predestined time and who before his time,
• who by water and who by fire, 
• who by sword, 
• who by beast, 
• who by famine, 
• who by thirst, 
• who by storm, 
• who by plague, 
• who by strangulation, and 
• who by stoning.

Then lunch, and a fitful nap.

 

Man, they had it rough. So actually I helped God.

It is Monday morning, six weeks after my wife and I learned that she is pregnant with our first child, and I am stopped at a traffic light. The kid doesn't have a chance. It's a trick. I know this God; I know how He works. The baby will be miscarried, or die during childbirth, or my wife will die during childbirth, or they'll both die during childbirth, or neither of them will die and I'll think I'm in the clear, and then on the drive home from the hospital, we'll collide head-on with a drunk driver and they'll both die later, my wife and child, in the emergency room just down the hall from the room where only minutes ago we stood so happy and alive and full of promise.

 

That would be so God. More
 
Why good Christians must side with Israel
(Corey Gil-Schuster) Want to know what Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East think about Israel's war? Ask and I will get answers. Want to contribute? Go to gofundme.com/Ask-Project. People ask Israeli Jews, Who is Jesus to you? (Thanks, Sheldon).